Bernard F. Dick - That Was Entertainment: The Golden Age of the MGM Musical

THAT WAS ENTERTAINMENT

That Was ENTERTAINMENT

THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE MGM MUSICAL

BERNARD F. DICK

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI JACKSON

www.upress.state.ms.us

Designed by Peter D. Halverson

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

Photographs courtesy of Photofest/MGM unless otherwise noted

Copyright 2018 by University Press of Mississippi

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States

First printing 2018

Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Dick, Bernard F., author.

Title: That was entertainment : the golden age of the MGM musical / Bernard F. Dick.

Description: Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2017049132 (print) | LCCN 2017053326 (ebook) | ISBN 9781496817341 (epub single) | ISBN 9781496817358 (epub institutional) | ISBN 9781496817365 (pdf single) | ISBN 9781496817372 (pdf institutional) | ISBN 9781496817334 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Musical filmsUnited StatesHistory and criticism. | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Classification: LCC PN1995.9.M86 (ebook) | LCC PN1995.9.M86 D53 2018 (print) | DDC 791.43/6578dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017049132

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

In Memoriam
Debbie Reynolds (19322016)

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Linda Harris Mehr, director, Margaret Herrick Library at the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study, for creating such a friendly space for film research. I am indebted to the staff on whose expertise I have relied, especially Louise Hilton of Special Collections and Kristine Krueger of the National Film Information Service (NFIS). Special thanks to the Seattle Genealogical Society for providing me with valuable information about Arthur Freed and his family; everyones favorite archivist, Ned Comstock of the University of Southern Californias Cinematic Arts Library; and Phillips Exeter Academy archivist Edouard L. Desrochers, who verified Arthur Freeds brief stay at the academy. As always, I must acknowledge my debt to my wife, Katherine Restaino, for her encouragement and wisdom.

I would also like to single out two books that were enormously helpful to me: Hugh Fordins The World of Entertainment! Hollywoods Greatest Musicals (Avon, 1975), reprinted as MGMs Greatest Musicals: The Arthur Freed Unit (Da Capo Press, 1996); and Earl J. Hess and Pratibha A. Dabholkars Singin in the Rain: The Making of an American Masterpiece (UP of Kansas, 2009). Both have drawn heavily on the Arthur Freed Collection at the University of Southern California, thus facilitating my own research.

My deepest gratitude to James Robert Parish for his meticulous reading of my manuscript and his suggestions for improvement, which I have implemented.

To cut down on needless repeating of documentation, unless indicated, all financial information (budgets, grosses, losses) come from the Eddie Mannix Ledger at the Margaret Herrick Library. (Mannix was MGMs troubleshooter, who knew how to cover up scandals that would detract from the studios family-friendly image.) While the Ledger provides financial information for MGM films from 1928 to 1962 (production costs, domestic and international grosses, etc.), the figures only reflect revenues from a films initial release, not from subsequent rentals. Still, the Ledger is the most reliable source of an MGM films box office performance after its release.

THAT WAS ENTERTAINMENT

INTRODUCTION

In the 2015 Broadway musical, Something Rotten! set in Elizabethan England, the playwright Nick Bottom resents Shakespeares widespread fame, while he labors in obscurity. God, I hate Shakespeare, . I just dont get it, how a mediocre actor from a measly little town / is suddenly the brightest jewel in Englands Royal Crown. He seeks out Nostradamus to see what the future holds for him. Nostradamus predicts a new theatrical form in which part of the story will be told in song. Nick is stunned: An actor is saying his lines, and out of nowhere he just starts singing? What possible thought can the audience think other than this is horribly wrong? Nostradamus replies that they will not think that because Cue for his big number, A Musical, in which he foresees a type of stage presentation with song and dance and sweet romance / and happy endings happening by happenstance. The lyrics explain the reasons audiences have gravitated to musicals: On a Saturday night, instead of attending a Greek tragedy and see a mother have sex with her son or a drama with all that trauma and pain, try a musical where crooners croon a catchy tune and limber leggy ladies thrill ya till ya swoon. Something Rotten! is essentially a tribute to the unique American art form, the stage musical, which may have derived from European operetta but which composers and lyricists such as Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Jule Styne, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, John Kander and Fred Ebb, Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, and Stephen Sondheim have turned into an indigenous art form.

Hollywood followed suit, creating a unique kind of film: the movie musical. In this regard, one studio eclipsed the others: MGM.

The MGM musical of the studios golden years (the late 1920s through the end of the 1950s) typically glorified the America of yesteryear, inspiring nostalgia for a simpler and seemingly happier time (Meet Me in St. Louis, Easter Parade, Two Weeks with Love) when gender roles were clearly defined, and society was unashamedly patriarchal (Meet Me in St. Louis); it portrayed an America devoid of urban sprawl and social unrest, where adolescents lacked a libido (Babes in Arms, Strike Up the Band, Little Nellie Kelly); and adults who did expressed it in dance (the Slaughter on Tenth Avenue ballet in Words and Music) or song (I Can Cook, Too, Betty Garretts catalogue of her culinaryand otherskills in On the Town). The Soviet Union may have exploded its first atomic bomb in 1949, but one would never know it from MGMs musicals of that year which belonged to an age of moviemaking marked golden, not nuclear. Who cared about the bomb when Esther Williams was swimming in turquoise water in Neptunes Daughter as if she were the sea gods offspring? For the aquatically indifferent, there was the sexy Baby, Its Cold Outside duet with a suave Ricardo Montalban romancing a coy Williams, in contrast to an uninhibited Betty Garrett cozying up to a seduction-resistant Red Skelton. Take Me Out to the Ball Game posed the burning question of 1949: Will Gene Kelly remain a ballplayer and pair off with Esther Williams so Frank Sinatra can do likewise with Betty Garrett? There was no pairing off in On the Town with three sailors on a twenty-four-hour leave in New York. They do their wooing, have an adventure (no time for a fling), and return to their ship at 6:00 a.m.

The MGM musical confirmed audiences belief in an America with strong family values, even if they interfered with social mobility. In Meet Me in St. Louis, the prospect of a fathers uprooting his family and relocating to New York causes such consternation among his children that he decides to remain in his old job. The films moral is simple: Home is where the heart is, especially when it is the site of the 1904 St. Louis Exposition World Fair.

No studio could compete with the dreamy lushness that Vincente Minnelli brought to a wisp of a film like