Written as part of the Summer Under the Stars Blogathon As an actress, Esther Williams films fit into a cookie-cutter mold: Beautiful girl goes to a place, sees musicians play music, and swims in the finale. Directors more flamboyant than others were able to work within this formula to mold story and necessity, and I’d…
Often considered the outlier of the Mickey and Judy films, Girl Crazy is the rare feature adapted from a successful play (Babes in Arms was significantly changed from its original stage incarnation). With original Broadway stars Ginger Rogers and Allen Kearns replaced by our two crazy kids, Girl Crazy, by veering off the pre-set track wins…
After Babes in Arms’ (1939) rampant success MGM thought, “Hey, those crazy kids have something special.” The eventual follow-up, Strike Up the Band sees Mickey and Judy go bigger with a larger budget and runtime. Mickey and Judy move out of the barn and into the world of small-town America with a script that ironically lampoons…
The final week of the July Four gets musical with those lovable scamps Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. The third film the two musical dynamos made, Babes in Arms was Warner Bros. biggest moneymaker for the year, beating out the other Judy Garland movie out, a little film called The Wizard of Oz that was…
Originally published March 21st, 2012 Calamity Jane was the latest film I watched for my Women in Film class and this movie is frustrating. It’s cute and has some good songs and Doris Day is beautiful no matter how hard she tries, but the issue of femininity and female competition over men really irked me.…
Van Johnson week closes – or lies dormant until his Summer Under the Stars day – with his role in a remake of a popular Jimmy Stewart Christmas classic! A turn-of-the-century remake set in America of The Shop Around the Corner (1940), In the Good Old Summertime is an effectively charming film that, in many regards,…
You wouldn’t expect me to devote a week to Van Johnson and avoid reviewing his work with Esther Williams, would you? Actually, he and Williams teamed up so frequently I could have devoted this week to their films alone, but in the interest of fairness I went with one. The second of six films starring Johnson…
