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Post by I Love Melvin on Feb 24, 2023 14:35:44 GMT
I'm going to steal Lucky Dan's idea ("A Couple of Swells") and start a thread where we can post our favorites (or ones which are just interesting or rare or whatever). The DVD box set for That's Entertainment included a fourth disc of numbers which they apparently considered but didn't use, so I thought it could be like that. Those movies also focused mainly on MGM musicals and we won't need to do that here.
I should probably breeze in here with something spectacular, but I want to start with this more modest one from There's No Business Like Show Business (1954). There's a cutaway to a producer saying how much Donald O'Connor and Mitzi Gaynor bring to the number and he's so right. It's witty and sprightly and a lot of fun.
The movie also features a fun duet between Mitzi and Ethel Merman. The conceit is that Mitzi's brother and partner has disappeared after a family fight and their mother, Ethel, has to step in. I'm a huge Donald O'Connor fan (obviously) but I can't quite imagine him bringing as much to this particular number as Big Mama did.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Feb 24, 2023 15:00:38 GMT
I love the idea that this grandiose number from It's Always Fair Weather (1955) is supposed to take place in the confines of a television studio. Dolores Gray was always a knockout in my book but I think she bested herself here with "Thanks a Lot But No Thanks".
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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 24, 2023 15:32:21 GMT
I love this roller-skating one from Fred and Ginger even though they aren't singing in it as its beautiful to see and they look like they are having fun doing it.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Feb 24, 2023 18:16:22 GMT
The roller skates remind me of a cute scene in my namesake movie in which Donald O'Connor roller skates (on stairs yet) with a sweet young girl in "Life Has Its Funny Little Ups and Downs". (I Love Melvin, 1953)
That same year Bob Fosse and Debbie Reynolds did a dance number using reverse projection in Give a Girl a Break, another minor but fun MGM musical. Nice couple.
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Post by Lucky Dan on Feb 24, 2023 19:53:11 GMT
Bob Fosse and Debbie Reynolds did a dance number using reverse projection in Give a Girl a Break, another minor but fun MGM musical . Nice couple. I was thinking of Give a Girl a Break just yesterday. The local independent station ran it a few times when I was a kid. I remember it being a lot of fun.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Feb 24, 2023 21:34:42 GMT
Columbia wasn't as invested in the musical game as MGM and Fox, but they pulled out all the stops for their big ticket star Rita Hayworth. This is a number from Cover Girl (1944) with co-star Gene Kelly.
. "You Excite Me" from Tonight and Every Night (1945).
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Post by Lucky Dan on Feb 24, 2023 22:17:42 GMT
When you've danced with Cyd, you stayed danced with. - Fred Astaire
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Post by I Love Melvin on Feb 24, 2023 22:23:53 GMT
This one from Tin Pan Alley (1940) is kind of history in the making. Alice Faye was Fox's big female musical star but here she's symbolically handing it off to Betty Grable, the way Betty did over a decade later to Marilyn Monroe in How to Marry a Millionaire (1954). Faye stayed with Fox making musicals in the early 1940's but the big buildup for Grable basically started here.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Feb 25, 2023 14:32:45 GMT
Warner Brothers was big into the musical business in the 1930's but sort of backed off for a while until Doris Day made it practically mandatory that they get back in. They didn't have nearly the "stable" of musical stars MGM did, but one of my favorites was Gene Nelson. He wasn't as charismatic as Gene Kelly but he held his own, thank you very much. He eventually went on to direct, with a couple of Elvis movies to his credit and also my all-time favorite teen musical, The Cool Ones (1967). Later in life he was in the original cast of the troubled Follies on Broadway. This is him in a nice number from She's Working Her Way Though College (1952).
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Post by I Love Melvin on Feb 25, 2023 15:27:27 GMT
Jane Wyman isn't generally thought of as a singer but her delight when she got a chance to do it is obvious, as in this Academy Award-winning duet with Bing Crosby in Frank Capra's Here Comes the Groom (1951). It's the Hoagy Carmichael / Johnny Mercer song "In the Cool Cool Cool of the Evening".
She reteamed with Bing in Just For You in 1952 and they did another duet, "Zing a Little Zong", an apparent attempt to strike the same spark. Jane got a nice, playful solo number as well.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Feb 25, 2023 21:51:36 GMT
I posted recently in the Music forum about an album of rock covers Mae West did in the 1960's. One of them made it into Myra Breckinridge (1970) so I thought I'd post it here. It's simultaneously disconcerting and freakin' amazing. Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle." Sorry for the so-so print.
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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 25, 2023 22:19:48 GMT
I posted recently in the Music forum about an album of rock covers Mae West did in the 1960's. One of them made it into Myra Breckinridge (1970) so I thought I'd post it here. It's simultaneously disconcerting and freakin' amazing. Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle." Sorry for the so-so print. Okay, that was something to see. So many thoughts.
Mae West looks like a hologram of herself in this video.
Kudos for her for keeping her figure as, knowing what she looked like in the 1930s, I would have bet big money that she'd have become a heavy-set older woman.
I'm not quite sure what I thought of her performance, but she gave it with confidence and that's half the battle.
And darn if that Mae West signature voice wasn't obvious from the first note.
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Post by dianedebuda on Feb 26, 2023 13:15:50 GMT
Watched the Mae West clip with interest after having read in the Raquel Welch thread: 😆
On the other hand, there's no doubt about Cyd Charisse in this number from Silver Stockings (1957). 😉 I loved an LP record with music from the show long before I ever saw the movie, but she's perfect in one of my favorites of its musical pieces. Read that the censors were causing big problems 'cause they classified her dance as a strip-tease. 😲 Does explain why she quickly hides behind a chair after doning the teddy-like lingerie. 😆
Reportedly the Josephine number was shot with a long and a short version, then the short version was seriously cut since it too was classified as a "strip-tease".
Another fun number from that show revolving around undergarments:
Silk Stockings had some fun poking at the new technologies:
Finally watching Peter Lorre "dance" at 2:21 🤣
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Post by I Love Melvin on Feb 26, 2023 15:15:13 GMT
Bing and Frank's duet to Cole Porter's "Well, Did You Evah!" in High Society (1956) is justly famous, but the same year Bing duetted with Donald O'Connor (See how I keep getting him in?) to Porter's "You Gotta Give the People Hoke" in Anything Goes.
I'm going to post Mitzi Gaynor's version of the title song, though it breaks my heart to say that it's a good example of what not to do. (It wasn't her choice of course.) The whole treatment could basically have been applied to any generic production number; just throw a lot of sequins and an artsy set at it and that's a wrap. It doesn't do anything to evoke the wit and verbal play of this particular song, and it's the title song. I adore Mitzi but, as an interpretation of an iconic song, this doesn't cut it. Please feel free to disagree.
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Post by dianedebuda on Feb 26, 2023 16:32:54 GMT
I enjoyed those clips including Mitzi's number. Guess I'm focused less on interpretation and more on the quality of the singing and dancing. Don't remember ever having seen them before, so looked at my library & there it was, captured in 2011 but still unviewed. 😄 Don't know how I've skipped this since I've seen the stage version a couple of years ago with the national touring company and the PBS filmed version of the production.
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