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Post by I Love Melvin on Dec 22, 2023 14:01:04 GMT
This is the shortest of Bing's filmed versions of the song but it's my favorite, with the simple music box accompaniment. I love music boxes and particularly associate them with Christmas. It really sets off that voice, which is probably more than anything what's made this such an all-time classic. From White Christmas (1954), of course.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Dec 23, 2023 14:10:46 GMT
And, from the same movie, here it is, the mother lode of Christmas sentiment. This was the first film Paramount released in its VistaVision process and they took the opportunity to make the movie as deluxe as possible to show it off. The color is mind-blowing, especially as it's been restored using the most modern technology. A gift that keeps on giving, year after year.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Dec 29, 2023 23:58:46 GMT
Holiday Inn (1942) is generally lumped in with Christmas movies (for good reason) but the rest of the year gets some attention too. This celebration is pretty tame stuff compared to what you'd be likely to run into today, but perfect for an old fart like me. (I record the ball drop and watch it the next day; pathetic, I know.) However you celebrate, enjoy!
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Post by I Love Melvin on Dec 31, 2023 14:39:49 GMT
Someone (Kate Gabrielle by name) has put together a nice montage of Auld Lang Syne as it has appeared on film, so I thought I'd share it here. Her sleuthing credits the following films: Ocean's 11, One Way Passage, The Gold Rush, Waterloo Bridge, An Affair to Remember, Wee Willie Winkie, Scandal, The Apartment, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Bachelor Mother and It's a Wonderful Life.
Another YouTube poster (Just Talking Musicals) has combined this scene from Holiday Inn with Fred's remembrances of the filming. Poor Fred. Seven takes.
It's included in the montage, but I love the dreamy waltz scene in Waterloo Bridge so I'm going to separate it out. Happy New Year to anyone who sees this in time, or belated if not.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Jan 4, 2024 0:22:58 GMT
Some performers preferred not to work with children because there could be too many variables, but some other performers breezed right through such numbers. I like but don't love the movie version of Anything Goes (1956), but I do love this number Donald O'Connor did with some enthusiastic kids. It was filmed in Paramount's VistaVision process so it looks great, in the tradition of other gorgeous Paramount VistaVision product from around that time like White Christmas (1954) and The Ten Commandments (1956). Unfortunately, this particular copy from YouTube seems to have been formatted for VHS, so SD instead of HD, but still fun. "You Can Bounce Right Back".
Gene Kelly was another who knew that you get what you give with kids and it shows in this charmer from An American in Paris (1951). I generally don't post numbers which have already been seen in the That's Entertainment! movies because I assume most readers here would already be familiar, but I can't resist posting this. "I Got Rhythm".
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Post by I Love Melvin on Jan 5, 2024 15:07:40 GMT
I'm realizing it was a glaring error to not include Danny Kaye with the other kid-friendly performers I mentioned, so here goes. He entertained a group of them in Hans Christian Anderson (1952) with "The King's New Clothes" and in real life was the first ambassador for UNICEF, so he took both entertaining and helping children very seriously.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Jan 10, 2024 22:54:29 GMT
A while back dianedebuda posted "It's a Lovely Day Today" with Vera-Ellen and Donald O'Connor from Call Me Madam (1953), but the movie hasn't been fully mined for their spectacular dancing. Here they are again. "Something to Dance About." It's a Fox film and 1953 was the year they introduced the CinemaScope process, so it always makes me wish a little bit that it had come just a tad later to take advantage of the widescreen and especially the stereophonic sound. But it looks great nonetheless. Note: IMDb lists Carol Richards as singing for Vera-Ellen, who was always dubbed in musicals.
And more Donald from that same film. "What Chance Have I with Love?"
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Post by I Love Melvin on Jan 11, 2024 16:36:53 GMT
TCM just showed Living in a Big Way (1947) with Gene Kelly, which I've been vaguely aware of but had never seen. It's not a musical but has a couple of good numbers for Kelly, created by him and Stanley Donen. This one, "Fido and Me" has only been posted on YouTube in truncated versions, so that's what's here, but it's enough to get in on the fun. The pup looks familiar and we've probably seen this dog in other films, but I can't put my finger on it.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Jan 12, 2024 17:06:28 GMT
The same day as the Gene Kelly movie TCM showed Broadway Rhythm (1944), a wartime MGM Technicolor musical. During the War Fox was cranking out a lot of Technicolor musicals but MGM used the process more sparingly, I guess in a goodwill home front conservation effort? Not sure. I seem to remember there being rationing of film stock. MGM switched to color for its musicals in a big way after the war, but Broadway Rhythm and a few others like DuBarry Was a Lady (1943) and Best Foot Forward (1943) were outliers at the time. Anyway, it's been beautifully restored and has a good cast and some good musical sequences. I especially enjoy Nancy Walker and Charles Winninger, who didn't come around every day in musical roles. Here's Nancy, with Ben Blue and the Tommy Dorsey Band. "Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet".
Here's Charles Winninger in a delightfully silly number with the great Tommy Dorsey. "I Love Corny Music".
The movie also featured two Lena Horne numbers, which have been posted previously. Gloria De Haven and Kenny Bowers had a number, "Pretty Baby", which morphed into a daydream by Charles Winninger doing the same number with Ginny Simms. Kenny had been in Best Foot Forward the previous year but didn't really last at MGM, maybe because he seemed to be trying a little too hard to be Mickey Rooney and they already had one of those. But he was an engaging performer nonetheless. See what you think.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Jan 23, 2024 0:26:38 GMT
A few duos have done a role reversal of this Academy Award-winning song from Neptune's Daughter (1949), my favorite being Michael Feinstein and Nancy Lamott on her Christmas album. It can play out beautifully when it's the man who is the nervous one. In the movie it's first done in the traditional way by Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban, switching to Red Skelton and Betty Garrett flipping the script. I won't ignore the fact that this song has been "condemned" in some quarters as promoting date rape, but I won't endorse that view either. Life's too short and I love musicals too much to go looking for problems.
Here's Betty taking the lead again with Frank Sinatra in Take Me Out to the Ball Game the same year. It was kind of her thing and both of these roles led up to On the Town, also that same year, for which she's probably best remembered. "It's Fate, Baby, It's Fate".
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Post by I Love Melvin on Feb 11, 2024 18:45:55 GMT
I haven't posted many Pat Boone numbers because, even though he appeared in a number of films which featured him singing, he was most often seen simply as a balladeer, without much else of interest going on, the "crooner" syndrome. I've always liked him though, starting with seeing him in Bernardine (1957) as a kid. It's pretty dumb stuff to my eyes now, but at the time I thought it was a cool movie. I recently revisited Mardi Gras (1958) to see if there was anything to post because it's coming up on that time of year; this one isn't specifically Mardi Gras-related but there's some fun interplay between Pat and co-stars Tommy Sands and Gary Crosby. Boy, Crosby really leaned into the sound made famous by his father, didn't he?
Pat had good energy and even a penchant for wackiness so it's a shame his home studio, Twentieth Century-Fox, never really threw him a bone with big, splashy production numbers and just kept him in what they considered his lane, passive crooning. So here's a stationary Pat crooning one of his biggest hits, "Love Letters in the Sand", in Bernardine (1957). I still have my 45 single of this one. Nerd.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Feb 11, 2024 22:58:25 GMT
Tommy Sands was a whole other story. I'm sure he had his fans and I hope they're not as passionate a power bloc as the Swifties, but of all the teen idols who made it into movies he was pretty much an also-ran careerwise. He entered the fray in 1957 with Sing Boy Sing, as an Elvisy singer and never really stepped out of carbon copy mode. Disney probably made the best use of him by pairing him with Disney girl Annette Funicello in Babes in Toyland (1961). "Whisper Away".
Tommy went blonde in a non-singing role for the "young adult" comedy Love in a Goldfish Bowl (1961), competing for the girl with co-star Fabian and had a reasonably high-profile gig singing the title song to The Parent Trap with Annette that same year, but his career just sort of trailed off into some TV work.
He started out with a bit of an edge but the bland settled in pretty quickly, maybe somewhat due to his marriage to Sinatra's daughter Nancy. Here's that early turn as Elvis...I mean Vigil Walker...in Sing Boy Sing (1957). Is he the world's worst lip-syncer or is it my imagination?
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Post by I Love Melvin on Feb 13, 2024 0:05:39 GMT
Now for the real thing. Same year. From Loving You, "Teddy Bear".
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Post by I Love Melvin on Feb 13, 2024 22:47:26 GMT
By sheer luck this thread began in late February last year, so this number from Holiday Inn (1942) is still up for grabs. Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds (dubbed by Martha Mears in her singing numbers) singing "Be Careful, It's My Heart", with Marjorie and Fred dancing. In checking IMDb to confirm the dubbing I found out that this song was intended to be the big breakout from the movie and the fact that it turned out to be "White Christmas" caught everyone by surprise. Happy Valentine's Day, all.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Feb 13, 2024 23:51:02 GMT
And here's one from my personal favorite movie Valentine, Betty Grable, from Coney Island (1943), "Cuddle Up a Little Closer". If poor Betty looks a little uncomfortable at first it's because club owner George Montgomery handcuffed her under those flowers so she'd have to just sell the song and not do any of the usual showgirl moves. I don't know about you, but I'm sold.
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