There's No Business Like Show Business (Thank God)

Film: When My Baby Smiles at Me
Format: Internet video on laptop.

When My Baby Smiles at Me is one of those movies I haven’t been able to find for the last few years. When it popped up on YouTube, I jumped at the chance to watch it, not knowing how long it might stick around. Based on the title, I expected a musical comedy, It’s not. It’s a drama, sort of a romance (because there’s always a love angle in films from this era), and a bit of a musical. It also treads pretty heavily on the boards of The Lost Weekend from a few years before. If you think that means we’ll be dealing with both show business and alcoholism, you’re more right than you know.

We’re going to be firmly enmeshed in the lives of Bonny Kane (Betty Grable) and “Skid” Johnson (Dan Dailey), a married pair of Vaudevillians dancing and clowning their way across stages in the 1920s. Bonny is a decent showgirl, able to knock out a song well enough and with the legs to make the audience enjoy it more. Skid is a comedian/comic dancer and is the true star of the show run by Lefty Moore (James Gleason). All seems well and good, except that, of course, off stage things aren’t that great.

Mr. Belvedere

Film: Sitting Pretty
Format: On Demand on big ol’ television.

From 1985 to 1990, there was a sitcom called Mr. Belvedere that featured a cultured English gentleman acting as a live-in nanny/servant for a typical American family. It ran for six seasons and is one of many television shows that featured a male caretaker of children. It, however, had a much better place from which to start, since the show was based on Sitting Pretty and its two sequels. Sitting Pretty features a typical American family in desperate need of a maid/nanny who, through a few miscommunications, end up hiring Lynn Belvedere (Clifton Webb) to take care of their children and help around the house.

That miscommunication is wrapped up in Belvedere’s first name. Harry (Robert Young) and Tacey King (Maureen O’Hara) are desperate for help with their three rambunctious boys and large dog when their current maid walks out. Tacey places an ad that is answered by Lynn Belvedere, who she assumes is a woman. When Lynn Belvedere arrives, wackiness ensues. Harry is keen to get rid of the man immediately, but Belvedere proves his competence quite quickly and within a day, the three children are quiet, polite, and well-behaved.

Singin' in the Pain

Film: With a Song in My Heart
Format: DVD from Mokena Community Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.

Unlike when I watched Goodbye, Mr. Chips a few days ago, I knew going into With a Song in My Heart that there would be a great deal of singing. This is, after all, the story of singer Jane Froman. Like many a film of this sort, we start at the end, with Jane being given an award for her tremendous courage. Courage? For a singer? Well, for that we’ll need to dive into the movie itself, won’t we?

Jane Froman (Susan Hayward) starts out life as a young woman studying singing and looking for a job on the radio. She manages to get an audition, but when she goes in, she encounters not the man she expected but Don Ross (David Wayne), who doesn’t tell her that he’s just failed an audition. She sings, the real manager for the station hears her and he hires her on the spot. Jane is a real talent (the singing in the film is voiced by the real Jane Froman, after all) and is soon skyrocketed into a real career. Don becomes her manager and lives on her coattails, working as a smaller warm-up act in many of her shows and managing her professional life. Eventually, the two decide to get married despite the fact that Jane doesn’t really love him. It’s more a marriage of convenience for her career than anything else.

Et Cetera, et Cetera, et Cetera

Film: The King and I
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on laptop.

While I’m not a massive fan of musicals, there are a few that are, more or less, required; you pretty much have to like them. I’d put The King and I into that category, or would have without question before today. It’s still a film that I have a great deal of respect for, but I can’t say that I’m as excited by it now as I may have been a couple of years ago since it had been years since I had seen it. Well, I’ve watched it again now, and it hasn’t aged quite as well as I could have hoped it would have.

The story is almost high concept in its simplicity. A traditional British widow named Anna Leonowens (Deborah Kerr) and her son Louis (Rex Thompson) agree to come to Siam in the 1860s to act as a tutor and teacher for the many children of the king, Mongkut (Yul Brynner). The film is very much a clash of cultures, as Anna learns to deal with the extremely non-British culture of Siam and Mongkut learns to appreciate a point of view very different from his own. And, since this is a musical, there’s a lot of singing and dancing involved. This is a more traditional musical in the sense that the songs are not so much performances, but instances of people publically singing their feelings.