Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: Show Biz Song And Dance

Wonderland Burlesque's 

Let's All Go To The Movies

Show Biz Song And Dance 

What better way to add scores of musical numbers to the plot of a movie than to make that film about show biz?

Today's Let's All Go To The Movies edition is all about song and dance - show biz style. Whether its tinseltown or the great white way, everybody sings, everybody dances!

Doris Day and her tyrannical cheerfulness stars in no less than three such vehicles.

So, let's tap, tap, tap our troubles away and take a look at these tune-filled cinematic bon-bons. 

--- ---

The Merry Monahans

(1944)

A vaudeville family bounces from circuit to circuit reconnecting with past friends and loves, while creating new friends and romances, while dealing with personal vices.

This comedy-drama musical was directed by Charles Lamont and stars Donald O'Connor, Peggy Ryan, Ann Blyth and Jack Oakie.

The film features 20 song and dance numbers of at least two minutes each, leaving a total of 31 minutes for plot developments and dialogue.

Director Charles Lamont's previous film, Chip Off the Old Block had also starred Donald O'Connor, Peggy Ryan and Ann Blyth, and all three would be featured in Lamont's next film Bowery to Broadway. All three films? Made in the same year, 1944!

The eighth and final vehicle for the screen team of Donald O'Connor and Peggy Ryan, although they would perform a musical number in 1944's Bowery to Broadway.

Peggy Ryan was frequently paired with Donald O'Connor, Jack Oakie, and Gloria Jean. She specialized in playing wisecracking, boy-crazy girls. In her later years, she spent time teaching Las Vegas showgirls how to tap dance. She continued to teach tap until two days before her death at the age of 80.

--- ---

Variety Girl

(1947)

Dozens of star and character-actor cameos and a message about the how-business charity the Variety Club are woven into a framework about two hopeful young ladies who come to Hollywood, exchange identities, and cause comic confusion throughout the Paramount studio.

This musical comedy was directed by George Marshall and stars Mary Hatcher, Olga San Juan, DeForest Kelley, Frank Ferguson, Glenn Tryon, Nella Walker, Torben Meyer, Jack Norton, and William Demarest.

Numerous Paramount contract players and directors make cameos or perform songs, with particularly large amounts of screen time featuring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. Among the three dozen contract players featured: Gary Cooper, Alan Ladd, Paulette Goddard, Ray Milland, William Holden, Burt Lancaster, Robert Preston, Veronica Lake, William Bendix, Barbara Stanwyck and Paula Raymond.

Under contract to different record labels at the time - Bing Crosby at Decca and Bob Hope at Capitol - the duo could not release a single of their specialty number from the film, Harmony. So, Decca, taking another tune from the score, united Bing with his frequent recording partners, The Andrews Sisters, for a best-selling single of the jaunty Tallahassee.

Includes a five-minute color Puppetoon segment Romeow and Julicat by George Pal. It turned out to be Pal's last Puppetoon short; he split with Paramount shortly afterwards to become an independent producer.

--- ---

It's A Great Feeling

(1949)

A waitress at the Warner Bros. commissary is anxious to break into pictures. She thinks her big break may have arrived when two actors agree to help her.

Based upon a story by I. A. L. Diamond, this Technicolor musical comedy stars Doris Day, Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan. It was directed by David Butler, produced by Alex Gottlieb and distributed by Warner Bros.

This was Day's third film and her third pairing with Carson. It was the first to bring her widespread notice and is a 'Who's Who?' of Hollywood in its heyday, glorifying the studio system at the peak of its golden age.

The film's working title was Two Guys and a Gal and also went under the title Two Guys of the Nineties and Two Guys from Hollywood. The film resembls Day's early career as a waitress struggling to get into the movies and nearly landing her big break when prepared to leave Hollywood. In real life, as a youth, Day won a talent contest which included a screen test with a major studio. On the night before she was to leave for Hollywood, she was in a car which struck a train, shattering one of her legs and her dreams of stardom.

Joan Crawford does an infamous cameo, directing a short speech to Jack Carson before slapping his face. It's the same one she gives to Ann Blyth in 1945's Mildred Pierce before slapping her face. Carson co-starred in that film with Crawford.

This film also features cameo appearances from three great directors of the era: Raoul Walsh, King Vidor, and Michael Curtiz.

Patricia Neal, still wearing the black fur-trimmed evening gown from The Fountainhead, came directly from that set to film her ballroom scene cameo.

About working with Carson, Day wrote: "He helped me enormously with my technical indoctrination into movie acting. He taught me dozens of tricks about how to move to precise camera marks without actually looking for them, how to handle myself in close-ups so that my face or profile rather than the back of my head would be in a shot, how to sustain the evenness of a performed scene. ... Since we were also going together, we'd often discuss some of these things in the evening, and there's no doubt that my relationship with Jack helped me considerably in my early going."

The green-and-black striped gown Day wears in the scene where she poses as a French starlet had previously been worn by Janis Paige in Hollywood Canteen when she danced with Dane Clark, and by Eve Arden at Ann Blyth's birthday party in Mildred Pierce. The scene is based on a prank Ginger Rogers played on the studio heads, where she spent a day disguised as a French chanteuse who had just been signed to a contract.

--- ---

Starlift

(1951)

A couple of Air Force fliers attempt to meet their favorite film star and a pair of fellow film stars jump to the conclusion that because one of the fliers comes from the star's hometown, that the two must be very close. They arrange for him to meet her and romance is soon in the air. But wires cross and misunderstandings abound as the press picks up on the budding romance. Meanwhile, a new program, Operation Starlift, has been set in place by the Air Force and the Hollywood studios, flying movie stars to San Francisco to perform for the outbound and inbound troops. 

This musical film released was directed by Roy Del Ruth and stars Doris Day, Gordon MacRae, Virginia Mayo, Dick Wesson, and Ruth Roman.  

 

Performing as guest stars in the film's show segment are: James Cagney, Gary Cooper, Virginia Gibson, Phil Harris, Frank Lovejoy, Lucille Norman, Louella Parsons, Randolph Scott, Jane Wyman and Patrice Wymore. 

Beginning in 1950, Operation Starlift was a program created by the Special Services Officers and Hollywood Coordinating Committee to bring movie stars of the time to Travis Air Force Base in order to entertain the wounded coming in from the Korean War. Ruth Roman was the forerunner of the project, which also saw such stars as Jane Russell, Shirley Temple, Shelley Winters, Alan Ladd, Jack Benny, Danny Kaye, Claudette Colbert, Keenan Wynn, Donald O'Connor, Janet Leigh, Debbie Reynolds, Bob Hope and many others

--- ---

Lullaby Of Broadway

(1951)

A young woman who has been singing overseas with a musical troupe decides to return home to surprise her mother whom she thinks is a successful Broadway star with a mansion in Manhattan. She doesn't know that her mother is actually a burnt-out cabaret singer with a bit of a drinking problem. When she arrives at the mansion, she is taken in by the two servants who are friends of her mother's. The house actually belongs to a kind-hearted Broadway producer who also gets drawn into the charade and takes a shine to the young woman - so much so, he agrees to star her in his next show. The up and coming star also soon finds romance with a handsome hoofer who's in the show. All is going well, except what she really wants is to spend time with her mother, who keeps putting off their reunion.

This musical romantic comedy was directed by David Butler and stars Doris Day, Gene Nelson, Gladys George, S.Z. Sakall, Billy De Wolfe, Florence Bates, and Anne Triola.

The Doris Day disc featuring songs from this musical captured the #1 spot on Billboard's Pop Chart.

Warner Brothers decided to elevate Gene Nelson to co-star status with Doris Day after Nelson won a Golden Globe in 1950 for Best New Star. However, when a 1957 accident involving a horse cut short his career as a dancer and leading man, Nelson began to work behind the camera, amassing quite a list of directing credits.

This was one of five successful films Doris Day made for Warner Brothers in 1951. Their combined box office won Day her a place in the Quigley Top Ten Box Office Stars list and won her the Photoplay Award as The Year's Most Popular Female Star.

--- ---

And that's all for now.

Tune in next time...

Same place, same channel!

S'Wonderful - Doris Day

from the 1951 motion picture Starlift