So-so Eastern despite the presence of talented people like Donald O'Connor and Mario Bava doing second unit. Henry Levin can make good movies but his output is variable. This isn't one of his better movie.
There is colour (though my copy was murky), lots of dubbing. Lacks energy. Story confusing. O'Connor tries and dances once or twice. There's some torture, dancing girls, dungeons, flying carpet. But never comes alive.
During filming there were riots where people died.
Let's see if I can do it...
1) Singing in the Rain (1952) - easy choice.
2) The Milkman (1950) - fun comedy with O'Connor teaming well with Jimmy Durante.
3) Feudin, Fussin and Fighting (1949) - O'Connor meets up with Percy Kilbridge/Marjorie Main before they went off to their franchises - a joyous time.
4) The Buster Keaton Story (1957) - look, this isn't a good movie and it killed O'Connor's movie star career but he's very good and it's interesting.
5) Call Me Madam (1953).- first rate musical.
6) Anything Goes (1956) - not highly regarded and undercast female leads but a lot of talent and joy.
7) Curtain Call at Cactus Creek (1950) - shenanigans out west sort of a musical Westerner and entertaining.
8) There's No Business Like Show Business (1954) - ah, I know its flaws but it has Marilyn singing 'Heatwave'.
9) Francis Covers the Big Town (1953) - I'll limit myself to one Francis and this 'll be it.
10) Bowery to Broadway (1944) - an all star Universal musical so the talent is B level but it's entertaining.
Not many films but anyway
1) Some Like It Hot (1959) - easy choice, so perfect... imagine Mitzi Gaynr in this. No thanks.
2) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) - again, easy choice - shame she was never reteamed with Russell.
3) How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) - glorious fun. Steals movie.
4) Bus Stop (1956) - I recall Don Murray being creepy and Marilyn being great.
5) All About Eve (1951) - one scene but a great one.
6) The Misfits (1961) - flawed, but marvelous
7) Niagara (1953) - she's probably miscast but it's a good movie.
8) There's No Business Like Show Business (1954) - hokey story but those song and dance numbers!
9) The Seven Year Itch (1955) - icon.
10) Don't Bother to Knock (1952) - haven't seen this in ages just throwing it in there.
Donald O'Connor's last movie before he entered the army, although its release was held back. It's more serious in tone, although still has a showbiz background, and plenty of numbers - he's a young performer whose dad Donald Cook is a singer.
Peggy Ryan is in it with Donald - I think this was their last movie together. They're running a theatre group in upstage New York. The plot has O'Connor be cast in a show that his father thinks he's been cast in... and Don is awkward about telling him. That's not much of a plot. More promising is another one about Don falling for older Frances Dee... that is resolved a little too quickly with her falling for Cook. The script shies from too much conflict.
But O'Connor is good, as is Ryan as a girl with a yen for him, Judy-Mickey style. The numbers are very good. This had a decent budget.
One of Universal's wartime musicals: little story, wall to wall musical acts, plenty of talent. I recognised some songs in this one, notably 'You Made Me Love You' and 'Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen'.
There's Henry James the bandleader the guy who married Betty Grable, singing cowboy Dick Foran. The plot has James and Foran join the army and Foran's got a big head. That's about it.
Donald O'Connor has a cameo as a kid who also tries to join but is too young - he returns to take part in a number (I think he was part of the Jivin jacks and Jills at this stage). The Andrews Sisters sing some songs. Joe E. Lewis is in it as is Mary Wicks and Shemp Howard.
Some patriotic singing like 'We've got a job to do' as the troops go off at the end. Just wants to entertain.
A bright and cheerful episode. O'Connor earns his dough - he does some patter, a few musical numbers, sketches with his wife Gwen (who seems hostile), his daughter (who seems lovely). Some other act does a sketch, Scatman Crothers does a song. This seems like a lot of work for him - classy television.
Battle of the sexes comedies from the 1940s always make one go "uh oh" but at least this has a fresh set up - it's post war college, so lots of students are married with kids, which is cute. Donald O'Connor wants to play football, while wife Gloria de Haven wants him to give up. There's a subplot with Charles Coburn unconvincingly case as a football coach and teacher romancing a feminist teacher, Barbara Brown. At least philosophies are espoused.
Some nice numbers and gags. It's in colour. Cute babies.
A sort of drama with music though not really a musical. It's got a great central situation: three brothers play in a band but sensible brother Fred MacMurray wants to focus on being a mechanic and irresponsible gambler brother Bing Crosby dreams of a big payday and the youngest brother Donald O'Connor (in his first proper movie role) worships Crosby. Both MacMurray and Crosby love the same girl, lovely Ellen Drew (who is always good).
The second half things get bogged down with Crosby buying a horse and they drop the musical stuff. There's a lot of horse related material - O'Connor as a jockey. They lose Ellen Drew. THen there's numbers at the end.
This is a good film inside here struggling to get out.
Donald O'Connor does well when teamed with an elder actor - Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Marjorie Main... and of course Chill Wills. Here he's with Jimmy Durante, although O'Connor got solo billing above the title.
The plot has rich man's son O'Connor go to work for milkman Durante. O'Connor has PTSD from the war which makes him... quack like a duck. Which is weird. But interesting. There's some gangsters led by William Conrad for the third act, which is effective.
It's not really a musical but O'Connor has a solo number singing and dancing as he delivers milk and he and Piper Laurie have a dance.
I enjoyed this film. O'Connor is fun, he teams well with Durante who has a high old time, Conrad and Laurie are good.
Really fun Donald O'Connor comedy musical benefits from Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbridge (coming off The Egg and I) in support. The set up could be used for a horror film - O'Connor is a travelling salesman kidnapped by hillbillies who want him to run for the town in a race. That could be a nightmare - here it's played for laughs.
O'Connor is locked in a barn and talks a lot to a horse - the year before he did Francis. He also does a spectacular solo number where he dances up a wall and flips years before Singing in the Rain. It's not really a musical though.
It is bright and energetic. Main and Kilbridge lift this above the usual O'Connor comedy from Universal. Penny Edwards is the girl.
Donald O'Connor's success in Singing in the Rain and Call Me Madam prompted Universal to splash a little more cash on this vehicle, including colour and importing Janet Leigh from MGM. Lloyd Bacon directed.
The plot is spectacularly stupid. O'Connor is out of the army where he played a band. And he tries to start up a band. Hackett is his mate. Janet Leigh is a girl who was in the army. Oh and O'Connor's family is rich and he inherits money to be an opera singer. Who cares? The crux of the plot is about O'Connor trying to find the right "sound" for his band. I think Leigh is meant to be worried she's too poor for O'Connor's family as well. It's inept.
There's some really racist moments - Buddy Hackett impersonating a Chinese waiter and O'Connor and Leigh doing a black and white minstrel number.
Scatman Crothers sings some songs. Sidney Miller who has a support role was O'Connor's collaborator on TV shows and films - Miller would write him songs.
The musical numbers are great, except the minstrel stuff. The dancing is fabulous. Just a lousy book.
Universal kept on Donald O'Connor after the war, ageing him up slightly in a series of musicals and comedies. This is a musical comedy although the first dance number doesn't happen until 18 minutes in. O'Connor is an insurance boffin who is persuaded to join carnies by Lew Parker.
O'Connor is great but his character is all over the shop - a nerd who can tap dance automatically. Olga San Juan is also delightful O'Connor's girlfriend even though her character too is all over the place..
The treatment is surprisingly sluggish - it lacks a light touch. The book is also at fault - it feels contrived how O'Connor ends up at a carnival (why not just have him on the run from gangsters or something) and it's weird he can dance (I get he does it via maths but it doesn't ring true... why not have him study and pick it up). He needed to fall in love with someone while in the carnival.
It's a shame because when this is good - during the musical numbers - it's very good. Just not that well directed and the story is a mess. The two stars deserved better.
Films set in Japan were all the rage in the late 1950s but this was one at the tale end of the cycle - I think it flopped. Glenn Ford is once again an American serviceman abroad, this time working for the navy. He and some other sailors including Glenn Ford get billetted at a geisha house.
The girls, Miko Taka and Miyoshi Umeki, were both in Sayonara. James Shigeta and Chet Douglas are other sailors.
There's a really unfunny extended bit in the middle where everyone watches a film with Japanese actors in a Western. Actually a lot of this is unfunny. It reaches for charm and doesn't get there. O'Connor's role is relatively small... I felt this would be better as a straight out buddy comedy.
Apparently Bobby Darin was up for a role in this but couldn't make it work schedule wise. O'Connor's part? Douglas's?
This is one of those films where the elements are there - the concept, stars, director all seem appropriate - but it just doesn't work. Maybe it's the lack of a core romance for Ford. Maybe it was too early to have really racy fun with the subject matter. Or they were too worried about offending people. Or something. It doesn't work.
Location filming is pleasant. And it was good to see actual Japanese actors given decent parts.
MGM musicals went into a decline after Louis B Mayer left. This reunited two stars of Singing in the Rain Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor - the age gap is only seven years which is small by Hollywood standards.
The songs and stars are great as are the dances. It's all done with MGM gloss and skill - they had so many good people under contract it was hard for them to make a bad musical. On one level.
This has a dopey book. A really bad book. And that matters. Reynolds is a small town gal dreaming of stardom (cue fantasy sequences which I believe are generally a bad idea unless completely fantastical) who is loved by photographer assistant Donald O'Connor. She insists he get her on the cover of a magazine or she'll marry someone else which isn't very nice although Reynolds gives a charming performance. It's based on contrived misunderstandings and greed. It's a shame because the musical numbers are so good and the stars so strong.
Robert Taylor makes a cameo. Richard Anderson plays a fake love interest to O'Connor's love interest as he would do in The Buster Keaton Story.
The film that marked the end of Donald O'Connor's time as a movie star... he'd just been in Anything Goes then he did this, billed above the title, and it flopped and it was... over. No films for a few years, and they didn't do much.
He's really good. He's always good. Does the comedy, the drama (Keaton's alcoholism). He's not exactly Mr Stoneface but that's hard to do. He was ideal because he grew up in vaudeville and was an alcoholic too.
Maybe the story was too hard. The fictionalisation of this is annoying. It gives Keaton one wife, a made up script supervisor. Ann Blyth was in musicals with O'Connor back in the day but here she's just bland pretty doll and too sensible. We never feel that she and O'Connor would be together or why (she seems very uncomfortable taking part in the slapstick at the end) - which is a big deal since that's the one relationship the film invests time in. Biopics only work really when they focus on a relationship.
They do little with Keaton's parents There's the one studio guy, Larry Keating, one flunkie, Richard Anderson (as a rival for Blyth). Rhonda Fleming pops up as a silent film star Keaton falls for. Peter Lorre has a random small role as a director and Cecil B De Mille appears as himself.
It never feels real. There's no consistent theme.
I enjoyed O'Connor's dramatic acting and there's nice bits like Keaton doing business for the baseball kids. I do like that they had a go at it - I mean it's interesting and is a good chance for O'Connor. Sidney Sheldon directed - maybe he was the wrong guy. Maybe it just should've focused on the early days of vaudeville made it happy go lucky. The true story actually has a great five act structure (early days, struggle, fame, decline and booze, third wife) but that was probably too hard legally.
Look, this film did buy Keaton a house.
Not regarded as one of the great Hollywood musicals but I really liked it. Ethel Merman blasting her way through a perfect vehicle for her, an ambassador to a small European country. Actually everyone is well cast - Donald O'Connor is charming as her press attache (they have a lovely relationship), Billy de Wolfe fun as the snobby ambassador staff, George Sanders has fun singing as the guy who Merman falls in love with, Vera Ellen's limitations as an actor are protected by putting on the accent and she has some wonderful dances. It's full of colour and fun and is just good natured delight. Walter Lang deserves more credit.
Donald O'Connor was meant to team with Bing Crosby in White Christmas but fell ill - the two men got their chance together with this, which isn't that well remembered. I mostly recall just hearing it used a different plot to the 1936 version.
Maybe the two female leads let it down - Jeanmarie is a dancing legend, but doesn't exactly pop on screen. Mitzi Gaynor is bright and professional but lacks a little X factor.
The number between Crosby and O'Connor at the beginning feels very influenced by Singing in the Rain. So too does a big ballet Jeanmarie does to a backdrop of a town, and a cheer up number O'Connor does to some kids.
There are some terrific numbers and songs - everyone can sing and dance (maybe Bing can't dance). Robert Lewis, more of a Broadway guy, does a decent job of directing.
The book is dim - misunderstandings about women being offered the lead in a play - but it is bright and sparky and I enjoyed it.
Fun musical Western which is kind of a spoof of The Westerner with Walter Brennan again as an outlaw (I guess he was a judge in the other one) with a crush on an entertainer. That's a great idea for a musical although they don't really do enough with the Lily Langtry figure - played here, very fun, by Eve Arden. Vincent Price is entertaining as a hammy actor touring the West with Arden, Gale Storm and backstage guy Donald O'Connor.
it's a vehicle for O'Connor who is winning. Charles Lamont directs well, it is lively and in colour. I wish more had been done with Price and Gale Storm but the relationship between Brennan and O'Connor is very sweet.
O'Connor does a final act in blackface, which is unfortunate.
The low budget Universal musicals of the 1940s didn't get much TV play in Australia when I was growing up. A shame since they're a lot of fun. Low budget yes but it was Universal, so production values are high.
This was Donald O'Connor's first film under contract to Universal. There's a bunch of teens in it - including Peggy Ryan - but O'Connor is the one who has individuality. Gloria Jean is pretty as a rich girl who sings. The Andrews Sisters are in it.
Not a lot of story - basically put on a show - but done with energy and verve.
Donald O'Connor was promoted to being above the line star for this musical set at a drama school. Florence Bates as a stuff rich girl who wants her niece Gloria Jean to star in Antigone, leading to some funny gags. Robert Paige rocks up to play a composer - his part isn't very good; he has a love interest. Peggy Ryan is very funny as a gal with a yen for O'Connor - actually a lot of girls seem to be into him. The Jiving Jacks and Jills dance.
O'Connor and Jean go the full pash at the end. There's wall to wall music and not much time on story. The kids do a number in black and white minstrel make up. Then some black singers turn up - kids, the Ink Spots.
There's a lot of talent here.
