Main Cast: Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, Cyd Charisse, Dolores Gray, Michael Kidd
Release Year: 1955
Country: US
Run Time: 102 minutes
Plot
Cooked up by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, It's Always Fair Weather could well have been titled On the Town Ten Years Later. Like 1949's On the Town (also a Comden/Green collaboration), this MGM musical follows the exploits of three servicemen buddies, played by Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd. The difference here is that the threesome has just been discharged from service. The boys agree to get together again exactly ten years after their parting. Flash-forward to 1955: Kelly, who'd dreamed of being a show biz entrepreneur, is a small-time boxing promoter, heavily in debt to the Mob; Dailey has abandoned his plans of becoming an artist in favor of a stuffy, grey-flannel existence as an ad executive; and Kidd, who'd aspired to being a master chef, is running a modest diner. On behalf of TV-personality Dolores Gray, network-staffer Cyd Charisse contrives to reunite the three men on a This is Your Life style TV special, but all three are hostile to the notion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Scripted by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, It's Always Fair Weather (1955) revisits On the Town (1949), but with a satirical, revisionist bite. In this send-up of musical and post-war optimism, the dreams of Army buddies Kelly, Dan Dailey, and Michael Kidd all fall apart, and their ten-year reunion is a "frost"; Dailey's bitter song "Situation-wise" takes aim at the stultifying effect of the quintessentially 1950s life of an advertising executive. Even though the trio finally bonds over a disastrous TV appearance, Fair Weather takes further aim at television's plastic insincerity and technical poverty. The film's slightly anxious putdowns of television are underlined by its own imaginative, almost competitive use of CinemaScope, particularly in the trio's energetic, un-pan-and-scannable trash can ballet, and the use of triple split screens and masking to visualize the friends' alienation. Even the musical joy emanating from the garbage can number and Kelly's impressive roller skate dance down a New York street cannot quite smooth over the underlying bitterness in It's Always Fair Weather, turning it into one of the more intriguing productions from MGM's storied Freed Unit. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Cedric Gibbons - Art Director, Arthur Lonergan - Art Director, Stanley Donen - Choreography, Gene Kelly - Choreography, Helen Rose - Costume Designer, Al Jennings - First Assistant Director, Stanley Donen - Director, Gene Kelly - Director, Adrienne Fazan - Editor, Andre Previn - Composer (Music Score), Alexander Courage - Musical Arrangement, Andre Previn - Musical Direction/Supervision, William J. Tuttle - Makeup, Robert J. Bronner - Cinematographer, Arthur Freed - Producer, Hugh Hunt - Set Designer, Edwin B. Willis - Set Designer, Warren Newcombe - Special Effects, Irving G. Ries - Special Effects, Betty Comden - Screenwriter, Adolph Green - Screenwriter
It's Always Fair Weather is a 1955MGM musical film scripted by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who also wrote the show's lyrics, scored by André Previn and starring Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, Cyd Charisse, Michael Kidd, and Dolores Gray. Directed by Kelly and Stanley Donen, the film is about three ex-G.I.'s who have served in World War II together and become best friends. Upon returning home at the end of the war, they spend their last night together drinking in a favourite New York bar and exchanging their hopes and plans for the future. Before going their separate ways, they promise to reunite exactly ten years later at the same spot. However, when the three men eventually meet up again, they soon realize that they have steadily grown apart in the intervening years and are now very different people. In addition, each is forced to face the fact that, to some extent, his present life falls short of how he'd imagined it would turn out when a younger man.
Betty Comden and Adolph Green originally conceived this film as a sequel to On the Town; to reunite Gene Kelly with his On the Town costars Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin, with the plans to be a Broadway show. At Kelly's insistence, however, they made it into an MGM musical. Kelly at this point in his life had been making films in Europe such as Invitation to the Dance, to take advantage of a tax law for resident Americans. But the films in Europe failed and the tax law was revoked, forcing Kelly to return to America.
Kelly asked his old friend and collaborator, Stanley Donen, to co-direct with him. Donen, who had just scored a major success with his first solo directorial effort, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, did not want to go back to collaborating with Kelly, but he reluctantly agreed. MGM, under new production chief Dore Schary, did not want to hire either Sinatra or Munshin; the former due to his difficult working reputation, the latter because he was not popular with audiences anymore. Ultimately, Kelly chose fellow dancers Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd, who had more choreographic experience than he did acting (he choreographed the original Guys and Dolls and Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon). Kelly was also forced to shoot the movie in Cinemascope, which he felt did not suit screen dancing. Many of the numbers in the film, such as "The Binge" and "Once Upon a Time" show Kelly's efforts to make use of Cinemascope. Comden and Green wrote the songs with André Previn providing the music as well as the accompanying score; it was his first major assignment on an MGM film.
It's Always Fair Weather received good reviews when it came out, but the studio did not open it with the fanfare it had with previous musicals. Instead it was released as part of a drive-in double bill with Bad Day at Black Rock and the studio did not make their money back. The film's bleakness may have had something to do with it; audiences at the time were not accustomed to unhappy musicals, but also, more Americans were staying at home with television than going to the movies at this time. André Previn claims the film's failure had to do with it being a musical: he feels that it would have been a good film had it not had any songs.
In recent years though, the film has gained reputation in the minds of musical aficionados and Kelly fans, who point to his tap dance on roller skates, "I Like Myself," as the last great dance solo of his career.[citation needed] Some[who?] have even claimed it to be a precursor to Stephen Sondheim's musicals Company and Follies, in terms of its cynical views on the nature of relationships. Scenes from the film were included in MGM's That's Entertainment, Part II, hosted by Kelly and Fred Astaire. The film itself has been shown on Turner Classic Movies.
Fortunately, the original multitrack pre-recordings of the score survive to this day, having enabled Rhino Records to reissue the soundtrack in true stereo (Rhino Handmade RHM2-7766). The Original MGM soundtrack was released in 1991 by Sony Music.
Track listing:
Lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green; music score by André Previn. All pieces played by MGM Studio Orchestra conducted by André Previn. Between brackets the singers.
