Themes: Musician's Life, Foibles of Marriage, Ladder to the Top
Main Cast: Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern, Robert Young, Lionel Barrymore, John Carroll
Release Year: 1941
Country: US
Run Time: 111 minutes
Plot
The 1924 George Gershwin stage hit Lady Be Good was brought to the screen by MGM; any resemblance (beyond the Gershwin score) to the original play is purely accidental. The MGM scriveners came up with a new story concerning married songwriters Ann Sothern and Robert Young, who can't live with each other and can't live without each other. Top billing goes to dancing star Eleanor Powell, who certainly deserves it. Red Skelton is around and about as well, inserting a few much-needed laughs. While such Gershwin songs as "So Am I", "Fascinating Rhythm" and "Hang on Me" are well showcased, the hit of the evening is a new song by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, the Oscar-winning "The Last Time I Saw Paris". Our favorite scene: Ann Sothern and Robert Young composing "Lady be Good" out of thin air in two minutes flat! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
"How many songs makes a musical?" is a question that Hollywood and Broadway answered quite differently in the 1930s and 1940s. On Broadway, a typical musical would have at least a dozen songs; in Hollywood, four or five was more frequently the norm, despite the fact that often the musical numbers were the film's sole reason for existing. Lady Be Good has five (plus reprises), and they're mostly winners. The most impressive number is "Fascinating Rhythm," which is danced to a fare-thee-well by Eleanor Powell, the Berry Brothers and 80 chorus boys (and which also features five pianos and a 65-foot chiffon curtain). Powell also shows off her impressive terpsichorean skills during the title number -- with a dog as her partner. Most of the singing is handled by Ann Sothern and Robert Young, with Sothern sounding particularly good on both a slow and a swing version of "You'll Never Know." Sothern also sings "The Last Time I Saw Paris," a tremendous hit and an Oscar winner, more because of the wartime context than the actual quality of the song. When Lady isn't singing or dancing, there are a lot of dry patches, but if a viewer sticks with her, he'll be reasonably entertained. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Although Powell received top billing, the main stars of the film are Sothern and Young. They play respectively Dixie Donegan, a would-be lyric writer and Eddie Crane, a struggling composer, who almost by accident write a hit song - Lady Be Good. They go from success to success, writing Gershwin and Kern songs, and marry. But when Eddie starts spending more time in rich New York society than composing, they grow apart and divorce. They eventually realise they are still in love and can't do without each other.
The film takes its title and theme song ("Oh, Lady be Good!") from the 1924 George and Ira GershwinBroadway musical, Lady Be Good, but otherwise has no connection to the play. According to film historian Robert Osborne in his introduction to a broadcast of the film on Turner Classic Movies in August 2006, the film was devised as a vehicle to launch Sothern as a musical star at MGM, however since she and Young were known primarily as light comic stars, Powell was brought in for a supporting role but given the top billing in order to attract audiences.
This film's most notable sequence involves an epic tap dance routine by Powell to the melody of Gershwin's "Fascinating Rhythm" (another song taken from the play). This musical number was later featured in two films in the That's Entertainment! documentary series -- in one of the films (That's Entertainment! III), behind-the-scenes footage was shown, revealing how this scene was accomplished. In order to allow Powell to dance between a series of pianos without interruption, pieces of the set had to be quietly removed off-camera as she worked her way across the stage. This musical sequence was directed by Busby Berkeley. Another sequence features Powell doing a dance routine with a dog that she herself trained for the number.
