Plot
Like Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), 20th Century-Fox's There's No Business Like Show Business is a "catalogue" film, its thinnish plot held together by an itinerary of Irving Berlin tunes. The story chronicles some twenty years in the lives of a showbiz family, headed by Dan Dailey and Ethel Merman. Two of the couple's three grown children -- Donald O'Connor and Mitzi Gaynor -- carry on the family tradition, while the third, Johnny Ray, decides to become a priest. There are a few tense moments when O'Connor falls in love with ambitious chorine Marilyn Monroe and loses all sense of perspective, but the family reunites during a splashy production-number finale. Highlights include Dailey and Merman's Play a Simple Melody duet, O'Connor's A Man Chases a Girl solo, and Monroe's tempestuous rendition of Heat Wave (her delivery and stage presence both compensate for her unflattering bare-midriff costume). Of historical interest, There's No Business Like Show Business was Fox's first CinemaScope musical; as such, it is best viewed on TV in "letterbox" format. ~ Hal Erickson, RoviReview
Big, colorful, and splashy, There's No Business Like Show Business might have been a classic movie musical if anyone had bothered to create a script for it. Oh, there's technically a script, but it clearly was just cobbled together from hither and yon -- and mostly yon -- so that the camera would have something to focus on between musical numbers. As a result, Business meanders around quite a bit, dropping in on one thread of a story just long enough for the audience to hear a few lines of clichéd dialogue before the orchestra starts vamping the intro to the next song. Fortunately, the songs are by the inimitable Irving Berlin, and they're handled by a cast that ranges from the technically qualified to the magical. The former includes a very wooden Johnnie Ray and a perky but dispensable Mitzi Gaynor, but the latter includes a clarion-voiced Ethel Merman, an impishly appealing Donald O'Connor, and the incredibly seductive Marilyn Monroe. (Dan Dailey falls in the middle, a good song-and-dance man and decent actor who nevertheless doesn't quite catch fire in this film.) Merman sounds terrific, sailing through "Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee" and "A Sailor's Not a Sailor" with glee, and O'Connor makes "A Man Chases a Girl" into something pretty special. But it's Monroe that provides the single most memorable number, a "Heat Wave" that sizzles, pops, burns and scorches like few other filmed songs. Add in some yummy costumes and nifty Leon Shamroy camerawork, and there's more than enough here to make up for the flimsy story. ~ Craig Butler, RoviCast
- Ethel Merman - Molly Donahue
- Donald O'Connor - Tim Donahue
- Marilyn Monroe - Vicky
- Dan Dailey - Terrance Donahue
- Johnnie Ray - Steve Donahue
Credit
Lyle Wheeler - Art Director, Robert Alton - Choreography, Charles LeMaire - Costume Designer, William Travilla - Costume Designer, Miles White - Costume Designer, Walter Lang - Director, Robert L. Simpson - Editor, Irving Berlin - Composer (Music Score), Alfred Newman - Composer (Music Score), Lionel Newman - Composer (Music Score), Alfred Newman - Musical Direction/Supervision, Lionel Newman - Musical Direction/Supervision, Irving Berlin - Songwriter, John De Cuir - Production Designer, Leon Shamroy - Cinematographer, Sol C. Siegel - Producer, Ray Kellogg - Special Effects, Lamar Trotti - Screen Story, Henry Ephron - Screenwriter, Phoebe Ephron - Screenwriter| There's Millions in It (1924 Film), There's Magic in Music (1941 Film) | |
| There's No Place Like Home (1910 Film), There's No Place Like Home: The Return to Homeschooling (2000 Film) |
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