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DVD The Harvey Girls
Sometimes lively, sometimes pokey, this Technicolor MGM musical inspires mixed feelings in aficionados of the form--except on one point. No viewer will question why "On the Atchison, Topeka, & the Santa Fe" won the best song Oscar for 1946. This is a brilliant, inventive song given an epic staging. Director George Sidney pulls out all the stops for this wowser--even Marjorie Main sings, an eardrum-testing sound. The real-life Harvey Girls were waitresses imported to the far-flung Fred Harvey Hotels, civilizing oases along the railroad lines out west. The fictional Harvey Girls is set in Sandrock, where the traveling waitresses are joined by a sort of mail-order bride (Judy Garland) whose prospective husband is a bust--he's a roughhewn rancher played by Chill Wills. Garland is in fine spunky form; unfortunately, her romance is with John Hodiak (as the owner of a dance hall), that uninspiring World War II-era lead. The film's other great Johnny Mercer-Harry Warren song is the unexpectedly melancholy "It's a Great Big World," performed in a lovely trio by Garland, Virginia O'Brien, and the young Cyd Charisse. The tall, deadpan O'Brien also does a comic take on "The Wild, Wild West" while shoeing a horse. With kewpie-faced Angela Lansbury as a bespangled dance-hall gal and Ray Bolger high-stepping through a dance solo, there are enough good people on board to keep the wheels a-turning "all the way to Californ-eye-yay." --Robert Horton
Not much written nowadays about John Hodiak, who plays Ned Trent in this 1946 George Sidney musical, but he was a wonderful presence in the Hollywood cinema of the 1940s, and all of his pictures are worth a look. He seems strangely modern, natural in his appeal, with some of the cocky good looks and charm of our own John Travolta. THE HARVEY GIRLS is one of his rare ventures into musical comedy, and moviegoers often recall him in tougher parts: playing opposite Tallulah Bankhead in Hitchcock's LIFEBOAT, you know you'd have to have balls of steel to carry off that assignment, or zipping through Mexico with Lucille Ball in Jules Dassin's noir road trip adventure TWO SMART PEOPLE. With Judy Garland he is noticeably gentler than he usually gets on screen; you can almost feel the effort involved. He seems more like an Angela Lansbury sort of guy, hard, attracted to the glitter, out for a good time. Then something clicks and he and Garland really start to click and the picture picks right up.
The DVD features the abysmal "March of the Dogies," a piece which has so many things wrong with it, you can see why Freed cut it out, but it's fascinating in its own right and it's great that they saved it. The song is bad, the singing isn't very good, the choreography pretty basic, and it seems they tried to save it by adding more and more elements to the number, you almost expect to see if not the kitchen sink, then the village pump, added to the mix. I suppose they were also trying to accommodate Hodiak's limitations as a dancer. He's no Ray Bolger (and no John Travolta). But his magnetism carries all before it, like a buffalo stampede.
Hodiak had the misfortune to be prominently featured in some of the era's most notorious failures, like SONG OF RUSSIA and MARRIAGE IS A PRIVATE AFFAIR, but in a way this has proved his salvation for he is not cursed with the overfamiliarity with which he disregard someone we've seen a zillion times, no matter how worthy, like Clark Gable or Gary Cooper. He's always fresh and exhibits new facets to his screen personality. He died in 1955, still a stranger, after a well-publicized marriage to a fellow thespian (Anne Baxter, with whom he starred in the low-key charmer SUNDAY DINNER WITH A SOLDIER).
Disappointing musical extravaganza
I am a big fan of movie musicals and will even sit through some of the less well-made ones just to enjoy some good clean fun. But the musical numbers in this one were so below par (except for the oscar winner) that I couldn't help counting the minutes until they were over. Most of them seemed to go on forever! I also have a very high threshold for silliness (preferring that to the bathroom humor so prevelant in today's movies) but the bar room brawl between the "good girls" and the "bad girls" was a little over the top! I hated the "Gigi" ending when the "good girl" decides she can be a "bad girl" if that's what the man she loves wants. Ick!
second the motion that this movie is a bore
I like Judy and Ray both, but to me, this movie was a bit of a snooze. I didn't like most of the songs, the costumes, the set design, the story, etc. The only thing that kept me watching was Angela Langsbury, believe it or not.
One of the finest American musicals, this 1944 film by Vincente Minnelli is an intentionally self-contained story set in 1903, in which a happy St. Louis family is shaken to their roots by the prospect of moving to New York, where the father has a better job pending. Judy Garland heads the cast in what amounts to a splendid, end-of-an-era story that nicely rhymes with the onset of the 20th century. The film is extraordinarily alive, the characters strong, and the musical numbers are so splendidly part of the storytelling that you don't feel the film has stopped for an interlude. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Director(s): Vincente Minnelli - Alan D. Courtney - Roy Mack DVD Release Date: Released the 06 April 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Don Hewes (Fred Astaire) is devastated when his longtime dancing partner, Nadine Hale (Ann Miller), breaks up the team to set out on her own. Determined to prove that he can succeed without her, Astaire vows that he can pick any random chorus girl and make her a star. Fortunately for him, the chorus girl he picks happens to be one of the greatest entertainers of the 20th century, Judy Garland (playing Hannah Brown). Easter Parade turned out to be the first and only collaboration between the two screen legends. Garland made the 1948 film despite ongoing health problems then had to pull out of a planned follow-up, The Barkleys of Broadway (Ginger Rogers replaced her); Astaire had retired following Blue Skies in 1946 but was brought in for this film as an emergency... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Judy Garland - Fred Astaire Director(s): Charles Walters DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This is my favorite Judy Garland movie. The DVD is a faithful reproduction of the movie and has, as expected, a pictorial clarity unheard of in the movie era. The flawless reproduction is tarnished, however, in a scene near the end of the movie. In the scene, the lights are low and were corrected to present reality. They were rendered so dark that the stars, Van Johnson and Judy Garland, were nothing more than silhouettes on the screen. From the tape version of the movie, this scene was one of Judy's most hilarious scenes, attributed to the expressions she delivered in response to Mr. Johnson's advances, both of which were unseen in the black. The DVD is worth watching, but, for students of Judy Garland's talents, a tape version clarifies the omissions of the DVD. More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Judy Garland - Van Johnson Director(s): Buster Keaton - Robert Z. Leonard DVD Release Date: Released the 06 April 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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"Say, he looks like an actor," says the platform conductor. And with that introduction, Gene Kelly steps off the train and into his film career. After starring on Broadway in Pal Joey, Kelly made his film debut in For Me and My Gal opposite Judy Garland, with the pair playing vaudeville performers who team up to find success and, of course, romance. But just when things are looking up, World War I intervenes, and Kelly has to take drastic measures to keep a promise and avoid the war, at least temporarily.
Bad move, Gene. Filmed in 1942, For Me and My Gal vigorously supports the war effort, including teaching Kelly the error of his ways. The old-time setting also allows for a basketful of nostalgic charmers, including "After You've Gone," "Oh You... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Judy Garland - George Murphy - Gene Kelly Director(s): Busby Berkeley DVD Release Date: Released the 06 April 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The Ziegfeld Follies were a popular form of entertainment during the 1910s. They featured many types of entertainment from low-brow vaudeville humor to high class musical numbers featuring glorified women in elaborate costumes. This film is about the women who are privileged enough to be chosen to be a Follies girl and how their lives change when fame hits.
Lana Turner plays the lead, a beautiful elevator girl turned showgirl. Her performance is understated perfection from the beginning when she feels gorgeous and wonderful to her decline into alcohol and ill-health.
Jimmy Stewart plays her boyfriend, a sweet man who idealizes his relationship with Turner. When she begins to flake, his heart breaks, and he becomes a bootlegger with dreary hopes of striking it... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Robert Z. Leonard DVD Release Date: Released the 06 April 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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