A VERY PLEASANT SURPRISE
Added 1/19/2010
The revue As Thousands Cheer was a huge 1933 Broadway success (more than a year playing, by Irving Berlin, sketches by Moss Hart, starring Clifton Webb, Ethel Waters and Marilyn Miller. MGM had acquired the rights. So it could use the title but that movie has nothing to do with Berlin. It has only one musical number with Gene Kelly, miscast here as a brooding private, quite unpleasant.
The love story with a charming Kathryn Grayson begins as a joke by KG but is never convincing.
Written by Paul Gallico the novelist (with Richard Collins), the screenplay has all the bad habits of by the numbers MGM
big pictures. Except for KG, no character is interesting, except for the sergeant Frank Jenks. Ben Blue is irritating as the
picturesque private. If it were only for that, the movie would be boring but it's all about glorious Technicolor by George Folsey
and the director George Sidney a passionate shutterbug who had shown his visual flair in his third movie PILOT N° 5.
We don't know if in 1942-43 Sidney could influence the MGM style, but one shot, Folsey or Sidney ,is striking: tha platoon getting back to camp, marching around a column.
Later on, Sidney would prove his mastery of cinematography with SCARAMOUCHE (remember the force of the first close up!), YOUNG BESS,
PAL JOEY, BYE BYE BIRDIE. Making VIVA LAS VEGAS the best Presley movie. He was one of the greatest Hollywood directors.
We still have to endure a trapeze act, to show why Kelly is brooding: as an aerialist ace he wanted to join the Air Corps!
Early on we had prestige music directed nicely by Jose Iturbi and La Traviata in a soulless rendition (prestige policy)
On the 1H15' mark we have at last he big revue in camp and it's worth the price of admission, or DVD:
a great sketch with Frank Morgan, Sothern,Hunt and a GORGEOUS LUCILLE BALL.. A very nice dance by Eleanor Powell, the wonderful Virginia O' Brien and THE sketch with Red Skelton and the genius: Margaret O' Brien.
At last a rousing song by Judy Garland (Iturbi at the piano): "The Joint is Really Jumpin' at Carnegie Hall" (Edens, Blane, Martin)
Garland is still an icon but her discography is very poor. If we are talking about pressure groups, I am waiting for an
IRENE fan club. Her costumes are always exciting. A matching dress and coat made my wife jump in her chair.
At the end, we have an awful song with a GIANT all male chorus (war and post war affairs are a male preserve):"United Nations on the March"(under marshal Stalin). Music by comrade Shostakovich (but the Soviet flag put at the very bottom of Allied flags, with a kind of unofficial Free French flag).
Kelly kisses Grayson under the eyes of her father and colonel: sleepy John Boles.
Like in the future Rio Grande, the wife Mary Astor, loking rather old in color, makes up with her colonel husband.
Not really a morale building movie.Less trapeze would have helped.
Again, great Technicolor.
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The Sound Of One Hand Clapping
Added 10/27/2009
What a cynical exercise on the part of MGM!!! This alleged wartime morale booster is only worth marking time. This clumsy grafting of service romance and all-star review accomplishes nothing but a sense of ennui. For sure there are some high points i.e. Kathryn Grayson's angelic pipes and Gene Kelly's hoofing but otherwise I would just pass this one by. Do yourself a favor and watch "Yankee Doodle Dandy" if you want to get into the war bond buying state of mind.
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A great missing musical
Added 10/26/2009
AS THIS FILM HAS NOT BEEN AVAILABLE FOR SO LONG IT'S GREAT AT LAST TO HAVE IT....
IGNORE THE LIGHT AND FLUFFY STORY, JUST SIT BACK AND ENJOY MGM STAR AFTER STAR IN GREAT TECHNICOLOR
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More stars that there are in heaven????
Added 10/19/2009
I saw THOUSANDS CHEER in Montevideo, Uruguay, back in 1953, when MGM was reprising most of Gene Kelly's musicals after his big success in AN AMERICAN IN PARIS and SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. The same year I could see those two films and ANCHORS AWEIGH too, and I was only ten years old. I became a big fan of Gene Kelly and now, when I'm over sixty, I haven't change a bit. So, is very touching to watch THOUSANDS CHEER again (I've seen the others over fifty times each) and place the film in the year it was made, 1943, with all that war climax, the studios trying to entertain the troops (and ALL of them were making the same kind of picture: Warners, Fox, RKO, Universal, Paramount) with a big parade of all their major stars singing and dancing, in musical numbers or comedy sketches (like Frank Morgan, Red Skelton and Mickey Rooney here) with Jose Iturbi directing the orchestra and making faces all the time. Gene Kelly has only one number (and a good one) and Kathryn Grayson sings a lot, but this Joe Pasternak production is very entertaining, colorful and well directed by George Sidney with his flying cameras. This film has something special that the years can't erase: an enormous and powerful description of an era, not only Hollywood in his golden years but the fabulous forties at their peak, with the charm, the rhythm (just listen the Kay Kyser and Bob Crosby orchestras), the songs and the dances that describes more than words a whole great american pastime. And we must not forget the personalities (not only Judy Garland, but Eleanor Powell, Lena Horne and all the others) that make THOUSANDS CHEER a real document of an era. Of course, the war was not that funny and amusing like it's shown here, but the film was made with the only commitment of cheering-up the spirits of the men overseas, where things weren't that funny. It must be seen now with that historical background, and that's its principal attraction nowadays.
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BUYERS BEWARE! ILLEGAL LISTING!
Added 6/6/2009
This DVD is from the WBshop online where it is available for half the price. Resale of these archive DVDs is prohibited by Warner Brothers. Don't subsidize theft by paying twice the price.
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