MGM Parade

As a child in the 1955-56 time frame whose parents routinely shuttled me and my brother to the local movie theater on Saturday afternoons to get us away from the house (lol), this show gave us some insight as to what was playing at the local theater. I vividly remember watching on our 17-inch black-and-white TV, Walter Pidgeon hosting the episode in which he introduces us to "The Forbidden Planet". My jaw dropped as I was introduced to the flying saucer landing on Altair 4, Robby The Robot, the ray guns, and all that other stuff (Anne Francis was beyond the scope of our experience at the time). My brother and I caught the movie first-hand at the local theater not long after. "Leo The Lion" was a cartoon mascot for this show. He was featured in numerous animated sequences before, during, and after the show. I am guessing that Hanna-Barbera were the animators, since the were under contract to MGM at the time.

Decidedly a mixed bag of stuff used for an MGM promotional short hosted by genial GEORGE MURPHY.

The first segment opens with a view of the MGM waterfront where many ships still remained after used in films ranging from SHOW BOAT to MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY.

First off is the story behind a ship that became known as a "ghost ship no longer alive" when it was discovered floating on the ocean with no survivors aboard. The ship was The Mary Celeste and the mystery surrounding it is explored briefly with scenes of what might have happened aboard the mystery ship before it disappeared in 1872 with the mystery never really solved.

Gears are shifted quickly to the next segment featuring an animated cartoon about baseball pitchers, giving new life to phrases like "kill the umpire" or "let's warm up the new pitcher", with a Goofy-like cartoon character serving his wild pitches.

Then, for no reason at all except to promote an upcoming film, Murphy changes the subject to French and we see a scene from GOOD NEWS featuring JUNE ALLYSON and PETER LAWFORD doing "The French Lesson", a nimble Technicolor musical number from the forthcoming MGM film. Oddly, this MGM short is photographed in B&W (1955, you know), so that even when color films are introduced they're all shown in B&W.

And finally, a dramatic moment from a film called TRIAL is shown, featuring Dorothy McGuire, Glenn Ford and John Hodiak. As the smiling host, Murphy seems a bit overwhelmed by his corny scripted remarks.

This show is a reminder of how things have changed on TV since '55, both in style and format, but is worth a look for nostalgia buffs.

... because this series was meant to entice television audiences into movie theatres to watch the current feature film offerings of MGM. But instead, all it could really do was celebrate MGM's past glories with scenes from such movies as "The Women" and "Captains Courageous". Unfortunately, the new stars and new films MGM would highlight on this show paled in comparison to their greats from the 30s and 40s.

Hosts George Murphy and Walter Pidgeon were dapper as always, but in the end, the contrast between past and present was just too stark...with maybe one exception. There was one episode that celebrated 1956's "Forbidden Planet" rather cleverly.

Episodes of this old show have aired frequently as filler between feature films on Turner Classic Movies since its inception. It's worth a look for the history of it all.

A little history: By 1955, MGM was already a shadow of it's former self. Once the premier studio in the world, it's status had slipped badly since 1947. Louis B. Mayer had been forced out or quit (depending upon who you believe) 4 years earlier, and a large amount of it's production had been moved to Europe for economic reasons. The studio adopted a spectacle stance as a defense against the video onslaught. MGM honcho Dore Schary, while certainly more progressive than Meyer, had to deal with the same vehemently anti-TV attitude amongst his board of directors and parent Leow's Inc. By 1955, Schary's hit-and-miss track record had him on the outs with the majority of management at the time he greenlighted this, MGM's first stab at TV. Loew's, a vast theater chain, saw TV as the enemy. Embracing TV as a revenue stream was unthinkable to the studio brass. The MGM Parade Show was conceived as a vehicle to promote it's 1955-56 releases while inexpensively padding itself with clips from it's massive film library, which included everything from Garbo to the hypo-nasal Pete Smith shorts, with each episode hosted by an old studio warhorse such as right-wing hoofer George Murphy and the dignified Walter Pidgeon. Occasionally, a contract star was hauled into the so-called "Trophy Room" and interviewed. The show flopped--- it didn't help it was shown on ABC, then an also-ran network, coincidentally owned by Paramount, and went unseen (indeed, was thought lost) until good ol' TCM located it in their purchase of the film library... interestingly, it wasn't immediately known to be among the inventory of Ted Turner's purchase. Industry wags at the time berated Turner for paying too much for the library, which formed the basis for TCM, since expanded to include parts of the Warner's, UA, Columbia and RKO libraries (film buffs rightly proclaim commercial-free TCM to be the main reason to pay for basic cable). As a result of the convoluted history of this flop show, the technical credits are largely lacking. The contemporary material was handled by studio vets Al Jennings (Assistant Director--- whose career would extend into the 70's working on _Deliverence (1972)_(qv) in the same capacity), Harold Marzorati (DP) and Ira Heymann (Film Editor, under contract with MGM since 1942 and active into the 1980's) and produced by Leslie Petersen (a liason exec between ABC and MGM) and associate Jack Atlas (a specialist in movie trailers, whose resume is impossible to catalog in IMDb). Sadly for MGM, unlike Columbia, it would fail to embrace TV production and the result is what we see today: a Vegas casino and an occasional James Bond movie. The MGM Parade Show is, at best, a footnote in MGM's history, only remarkable for how it chose to market it's product on an enemy medium and it's discovery amongst the racks in the vault. Anything else in there?