There's No Business Like Show Business

The film was, perhaps, the splashiest of the year's musicals… It dealt with the joys, loves and heartaches experienced by a vaudeville family called the Donahues (spending their lives singing and dancing and touring) with Merman and Dailey as mother and father, and Ray, Gaynor and O'Connor as their talented offspring…

All of them get to perform a large catalog of new and old songs by Irving Berlin in sumptuous arrangements, beautiful settings and on a big Hippodrome extravaganza…

Daily and Merman hit the top; O'Connor—who had liked to build a barbed-wire fence around Marilyn—did it Scottish and came with some fine dances; Gaynor's love was dancing… and she was really cute; and while Ray got some thinking to do, he sells a very beautiful song ("If You Believe").

Marilyn (appearing after 29 minutes screening) was deliciously charming, seducing and very appealing… She sang "After You Get What You Want" and "Lazy," and did that tropical version of 'Heat Wave.'

There are two main types of musicals--those where the emphasis is clearly on the music and others where the music is incidental to the story. While which style you like is up to you, for me, I much prefer those with less music--where the story is predominant. So, because of my personal preference, movies like "There's No Business Like Show Business" are NOT exactly my cup of tea, so to speak.

The film is about a fictional show business family, the Donohues. When the film begins, the three children are young. But then through the miracle of movie magic, soon about 15-20 years pass--and the children are now grown (and include Donald O'Connor and Mitzi Gaynor). Oddly, the parents, Dan Dailey and Ethel Merman, didn't seem to age a day. Even more noticeable is Marilyn Monroe--you see her early in the film and after all those years she looks as if she hasn't aged a day. Even if it was only 10 years--still, she looked EXACTLY the same! While the film follows the family with their ups and downs (and the third child when he decides to become a priest), all of it seems to be there just to provide a chance to sing and dance...a lot. Many of the songs are very familiar. Overall, very glossy and enjoyable if all you want is lots of singing and dancing...which I didn't. Watchable for a guy like me, but only just, as the story didn't seem strong enough to handle all the songs.

The first time you watch this movie, you'll think it's long, boring, and stupid. The second time you watch this movie, you'll love it. I can't begin to tell you why, but it's the truth. (I had the chance to show this film to an audience during a Donald O'Connor film festival. People came up to me weeks later to say that they had caught it again on cable, and loved it the second time through.)

Marilyn is definately "ehh". This movie was filmed during her worst years of personal abuses, and it shows all over her face and her work, lending a shadowy sadness to her character for modern audiences. Donald O'Connor's character also takes on a new depth for modern viewers familiar with his own life's history, oftentimes with a sharp poignance that helps him grab control of so many scenes, and turn his character's story into the strongest sub-plot of the film.

Merman is BRILLIANT as the real head of this family, giving us a wonderfully unique character. Her role as the strong, smart, powerful, and loving mother is truly a standout for the 50's in general, and musicals in particular.

This CinemaScope musical follows the lives and loves of the Donahues, a family of vaudeville performers: father Terrance (Dan Dailey), mother Molly (Ethel Merman), elder son Tim (Donald O'Connor), daughter Katy (Mitzi Gaynor), and younger son Steve (Johnnie Ray). They persevere through changing tastes, the stock market crash, and the start of WW2. Tim falls for co-star Vicky (Marilyn Monroe), while Katy finds romance with writer Charles (Hugh O'Brian), and Steve pursues a different calling.

The threadbare story merely serves to connect a series of elaborate musical numbers designed to make the best of the new widescreen CinemaScope format. Director Lang and choreographer Robert Alton turn in some excellent work, and Donald O'Connor reportedly called this his favorite of his films (over Singin' in the Rain?!?). I watched this for Monroe, who doesn't impress much here. She supposedly didn't want to appear in this, but did so in order to win the lead in The Seven Year Itch. This was one of Fox's most expensive productions to date, and despite selling a lot of tickets, it ended up being a money-loser. It earned Oscar nominations for (inexplicably) Best Story (Lamar Trotti), Best Score (Alfred & Lionel Newman), and Best Color Costumes (Charles Le Maire, Miles White, Travilla).

When Darryl F. Zanuck virtually forced exhibitors and most of his fellow studio mogul rivals to adopt CinemaScope as a panacea for TV's devastation of Hollywood's weekly box office bonanza, he dictated that virtually all of Twentieth's output was to be filmed in that eye-stretching process. "There's No Business Like Show Business," directed by that old pro, Walter Lang, seems to be the prime example of Darryl's minions saying to their boss: "You want wide? We'll give you W-I-D-E!!"

Everything about it was designed and lensed to emphasize the original ratio of the CinemaScope process and viewing it on a video that isn't letterboxed must look like what a one-eyed person must experience in everyday life. I never did see it in a theater but I have seen it on a TV broadcast which more-or-less recreated its widescreen ratio. It's a glorious mish-mash. Every Berlin tune that could be stuffed into it is given at least one run-through; John de Cuir's production design must have occupied every inch of several of Twentieth's West Los Angeles soundstages; Ethel Merman, after her terrific movie repeat of her Broadway success in "Call Me Madam" for Fox (and now, as of 2005, available on video), trumpets away in number after number (Must have been an ear-rending experience over those original four-track stereophonic sound systems.); Dan Dailey, Donald O'Connor and Mitzi Gaynor give it their energetic best; and then there's Marilyn. What can we say, with all that so sadly, in her personal life, came after she reluctantly fulfilled her contractual obligation in this one? She dazzles in, let's face it, a rather vulgar way, and seems shoehorned in to boost the potential box office. And they even added Johnnie Ray, a huge jukebox success at the time (and, due to his hearing deficiency, performing his songs at an even greater volume than La Merman.)

All in all this one shouldn't be missed if you want to view an example of Hollywood at its brassiest, in a production fairly bulging with elements that may not coalesce very harmoniously but which was, no doubt, worth the price of admission to those movie palaces before they were carved up to become the precursors of today's sterile multiplexes.