LOVELY TO LOOK AT (MGM, 1952) Warner Archive
With its all-star assemblage, a veritable who’s who of
MGM’s then reigning glitterati, a sumptuous pre-sold score already immortalized by Jerome
Kern, and, gowns by Adrian, returning to his alma mater for the first time since
striking out on his own in 1941, director, Mervyn LeRoy’s Lovely To Look At
(1952) had something for anyone old enough to remember and admire such in-house
panache at its zenith. Even better, here was the perfect artistic vehicle to
inaugurate husband and wife dancers extraordinaire, Marge and Gower Champion
(then, being groomed as ‘the next’ Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers), despite the
fact Astaire and Rogers had willingly acknowledged the sun had already begun to
set on that art deco decadence, appearing for only one final bow together after
their legendary run at RKO in MGM’s The Barkleys of Broadway in 1949. Things
come suitable to a particular time. The Champions, with their impeccable timing
and exquisitely intimate understanding of each other’s bodies, effortlessly to
move as one in their pas deux, ‘Smoke Gets In Your Eyes’ – danced across
a seemingly bottomless azure backdrop of twinkling stars – marked both a new
beginning, as well as the beginning of the end for such graceful achievements
on the big screen, with a truly awe-inspiring and applause-worthy execution in
style and substance. This level of perfection, alas, was never to be equaled anywhere
else in the film, not in the mellifluous coupling of co-stars, Howard Keel and
Kathryn Grayson – each, at the top of their game and paired together for the
second time (their first, 1951’s Show Boat, and their third and last,
1953’s Kiss Me Kate), nor in the joyously daft rendering of second-tier hopefuls,
Ann Miller and Red Skelton, strictly in it for comic relief. Nor even in
Vincente Minnelli’s uncredited, fanciful and outlandishly staged ‘fashion show’
finale, sporting more than 40 original creations by Adrian at a staggering cost
of $100,000, complete with a story within a story, to feature the Champions
again: Gower, as a sexy jewel thief, making chase through this fashion parade
of statuesque beauties, on route to a rendezvous with Marge’s kinky/slinky
escape artist.
Based on Alice Duer Miller's novel 'Gowns by
Roberta', and, more directly on the Broadway smash hit, and, subsequent
film version of Roberta (1933) a big one for Astaire and Rogers, Lovely
To Look At kept only the Kern classics and threadbare outline from the
original book and screenplay, deciding instead to go it alone and bigger than
ever with a new screenplay by George Wells and Harry Ruby. In its preliminary
stages, the picture was planned as yet another reunion for Gene Kelly and Frank
Sinatra. The problem here was Sinatra, by 1952, increasingly at odds with the
studio, and, tired of always being cast as the seemingly anemic crooner to
Kelly’s robust figure of male athleticism. And thus, the reunion was not to be –
with Sinatra entering a fallow period in his career in which he found it
increasingly difficult to find work, either as a recording artist or movie
star. Lovely to Look At is yet another blazing example of MGM’s
excellence in the picture-making biz – a formula that, in the good ole days,
ought to have sent cash registers ringing round the world. Fair enough – the crowds
still came around, though hardly in the droves that had once ear-marked
virtually every Metro musical for a shockingly successful debut at Radio City
Music Hall.
The Wells/Ruby screenplay retained the most durable
aspects of the stage show and book while ever so slightly refreshing its
bouquet of memorable songs for the postwar generation. Overall, the dated
material held together remarkably well, thanks to the winning score that
featured such immortal songs as 'Yesterdays' and 'Smoke Get In Your
Eyes'. Our story begins in the drawing room of aspiring Broadway producer,
Tony Naylor (Howard Keel) who, at present, is entertaining potential backers
for his new show with a sampling of its score alongside co-producers, Al Marsh
(Red Skelton) and Jerry Ralby (Gower Champion). Tony’s the real brains behind
this operation…or rather, the wily con artist, capable of bilking the backers
out of their hard-earned moneys to finance his pipe dreams. And it works. The
backers are enchanted by what they see and hear, though far less amused upon
learning all Tony has for his efforts is 2/3rd’s inspiration to 1/3rd
perspiration. Given the financial risks of such a costly venture, the backers
walk out without committing a single dollar to his venture. Disillusioned,
Tony, Al and Jerry decide to hit the nightclub where Tony's latest plaything,
Bubbles Cassidy (Ann Miller) is performing. She wants to get married. But Tony is
all fizz and no pop. Besides, you need money to get married.
After the show, Al gets the surprise of his life. His
beloved Aunt Roberta has died in Paris, bequeathing to him her Paris couturier.
Tony has another inspiration. They will all go to France, sell off the assets
and use the inheritance money to finance their show on Broadway. A good plan?
Yes, except that upon their arrival the boys discover Roberta’s couturier is in
steep financial decline. Actually, it’s two steps away from receivership. The
shop's overseer, Stephanie (Kathryn Grayson) and her chief designer, Clarisse
(Marge Champion), both adopted by Aunt Roberta, have been counting on Al to
pull the company out of imminent ruin. After some consternation, Al agrees to
help the girls. He has more trouble convincing Tony it is the right thing to
do. But Tony has already moved on, finagling a selloff of Roberta’s, and better
still – at least for Tony – a chance to get Broadway backer, Max Fogelsby (Kurt
Kasznar) whose girlfriend, Zsa Zsa (Zsa Zsa Gabor) is hoping to be part of
Roberta's fashion show extravaganza, to fund his show. Meanwhile Jerry has
fallen in love with Clarisse and Stephanie with Tony - although he is as ever
reluctant to commit himself to any relationship for very long. Bubbles realizes
she has been romantically betting on the wrong horse and eventually decides to
accept a proposal from Al. This leaves Tony free to pursue Stephanie. But a
falling out between Tony and Al - after the latter learns Tony has been wooing
Stephanie merely to convince her to give up the couturier - threatens not only
their future professional and personal friendships but Stephanie's happiness as
well. This being a musical…and one made by the greatest of all movie musical
studios, it ends predictably in merriment and reconciliation – Tony appearing
on Roberta’s stage to serenade Stephanie with ‘The Touch of Your Hand’,
moments before everyone raises their glasses to celebrate Roberta’s restoration
to fiscal solvency.
For the most part, the songs in Lovely to Look At
are all staged with great visual flare. 'I Won't Dance' is playfully
performed by Marge and Gower Champion in the shop's attic, amidst bolts of
fabric and other fashion accessories. 'Lafayette' is a charming
traveling song, sung exuberantly by Howard Keel, Gower Champion and Red Skelton
as the boys experience the pleasures of Paris on route to Roberta’s. The film's
title song gets a clever treatment as Grayson’s Stephanie, stands before six
full-length mirrors, and fantasizes about Tony, who suddenly materializes in
their reflections to serenaded her. Howard Keel is given several choice
opportunities to romantically spar with Grayson in song, the sublime ballad, ‘You’re
Devastating’ among their best. Keel also sings the sublime, ‘The Most Exciting
Night’. Grayson gets the solo, ‘Yesterdays’. Ann Miller puts in her
saucy digs with an eccentric nightclub recreation of ‘Hard to Handle’ –
chased about the stage by a pack of male dancers wearing wolf masks. But again, the most spectacularly realized
song here is 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes' – a cornerstone in the Kern
catalog, sung by a tearful Grayson, clad in off-the-shoulder red velvet from a
moonlit balcony, and danced by the Champions amidst a seemingly endless array
of glistening stars nestled in velvety blue heavens. Midway through the filming,
Mervyn LeRoy had an inspired notion, to call upon Vincente Minnelli to stage his
lavishly appointed fashion show finale.
MGM also brought in Adrian for this family reunion. Alas,
the combination of Minnelli’s powerfully saturated color palette and Adrian's
over-the-top prototypes are at odds with the clutter in Jack D. Moore and Edwin
Willis' production design, a garish, rather than lovely display of fashion
curios framed by glowing obelisks draped in English ivy, and pushed on castors
from side to side by an enviable army of fancified courtiers, to render
everything, devastatingly ugly. Red Skelton serves as the hapless master of
ceremonies, constantly in the way and tripping over the countless yards of silk
bunting perpetually being moved about the pavilion. Models, looking more like
the angry wax-sculpted and rail-thin mannequins that have since come to conquer
the Paris runways, herein cavorting between extras attired in animal skulls,
wearing filigree metal breast plates. Amidst all this hullaballoo, the Champions
perform one of their strangest pas deux, she, as the bejeweled gamin and he, the
lanky jewel thief in black, gravely in danger of having his own heart stolen. From
this nightmarish fantasy, a stunningly attired Kathryn Grayson emerges to
warble, 'The Touch of Your Hand', accompanied by Howard Keel; the movie’s
short-shrift way to solidify for the audience Tony and Stephanie have found
their true love at long last. Yet, the fashion show finale is a bewilderingly
awful note on which to end the show, seemingly done up, either in exquisite
jest by Minnelli, or worse, in very bad taste (which I would have never
believed Minnelli to be capable of deliberately). Nothing that is here
is bad enough to wreck what’s gone before it. Still, the ending is unremittingly
bizarre in its exaltation of the obscenely fashion-conscious need to be different
for difference sake.
Overall, however, Lovely to Look At is a wowser
of a musical, seemingly effortlessly assembled with the studio’s top-flight
talent giving it their all. Feather-weight to a fault, but steeped in the
studio’s tradition of glamor above all else, it ought to have been a colossus
and a windfall for Metro, as musicals traditionally fared best for them at the
box office. Alas, at war’s end, the world had changed, while the studio’s time-honored
edicts remained tragically ensconced in an increasingly chronic exhumation of
their past. Lovely to Look At was only one of the studio’s ill-timed,
star-studded super-productions to miserably fail, as people stayed home and
glean their musical entertainments from popular television variety shows. Its
box office implosion resulted in a loss of $735,000 (or $7million in today’s
dollars) at a time when MGM could scarcely afford to play fast and loose with
its expense account, an unanticipated trend to continue with the release of Brigadoon,
Rose Marie and The Student Prince (all in 1954), Hit the Deck,
It's Always Fair Weather and Jupiter's Darling (all in 1955) and Meet
Me in Las Vegas (1956). None of these expensive productions actually earned
back their budgets at the time of their original theatrical release. So, when fans
of these movies today inevitably inquired, “why don’t they make ‘em like
they used to?” the simplest answer is to be found in what happened to MGM after
the late fifties and beyond, as its incapacity to evolve with the times eventually
led to its premature decline and ultimate extinction as the grandest movie
studio this world has ever known – or likely ever is to know. The empire -
gone, the industry today is decidedly poorer for its loss. The movies, for
better or worse, live on.
Warner's MOD DVD of Lovely To Look At is above
average, though not spectacular. Lovely To look At received a
Technicolor photochemical restoration all the way back in 1995 for its
laserdisc release. The work done then serves as the basis for this WAC DVD. It
remains flawed with minor mis-registration problems intermittently scattered
throughout. Color fidelity is extraordinary, showing off Adrian’s divine confections
to their best effect. Without the benefit of digital clean up, age-related
artifacts are present throughout and infrequently distract. Scratches are the
most obvious and begin immediately during the title sequence. When the image is
properly aligned, it exhibits a razor-sharp clarity that is very impressive. Colors
are less vibrant than one might expect and flesh tones are at times unnaturally
pink. Contrast appears slightly bumped.
And there is some untoward edge enhancement, to create distracting
pixelization and halos. Overall, the work here is better than competent, if
hardly perfect. The 2.0 Dolby Digital mono possesses minor hiss and pop, but
usually retains the sonic resonance of vintage Westrex sound recording. Regrettably,
there are NO extras. Bottom line: Lovely to Look At ought to be a major
candidate for a WAC Blu-ray release. Much of the work done earlier is solid,
and with marginal digital clean-up, a slight tweaking of the Technicolor
records to bring them back into proper alignment, and a bit of due diligence
paid along the way, Lovely to Look At in 1080p could truly be a deep
catalog title to live up to its namesake…at least, that is the promise…and the
dream.
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
4
VIDEO/AUDIO
3
EXTRAS
0
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