WORDS AND MUSIC (MGM, 1948) Warner Home Video
A bumper crop of Rodgers and Hart’s mega-hits, and virtually
every major musical star working at MGM then, are poured into director, Norman
Taurog’s Words and Music (1948) – a thinly disguised rekindle of the
magic in Richard Whorf’s fictionalized biopic of composer, Jerome Kern, Till
The Clouds Roll By (1946). The formulaic results of taking a hit back catalog
and fitting bits of connective dialogue between its cavalcade of songs, while
far from original, is nonetheless enchanting, the sight of a thoroughly bubbly,
June Allyson, escorted by the Blackburn twins, warbling ‘Thou Swell’
from R&H’s A Connecticut Yankee, or Perry Como, effortlessly cooing,
‘Mountain Greenery’ from The Garrick Gaieties, just two of the
shockingly plentiful 22 songs featured, with other memorable highlights going
to Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, in the competition number, ‘I Wish I Were
In Love Again’, and Garland, thereafter given her breathtaking solo, ‘Johnny
One-Note’. “Aaaahhhhhhhh!” Although
these last two numbers appear consecutively in the movie, in reality, they were
shot 4 months apart, with Garland ever so slightly plumper as she belts out
with gusto. Words and Music was something of a ‘reunion’ and a swan song
for Garland and Rooney, absent from the silver screen together since the
dissolution of their popular ‘barn yard’ musical cycle at MGM, begun with 1939’s
Babes in Arms and reaching its apex with Girl Crazy, just four
years later. Alas, as Rooney stepped out of his short pants and away from the Andy
Hardy franchise, Garland too had graduated to more adult fare, proving her
tenure at Metro was just beginning. Ironically, Garland was hotter than ever,
while Rooney’s box office pull had already slipped…just a little, but enough, as
it would continue in steep decline throughout the 1950’s. Words and Music sports some stunning production
values and is, of course, a superior way to experience Rogers and Hart’s
showbiz razzamatazz in one consolidated and legendary celluloid regurgitation.
Metro throws everything it has into this creative blender, and, with very few
exceptions, makes us forget the banality of its fictional plot.
For the record, Lorenz Hart was not the love-sick
puppy, mooning after the girl that got away, as reconstituted in Guy Bolton, Ben
Feiner Jr., Fred F. Finklehoffe and Jean Holloway’s corny yarn; rather, a closeted
homosexual who, despite his incredible wit, enviable social connections, and formidable
family fortune, nevertheless managed to squander everything on a serious of hedonistic,
meaningless affairs, living publicly with his widowed mother, but drowning his
sorrows in chronic alcoholism. To put it mildly, Hart despised himself so
completely, he allowed his creative bent to be overrun by his secretive bouts
of depression and tormented erotic indulgences with young men, meant to assuage,
or at least, dilute his fears. Nothing
really helped. It isn’t difficult to see why Richard Rodgers so disliked what
Metro had done with the story of Words and Music. Setting aside the fact
Rodgers is played by Tom ‘the boy next door’ Drake – as a thoroughly colorless
collaborator, the movie completely fakes the personal history of Rogers’ professional
alliance with Hart without even a whiff of the tempestuousness that eventually
caused their real-life pairing to call it quits. Nor, in the embodiment of
Mickey Rooney, does Words and Music infer Hart was anything but a manic
little quisling, impish in his outlook on life, but utterly incapable to translate
a flirtation with ‘love’ itself into anything ‘ever-lasting’ with the
proverbial ‘good woman’ – herein, briefly suggested in the embodiment of Peggy
Lorgan McNeil (Betty Garrett).
For the real Lorenz Hart, his teaming with Dick Rodgers
ought to have been the real start of a lengthy and vibrant career. But Rodgers
was straight, so there could be no finely wrought and thoroughly trusting
collaboration a la Noel Coward and Cole Porter. No, Hart let his thorough guilt
and self-disgust get the better of him, in the interim, plying his earthy urges
on a throwaway succession of chorus boys and male prostitutes. Naturally, none
of this makes for glamorous copy in an MGM musical – even if there had been no censorship
at the time – and so, none of it ultimately appears in the movie. We do, however, get a moment in which the
fictional Hart’s mother (played by Jeanette Nolan) quietly observes from her
bedroom window as her lonely and inebriated son is quietly serenaded in the
forecourt of their palatial home by Mel Torme’s velvety vocals of ‘Blue Moon’
– ‘blue’ being the operative word as a subversive hint to illicit love denied.
For L.B. Mayer, Words and Music likely seemed as fitting a tribute as
any: Hart, having died in New York in 1943 and therefore quite unable to resist
the temptation to have his life bastardized all out of proportion in this gargantuan
musical pastiche, mostly devoted to his works instead of his story.
The only star, other than Garland, afforded two numbers
is Lena Horne, whose tenure at MGM was regrettably marred by the studio’s
shortsightedness to allow her to appear in anything beyond these cameos for fear
of alienating their bookings in the American South. Horne coos the romantic
ballad, ‘Where or When’ in a posh nightclub before setting the place on fire
with her flashy/sassy rendition of ‘The Lady is a Tramp.’ Interviewed decades
later, Horne harbored no ill will against the studio for limiting her movie
career to walk-ons, laughing off the suggestion then she should have felt ‘privileged’
they allowed her to eat in the commissary with the other contract players. Indeed,
there was such an anti-black sentiment at the studio then, the hairstylists
refused to do Horne’s hair. Rather nobly, MGM’s head hairstylist, Sydney
Guilleroff openly agreed to personally attend to Horne’s special needs. Today,
one quietly observes Horne’s myriad of Metro performances with a slight twinge
of sadness. For, apart from her delicious appearance as the vixen, Georgia
Brown in Vincente Minnelli’s all-black musical, Cabin in the Sky (1943),
here was a woman, and a talent, repeatedly denied movie stardom so rightfully
deserved. Horne’s second marriage to one of Metro’s most brilliant musical
conductors/arrangers, Lennie Hayton in 1947, she later admitted was a mercenary
decision on her part to advance her career. And although the couple appeared
happy at the time, separating in the early sixties, but never to divorce, during
the marriage, Horne indulged in various affairs with the likes of Artie Shaw,
Orson Welles, Vincente Minnelli, and the boxer, Joe Louis, procuring a lasting
friendship with Billy Strayhorn, for whom she later admitted she would have
forsaken her staunch Catholicism and divorced Hayton, had Strayhorn not been a
homosexual.
Despite its embarrassment of riches, Words and
Music was foreshortened before its premiere, losing some gorgeous ballads, sung
by Perry Como; “Lover” – whose orchestral and choral arrangement are
retained under the main titles, and, “You’re Nearer” – a tender tome.
Also cut, ‘My Funny Valentine’ and “It Never Entered My Mind” sung by
Betty Garrett, “My Heart Stood Still” from Como, “Falling in Love
With Love” and “You Took Advantage of Me” (both sung by Gene Kelly, who –
now – would only appear in the celebrated ‘Slaughter on Tenth Ave.’
ballet from R&H’s 1936 musical stunner, ‘On Your Toes’). Oddly, the
movie’s Dorothy Rodgers, played by Janet Leigh (the only casting choice of
which the real Richard Rodgers approved) informs Rooney’s Hart of the prospect
of 'doing a play’ with Kelly, implying he was an established stage star when,
in fact, Kelly was all but an unknown before appearing in R&H’s 'Pal
Joey,' his only Broadway show before becoming a movie star. The songs, “Manhattan”,
“Way Out West”, and the medley, featuring "On Your Toes/The Girl
Friend/This Can't Be Love," were all shortened for the final release, indiscriminately
dropping verses to keep the movie’s overall run time manageable. Interestingly, although MGM promoted the
release of Words and Music with a soundtrack album (one of the first), none
of Perry Como’s songs, nor Mel TormĂ©’s silky smooth rendition of “Blue Moon”
were among the offerings as each artist’s recording contracts belonged
exclusively elsewhere: Como’s to RCA Victor, and Torme, to Capitol Records.
Capitol at least allowed Torme to cut a studio version of ‘Blue Moon’ for
their label.
With his eye clearly on the box office returns
garnered by Till The Clouds Roll By, director Norman Taurog immersed
himself in the necessary evil of indulging a blissfully obtuse (choke!)
biography. As far as stage to screen yarns went, this one has Rodgers and Hart miscast
as a pair of financially struggling and forlorn composers who eventually strike
it big with the aid of mutual friends, Eddie Lorison Anders (Perry Como), Peggy
Lorgan McNeil and Margo Grant (Cyd Charisse). While Rodgers eventually meets,
woos and marries Dorothy Feiner (Janet Leigh), Hart suffers from a tragic one-sided
love affair with Peggy; also, from ‘short man syndrome’ – that
much-recognized affliction of guys barely 5 ft. in stature. This taints his
romances. So, Hart compensates by immersing himself in his work. Alas, this
ultimately leads to overwork and his premature death…at least, so the movie’s modus
operandi would suggest. In between Hart’s search for the great ‘heterosexual’
love of his life, alas, in all the wrong places, he manages to bounce from one
hit Broadway smash to the next, celebrated in a compendium of singable
standards that have forever since remained peerless examples in the song
writing milieu. In the final moments of the picture, the Rodgers are seen on a
recording sound stage at MGM, painfully observing through bittersweet tears as
Eddie sings ‘With a Song in My Heart’.
Words and Music remains an enchanting musical for
musicals’ sake. There is no attempt at integrating any of these stage-bound
songs and dances into the plot. They are strictly executed to illustrate the
ballast of Rodgers and Hart’s showmanship and the stunning autonomy MGM wielded
as the peerless purveyors of musical extravaganzas like this one during its gala
days. Producer, Arthur Freed, having given Gene Kelly the green light to stage ‘Slaughter
on Tenth Avenue’ to his own likes (the rest of the picture’s numbers were
done by Robert Alton, whom Kelly greatly admired, and who enthusiastically
supported Kelly’s desire to work out the kinks to this ballet on his own
terms), reasoned the number was so good, it deserved to be situated near the
end of the movie, thereby dovetailing into its dramatic climax - the collapse
and death of Lorenz Hart. When the dust settled, Freed had another colossus on
his hands, praised for its big and flashy, absolutely ravishing entertainment
value. Produced on a budget of $2,799,970, Words and Music easily earned
back twice its cost, raking in, in excess of $4,522,000. And while the real
Richard Rodgers was to send Freed a glowing letter, in part to thank him for
the ‘exciting’ and ‘gratifying’ handling of the songs with ‘such an
extraordinary cast of stars’ – Rodgers was never to be satisfied with the way
the story of his song-writing tenure with Hart had been laid out. In truth, the
movie is more 'a show' than tell or ‘tell all’ for that matter. Yet, it works
as a glossy star-spangled and hit-filled cavalcade of R&H’s collaborative
efforts and, in the annals of movie ‘biopics’ proved a real tough act to
follow. More than half a century later, audiences are not left wanting. Words
and Music became one of MGM’s biggest and brightest money makers of the
season. While it could never be confused as being in the same artistic league
as Freed’s Easter Parade (also made and released in 1948) nor even the
ambitious, though somewhat fractured reconstitution of the stage classic, On
The Town (1949), to immediately follow it, Words and Music sustains
a joyful vigor and vitality every blue-chip movie musical ought to possess.
Better still, its tune-packed 2-hours endures as an experience not to be
missed.
Warner Home Video’s DVD fails to impress. While the
original LaserDisc release of Words and Music sported brilliantly saturated
colors, the DVD appears to have drained and distilled much of that sparkling
clarity to a wan ghost flower of its former presentation. This, like the long-ago
and now defunct DVD release of The Pirate, is a sub-par effort, further
marred by considerable edge enhancement. When the image is left to its own
devices, what’s here is relatively crisp and easy on the eyes, if otherwise
thoroughly unremarkable in capturing the breath-taking hues of vintage 3-strip
Technicolor. There are some very minor mis-registration issues scattered
throughout, but overall, the biggest regret here is color saturation – or lack
thereof – and the excessive DNR and artificial sharpening plied to ‘manage’ and
transfer the visuals from analog source materials into the digital age. The 1.0 Dolby Digital mono is adequate, though
just. Again, harking back to the LD, supervised by George Feltenstein, and, produced
as part of an MGM/UA ‘composer’s’ box set, Words and Music was then
afforded a lavish back catalog of outtakes and isolated score options. With the
exception of a badly worn outtake of Perry Como’s ‘You’re Nearer’, none
of these other goodies have made the transition from LD to DVD. We do get a rather informative commentary from
historian, Richard Barrios, a ‘puff piece’ featurette on the movie, and the
original theatrical trailer, but that’s about it. Bottom line: Words and
Music, like its predecessor, Till The Clouds Roll By, is so
deserving of a Blu-ray restoration and release it positively hurts to watch all
these great performers given short shrift on a lack-luster DVD. Regrets.
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
4
VIDEO/AUDIO
2.5
EXTRAS
3
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