BLUE SKIES: Blu-ray (Paramount, 1946) Kino Lorber

A boatload of Irving Berlin songs is wed to a thimble of a plot in director, Stuart Heisler’s Blue Skies (1946) – a utterly monotonous musical, reteaming Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby (who first appeared for Paramount in the iconic Christmas classic, Holiday Inn 1942). And while Berlin could always be counted upon to deliver the goods, rather shamelessly recycling his time-honored back catalog with a few ‘new’ songs filtered in to fatten the program, what’s on tap in Blue Skies plays with a distinct whiff of formaldehyde, with the exception of Astaire’s trendsetting rendition of ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’, a ditty Berlin penned in 1927, but originally published in 1929, and, was memorably sung and danced on film by Clark Gable in 1939’s Idiot’s Delight. For the ’46 adaptation, Astaire is featured with a chorine of Astaire clones, seamlessly projected in the background with whom he appears to do a full-on battle of the dance, complete with his trademarked top hat, white tie and tails. According to Astaire, it took 5 weeks to iron out the technical kinks, rehearse and shoot the number. Astaire, having already announced his retirement from pictures, likely viewed ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’ as his opportunity to leave the industry with a bang, his cane, animated by a floor-concealing mechanism that occasionally propelled it into the air. Situated at the tail end of Blue Skies’ 104-minute run time, this is the picture’s pièce de résistance – a peerless exercise from Astaire’s repertoire of memorable movie moments.

For the rest, Astaire as Jed Potter (in a role originally intended for dancer, Paul Draper) offers some of his own light taps to ‘A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody’ (written by Berlin in 1919, but shown to its best advantage in MGM’s titanic musical masterpiece, The Great Ziegfeld, 1936), and engages costar, Bing Crosby, as Johnny Adams, in the deliciously sassy duet, ‘A Couple of Song and Dance Men’. He also rumbles through the picture’s maudlin musical finale, ‘Heat Wave’ – an absurdly lavish, Latin-themed number in which a drunken Jed exorcises his romantic demons, having lost the love of his life, Mary O’Hara (a thoroughly inexpressive Joan Caufield) to Adams, toppling from a great precipice, presumably to derail his career forever, until – of course – the bittersweet finale, when Jed is reunited with the now marrieds – all’s forgiven - during a live radio broadcast, celebrating their life’s work together. This leaves the lion’s share of the musical program to Crosby – not surprising, since he was Paramount’s major box office draw and top-billed. Crosby warbles ‘I've Got My Captain Working for Me Now’ (written in 1919), ‘C-U-B-A’ (from 1920), ‘All by Myself’, and, ‘Everybody Step’ (from 1921 and more supremely realized by Ethel Merman in Fox’s 1939 titanic musical offering, Alexander’s Ragtime Band), Blue Skies (1926), Russian Lullaby (1927), ‘The Little Things in Life (1930), ‘How Deep Is The Ocean?’ (1932), ‘Not All The Rice in China’ (1933), a ‘wartime medley, comprised of ‘Any Bonds Today’, ‘This is the Army Mr. Jones (used to better effect in Warner’s 1943 wartime spectacle, This Is The Army) and, ‘White Christmas’(recapped from Holiday Inn), and finally, ‘You Keep Coming Back Like A Song’ and, ‘Running Around In Circles Getting Nowhere (both, expressly written by Berlin for this movie). Only the latter is worthy of Berlin’s great song catalog, gingerly performed by Crosby to his estranged daughter.

Blue Skies emphatically appealed to wartime audiences, to the tune of $5.7 million, making it one of the year’s biggest bell ringers, perhaps, partially due to the huge hype in marketing it as Fred Astaire’s farewell to the picture-making biz. At age, 47, Astaire had been in the public spotlight for nearly his entire life and was looking forward to spending more time with his wife, Phyllis, and their two children. He had also severely tired of playing the heel, cast as mere filler for his dancer’s finesse, but in roles that did little to strain his competence as an actor. Mercifully, Gene Kelly’s football injury precluded his partaking of MGM’s Easter Parade (1948), allowing Astaire to re-enter the movies ‘as a favor’ and last-minute substitute that would ultimately propel him through another 2 decades of solid work as the grand ole man of the dance. Another reason for Blue Skies success was undeniably Technicolor, then, still a rarity in movies due to its exorbitant costs. And, of course, Crosby had his mega-watt following. Produced by Sol C. Siegel, Blue Skies also costarred Billy De Wolfe (as maître D, Tony) and Olga San Juan as his comedic sidekick, Nita Nova). As for Joan Caulfield, she had been a protégé of director, Mark Sandrich, who ought to have directed Blue Skies, but was felled by a fatal heart attack during pre-production. Sandrich’s replacement, Heisler then set about to have Caulfield replaced, a fool’s errant since Crosby was carrying on his secret affair with Caufield, using his formidable clout at Paramount to ensure she remained at his side. Crosby also leveraged his star power to replace Draper after he became critical of Caufield’s dancing prowess.

Arthur Sheekman’s screenplay for Blue Skies is lethally anchored to a series of heavy-handed vignettes narrated by Astaire’s Jed Potter, a one-time Broadway headliner, recalling his life story during a radio broadcast. We regress to WWI where Jed and Johnny Adams first become acquainted while serving their country. Johnny is all business while Jed daydreams of stardom. But Johnny is less disciplined when aspiring to become a successful nightclub owner. To help his ole pal out, Jed introduced Johnny to Mary O’Hara, an aspiring band singer with whom he has begun to fall in love. Unhappy circumstance, Mary prefers Johnny to Jed. Despite Jed’s protestations, that Johnny is not the marrying kind, Mary throws caution to the wind. Soon, she and Johnny tie the knot. It’s hardly joy galore, despite the birth of their only daughter, Mary Elizabeth (Karolyn Grimes). As Johnny’s various attempts at managing nightclubs miserably fail, Mary realizes Jed was right. Her husband is self-absorbed and unable to commit to anything for very long. Mary and Johnny split, with Mary Elizabeth placed in the care of a nanny (Victoria Horne) while Mary tries a second time for Jed’s heart. He is willing. But alas, Mary cannot get Johnny out of her heart. Thus, her engagement to Jed is derailed repeatedly by her lingering feelings for Johnny. Devastated, Jed turns to the bottle and, near fatally, takes a tumble from the stage during his opening night on Broadway, thereby wrecking his health and career. In the meantime, Johnny, having come to his senses as to how much he has given up, is reunited with Mary and their child. As Jed prepares to conclude his radio broadcast, Johnny and Mary appear in the recording booth. Grateful for their friendship now, Jed, Johnny and Mary stroll off together as a reprise of ‘You Keep Coming Back Like a Song’ swells over the end titles.

Sporting no less than 32 Berlin songs, some merely heard as orchestral background, Blue Skies promised the sort of epic show biz razzamatazz that a studio like MGM might have best delivered. What is rather disheartening about Blue Skies when viewed today is the truncation of many of those Berlin songs, to begin abruptly and, on occasion, end just as inexplicably without any grand finale of finesse. With few exceptions, numbers here are garishly mis-represented, the subtleties in Berlin’s lyrics hammered home.  Nevertheless, most critics were ‘over the moon’ in their praise of the picture, pressing Astaire to reconsider his self-imposed retirement and exalting Crosby’s contributions to the rafters. Indeed, viewing Blue Skies today, one is immediately cognizant of the comfortable nature between Astaire and Crosby – pros, for certain, while having an utterly marvelous time sparing off one another. Their chemistry really clicks. If only there had been more such chemistry between Joan Caufield and her co-stars. Blue Skies really suffers from a dearth of romance – odd too, as she and Crosby were lovers behind the scenes. But on camera, and although quite attractive physically, Caufield is as wooden as a stick of kindling. The intermittent comedic respites lent the picture by De Wolfe and San Juan, either riffing together or apart, play more like skits, some clumsily inserted into the proceedings and transparently provide an out between otherwise disconnected dramatic moments.

The chief oversight in Blue Skies is its lack of a ‘cute meet’, romantic thread that follows through, and, ultimately, the lack of a distinctly ‘happy’ ending. While one may debate, Arthur Sheekman’s screenplay is exploring tragi-elements, to have buoyed many a Broadway musical in the 40’s, eventually to trickle down more successfully into Hollywood-made movie musicals of the 1950’s like Love Me Or Leave Me and Interrupted Melody (both released in 1955), the wartime milieu of Blue Skies is already cause enough for bittersweet treacle. The picture’s resolution – an awkward reconciliation between its triumvirate of stars – is anticipated, and even cliché.  Worse, Caufield and Crosby have zero screen chemistry. Accepting their love affair and later reunion is awkward at best. And cramming the show with Irving Berlin songs really leaves Sheekman’s contributions emasculated, with little opportunity to write for character. Rather, his work here is mere connective tissue – an economical way to link one musical number to the next. Structurally, the show is on even less solid ground as Astaire’s narration keeps interrupting these flashbacks. Instead of one extended regression, we get little bits, ripped from this imperfect past, and predigested by Astaire’s connect-the-dots reflections, presumably meant to expedite and summarize what went on between them, on occasion, to cover a span of years in a matter of a sentence or two. Despite all of these shortcomings, Blue Skies was a colossal smash. Today…not so much!

One of only 35 Technicolor productions from 1946, Blue Skies arrives in hi-def via Kino Lorber, cribbing from digital files described as a ‘new 2K transfer’ (when a 4K scan ought to have been the norm) on loan from Universal Home Video, the custodians of pre-50’s Paramount catalog. I wish I could say, “prepare to be dazzled” but if you’ve purchased more than a handful of Kino’s Uni’ product, then you know Universal’s business acumen where deep catalog is concerned is to do as little as possible. Uni has afforded Kino a 1080p transfer culled from elements that are probably several decades old. Mercifully, the work here is not as compromised as some others I have seen. Technicolor mis-registration is kept to a minimum. There are a handful of instances where the image just looks slightly out of focus. And colors, while richly pronounced, are ever so slightly anemic, faded, or otherwise just out of whack. So, flesh tones lean toward piggy pink and reds occasionally skew to orange. There are also one or two instances where colors in general look a tad muddy or duller than they ought. And, oh yes – contrast suffers with a complete absence of shadow detail. Occasionally, the image can also look artificially sharpened – again, just a smidgen. There are a few errant age-related artifacts, though none to distract.  The 2.0 DTS mono audio is adequate – though just. Kino has shelled out for a new audio commentary by critic and author, Simon Abrams, who provides some factoid fluff, but otherwise tends to ramble on with uninspiring thoughts. Bottom line: Blue Skies is not a stellar musical. That said, I am of the opinion it is far too late in video mastering for any studio to simply take the attitude of preservation as a necessary evil for their archives without going the extra step of performing marginal restoration to ensure these elements survival in optimal quality for the next hundred years. Blue Skies on Blu is a so-so transfer of a mediocre movie musical. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

1