THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS: Blu-ray (2oth Century-Fox, 1955) Fox Home Video

A cornucopia of Irving Berlin’s standards, mashed into splashy pulp and given the added punch and polish of fifties’ panache for which 2oth Century-Fox was well known in its heyday, director, Walter Lang’s lavishly-appointed musical extravaganza, There’s No Business Like Show Business (1955) was, in hindsight, meant to typify all that was mighty and overdone in the pantheon of those garish, gaudy, and bawdy Fox movie musicals. In its prime, Fox’s particular brand of Technicolor song and dance show, a la Bette Grable, June Haver and Alice Faye, had buoyed the otherwise lean coffers in the black; enough for studio boss, Darryl F. Zanuck to indulge to his heart’s content in all those ‘prestige’ pictures, even more well-regarded today than in their own time. The oddity of There’s No Business Like Show Business, however, is that its story never quite lived up to its spectacle; the meandering, and very loose tale of a close-knit Vaudeville family, torn asunder by the inevitable frictions of life, more or less boiling down to one or two scenes sandwiched between a mind-boggling array of Berlin’s best pop tunes; many of them, heard to better effect in other movies outside of this one. I’ll say this for There’s No Business Like Show Business – it has exceptional production design from ‘master builder, John DeCuir, and Gone with the Wind alumni, Lyle Wheeler; superbly saturated cinematography by Leon Shamroy, in Fox’s patented DeLuxe color, and costumer, Travilla’s incredible assortment of gowns, bedecked and dazzling the likes of Ethel Merman, Mitzi Gaynor and Marilyn Monroe; each maven’s body type demanding an entirely different set of criteria to show it off to its best advantage. Add to this mélange Johnny Raye, whose electrifying solo of Alexander’s Ragtime Band – sandwiched midway through its titanic production number raised goose pimples, the magnificent Dan Dailey – sadly underused herein – and even more magnetic, Donald O’Connor, even more tragically afforded only one dance number in which to distinguish himself – ‘A Man Chases A Girl Until She Catches Him’ – and…well, There’s No Business Like Show Business ought to have been a royal crowd-pleaser and real bell-ringer for Fox.   

By 1955, Marilyn Monroe’s star alone had risen to near mythic levels. She was, undoubtedly, at the top of her game. So, to find her taking the proverbial backseat in this super colossus, if, in fact, given the lion’s share of its latter musical offerings – the sultry, ‘After You Get What You Want You Don’t Want It’, the overwrought and over-choreographed sizzler/fizzler, ‘Heat Wave’, and, ridiculously staged, ‘Lazy’ – interpolated with frenzied high-stepping from O’Connor and Gaynor – is more than a little perplexing and off-putting. The chief difficulty here is Marilyn does not appear until well into the second act, a whole 36 minutes into the picture’s 117-minute run time. Until Monroe’s arrival, we are given ‘the Five Donahues’ – Terry (Dailey), Molly (Merman), Tim (O’Connor), Steve (Raye) and Katie (Gaynor); but mostly, Terry and Molly, rising like cream through the Vaudeville circuit – Merman, belting out – as only la Merman could - ‘When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam’, ‘Play a Simple Melody’ and ‘A Pretty Girl is Like A Melody’, while the lanky Dailey hoofs and struts with all the finesse of a frenetic Break-dancing chicken, and makes Berlin’s light innuendo in ‘You’d Be Surprised’ seem like salacious pickings from a house of ill repute. Despite its flaws, There’s No Business Like Show Business is infinitely watchable – even enjoyable fluff – the cast’s reinterpretation of Berlin’s time-honored tunes, clouding out the clumsy architecture in Phoebe and Henry Ephron’s nimble-minded screenplay and its rather haphazard stab at blending the high drama of the Donahue’s family life with Berlin’s bright and breezy pop sensations.

Without Cinemascope, Berlin or DeLuxe color, the picture might have scored as an intimate little family drama. But with the added girth of 6-track Westrex stereo, flooding in on all sides, There’s No Business Like Show Business hasn’t a chance to be any more than an over-inflated bonbon of joy. The movie’s title is, of course, derived from one of the most popular songs Irving Berlin ever wrote, first immortalized by Ethel Merman in Broadway’s smash hit, Annie Get Your Gun. That Merman was passed over to recap her most iconic stagecraft in MGM’s film version – first, for Judy Garland; then, Betty Hutton, after Judy proved too unwell to continue - seems an oversight Fox sought like hell to rectify with Merman’s inclusion in this homage. And truth to tell, There’s No Business Like Show Business really is more Merman’s show than it is Marilyn Monroe’s – even if Monroe’s cache at the box office outranked virtually all of her co-stars put together.  Monroe’s Victoria Hoffmann makes quite a splash as the hat check girl who dons a flesh-colored gown with glitter pasties glued in all the appropriate places, but with a slit up the leg to likely cause Hollywood censor, Joseph Breen to break a sweat. And Monroe, with not one hair of her blonde quaff out of place, and, with those impossible hourglass hip-swiveling proportions shimmying from left to right, then back again, is precisely the blonde every man – gentle or ‘un’ with a pulse – preferred. There’s No Business Like Show Business affords Monroe all the right moments to show off her most daring assets for which she remains justly celebrated today. But it also gives her character a rather sincere soft-centered core of dignity, minus the anticipated bubble-headed idiocy that only Monroe could make so utterly charming, though on this occasion, proves she does not have to, to make her screen persona click with audiences. In a word, Monroe is delicious; the perfect elixir and counterbalance to the bombastic Merman, and lithe – to the point of almost being invisible – Gaynor, who is cute, but otherwise a total nondescript.  

Our story begins in 1919 with the Donahues, Terrance (Dan Dailey) and Molly (Ethel Merman); big-time headliners on the Vaudeville circuit.  Ten-year-old Steven (Billy Chapin), six-year-old Tim (Donald Gamble) and Katie (Mimi Gibson), who is all of four-and-a-half, are put in the care of kindly Father Dineen (Rhys Williams) while their folks are on the road. But after Tim masterminds a daring escape from the school, Dineen encourages Terrance and Molly to take a more proactive stance in their children’s rearing. One by one, the kids enter the act until the entire family is headlining at New York’s world-famous Hippodrome as The Five Donahues. Despite being very close-knit, Molly senses they are slowly moving away from the family unit. Tim (now played by Donald O’Connor) is a wily womanizer whose latest fling with chorine, Lillian Sawyer (Robin Raymond) is doomed after he falls head over heels for sultry chanteuse Victoria Hoffmann. Molly asks Terrance if he tried talking to Tim about girls yet, to which Terrance glibly replies “Yeah, but he wouldn’t give me any phone numbers. Are you kidding? That would be like me teaching Dempsey how to fight!”  In the meantime, the introspective Steve (now played by Johnnie Ray) has gone for a long soul-searching walk while Katie (now played by Mitzie Gaynor), has dumped her devious date (Alvy Moore) after he tried to spike her drink. Converging on the homestead well after midnight, Katie is excused her tardiness after revealing the cruel prank she played on her date. And, while Tim’s arrival – stinking of liquor – is met with frustrated concern, Steve has, by far, dropped a biggest bombshell. He has decided to become a priest; a vocation he feels compelled to pursue. Terrance is outraged by what he perceives as Steve’s impromptu decision. Katie, however, encourages prudence and a kind word, believing Steve may someday rise in his ambitions to become a bishop, or even a cardinal.

Molly takes Tim upstairs and attempts to sober him up by repeatedly dunking his head in the sink before putting him to bed. Days later, Terrance and Molly decide to throw Steve a farewell party as he prepares to enter the seminary for his studies. Publicly they are all smiles. Secretly, they share a good cry together – still believing Steve has given up on his innate talents as a born entertainer. The Four Donahues leave for Florida to continue their winter bookings. There, Tim is reunited with Victoria (rechristened Vicky Parker) who is scheduled to open their act. In the interim, Vicky has made remarkable progress, thanks to the influence of producer, Lew Harris (Richard Eastham), who has romantic designs on her. After Tim gets the family to change their act, as one of the numbers in their show is also a big part of Vicky’s – the two become friendly, all the while as Tim wishes for more. Alas, Vicky’s not about to blow her connections with Lew for Tim’s amorous advances. This leads to some very unhealthy friction between them.  Molly blames Vicky as the bad influence even though Tim is clearly investing too much of himself in their relationship. When Tim gets drunk yet again and wraps his car around a tree Terrance decides to go to the hospital and lower the boom.

Disillusioned and utterly ashamed of himself, Tim checks out of the hospital and all but vanishes into thin air. Molly initially blames Terrance for his hasty departure, but then comes to her husband’s aid as he sinks deeper into his own depression over having miscalculated their father/son relationship. Meanwhile, Katie has begun a romance with Charles Gibbs (Hugh O’Brien); the producer of Harris’ latest show that she and Vicky are appearing in together. The show was to have also included Tim. In his absence, Molly enters the cast and makes a success of the part. Terrance leaves home in the dead of night, determined to locate his missing son and restore their fractured family. Steve, now a priest, comes to the family’s aid, searching every new lead in the hopes of finding Tim safe and sound. At a benefit for the Hippodrome, Molly is forced to share a dressing room with Vicky to whom she remains resentful. However, Molly cannot bring herself to hate Vicky, particularly after she hears her side of the story at Katie’s behest. As they say, “the show must go on!” Molly belts out a rousing rendition of ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’ only to discover Tim waiting for her in the wings along with Steven and Katie. Having done a lot of growing up in their absence, Tim has enlisted as a soldier on the cusp of WWII.  Rather optimistically, Terrance rejoins the family moments later, for a tearful backstage reunion, and then, an impromptu adlib of their biggest hit, ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ before the entire cast rejoin in a reprise of the movie’s title tune.

There’s No Business Like Show Business is a highly enjoyable bit of super-kitsch. Despite its maudlin trappings, the cast are primed pros at the top of their game. And Fox has thrown everything it has behind this elephantine spectacle, selling their gaudy bunk as high art and, more often than not, managing to flimflam the rest of us into seeing things their way. From a purely nostalgic perspective, we get to see and hear Ethel Merman belt out one of only two entertainment anthems (the other, likely being That’s Entertainment! – with honorable mention to ‘Hooray for Hollywood’) with all the chutzpah of a great performer at the peak of her powers. Dailey and Merman strike just the right chord as oft’ harried parents of this musical dynasty. And there is at least one moment for each of these headliners to shine.  The two best numbers in the movie are also its biggest: the aforementioned reprise of the title tune, with the 5 Donahues plus Vicky perched atop an azure pedestal, amidst a sea of starry glitter and flag-waving streamers, surrounded by a cacophony of acrobats, roller skaters, clowns, and, flamenco dancers in spandex, and, Alexander’s Ragtime Band – where the 5 Donahues take us on an odd Euro-festival through Germany, Scotland and France, before cutting to Johnny Raye’s jazzy reprise, and then, a sort of ‘Sunday in the park with John Philip Sousa’ finale – shot with monochromatic finesse on a highly stylized bandstand.  More than anything else, this enormous pantheon of parody and art hits the bull’s eye of Tin Pan Alley dead on.

In retrospect, Marilyn Monroe’s musical program is the most undernourished by the movie. After her uber-sassy debut, ‘After You Get What You Want You Don’t Want It Anymore’, she is relegated to the ill-themed and over-stuffed ‘Heat Wave’, one of the most egregiously tacky interpretations of that Berlin standard, and then, ‘Lazy’ – a case of a little ditty being blown all out of proportion to satisfy the conventions of Cinemascope rather than the lithe and laid-back lyric of the song. Nevertheless, There’s No Business Like Show Business is a colorful explosion of talent, populated by as flamboyant personalities from Fox’s pantheon of stars, of which only Mitzi Gaynor, age 88, remains alive today.  Donald O’Connor’s death, age 78, from a heart attack in 2003 was, of course, preceded by his co-stars’: Johnny Raye, from liver failure in 1990 (he was only 63), Ethel Merman (in 1984, age 76, from terminal brain cancer), Dan Dailey (barely 62 in 1978, due to complications following hip surgery) and, of course, Marilyn Monroe (whose death at age, 36, in 1962, and billed as a ‘suicide’, has, in fact, never been satisfactorily explained away).

There’s No Business Like Show Business has always looked solid on home video, a real mystery, considering Fox’s spotty record for preserving their plush movie heritage.  This Blu-ray, released nine years ago, has managed to escape the ‘teal-leaning’ bias a good many of Fox’s ‘scope’ movies have suffered from due to a flummox in color balancing, all too liberally applied and thoroughly out of whack with what these movies looked like originally. But There’s No Business Like Show Business is the exception here; abounding in rich, vibrant and well-balanced colors, with gorgeous reds, yellows, and blues. Contrast is superb and there is not a hint of age-related damage to detract from this razor-sharp and crystal-clean presentation. You are going to love it – period.  A hint of video-based noise creeps in during the Alexander’s Ragtime Band number, but only briefly and in background detail at the beginning of the number. The audio is DTS 5.1 but a bit of a curiosity. The vocals oft’ sound a tad strident, particularly Merman’s, which can be grating at higher levels of volume. But the lush orchestrations by Ken Darby are exquisitely rendered throughout. Fox offers us NO extra features, except for trailers for this, and other Monroe product being peddled. For shame! Bottom line: highly recommended for overall quality. The movie is fun but unevenly paced.  Judge and buy accordingly.

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

3.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

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