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 Tormé’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