WORDS AND MUSIC: Blu-ray (MGM, 1948) Warner Archive

A bumper crop of Rodgers and Hart’s hit tunes, and, virtually every major musical/comedy star working at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during its golden age then, are poured into director, Norman Taurog’s Words and Music (1948) – a thin rekindling of the magic in Richard Whorf’s fictionalized biopic of composer, Jerome Kern, Till The Clouds Roll By (1946). The formula of taking a composer’s back catalog and fitting bits of connective dialogue between the cavalcade of songs, while far from original, is nonetheless enchanting, the sight of a thoroughly effervescent, 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 plentifully amusing 22 songs featured herein. Other memorable highlights go to Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, in the competition number, ‘I Wish I Were In Love Again’, with Garland, thereafter given a breathtaking solo, ‘Johnny One-Note’.  “Aaaahhhhhhhh!”

Although the Garland/Rooney collab’ appears consecutively, the numbers were actually shot 4 months apart, with Garland slightly plumper as she belts out with gusto. Words and Music occupies a curious place in Garland’s MGM lore. On the one hand, it was both 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 begun with 1939’s Babes in Arms and reaching its summit with Girl Crazy, just four years later. In the interim, Rooney had stepped out of his short pants and away from the Andy Hardy franchise to do some incredible work. Garland too had graduated to more adult fare, proving her teenage tenure at Metro was just beginning. Ironically, Garland was hotter than ever at war’s end, but Rooney’s box office had slipped…just a little, but enough, as it would continue in steep decline throughout the 1950’s. 

In retrospect, the greater tragedy here, is Garland’s tenure at MGM had barely four more years to go. Words And Music was thus, Judy’s last film for producer, Arthur Freed, who had been the greatest proponent of her talent when first she appeared on the scene. Freed adored Garland. Alas, Judy’s addiction to studio-sanctioned pills was getting the better of her. Delay after delay ensued. Garland barely had enough stamina to pre-record her pas deux with Rooney.  Her on-set collapse necessitated a costly postponement. At this juncture, Freed planned to star Garland opposite Fred Astaire in the upcoming The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), those plans kiboshed after Astaire refused to work with Garland again, citing the complications endured on the set of Easter Parade (1948, and, their one and only screen pairing). Nevertheless, Freed began preliminary work with Garland in the saddle on ‘Barkleys’ only to realize after a sneak prevue on Words and Music, audiences wanted one more number from Garland. So, the set was rebuilt, the extras reassembled, and Judy came back to record and film Johnny One-Note.

Words and Music sports some stunning production design 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 a girl that got away, as reconstituted in Guy Bolton, Ben Feiner Jr., Fred F. Finklehoffe and Jean Holloway’s corny yarn. Rather, he was a closeted homosexual who, despite his incredible wit, enviable social connections, and formidable family fortune, managed to squander everything on a series of hedonistic, meaningless affairs, living publicly with his widowed mother while 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 younger men, meant to assuage, or at least, dilute his guilt and self-loathing.  Nothing really helped.

It is not difficult to see why Richard Rodgers so disliked what Metro did with the story behind Words and Music. Setting aside Rodgers himself, as depicted by all-American/fresh-faced Tom ‘the boy next door’ Drake – a thoroughly colorless collaborator to Lorenzo Hart’s strapping genius, 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 split. Nor, in the embodiment of Mickey Rooney, does Words and Music infer Hart was anything but a manic quisling, impish in his outlook on life, but utterly incapable to translate a flirtation with ‘love’ into anything ‘ever-lasting’ with the proverbial ‘good woman’ – herein, brought forth 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 ‘after hours’ alliance a la Noel Coward and Cole Porter. Instead, Hart plied 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 a 37-yrs.-young 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 to ‘Blue Moon’ – ‘blue’ being the operative word as a subversive hint to Hart’s illicit love denied. For L.B. Mayer, Words and Music likely seemed fitting tribute. Hart had died in New York in 1943 and therefore was quite unable to resist this bastardized of his life’s story, remade into a gargantuan musical pastiche. 

The only star, other than Garland, afforded two numbers is Lena Horne, whose tenure at MGM, regrettably, is marred by the studio’s shortsightedness to allow her to appear in anything beyond a cameo. 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’ – neither number ever seen in theaters beyond the Mason/Dixon line. Interviewed decades later, Horne harbored no ill will against MGM for limiting her movie career to walk-ons, laughing off the suggestion she should have felt ‘privileged’ because Mayer 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. Nobly, the head of the department, Sydney Guilleroff personally attended to Horne’s needs for the duration of her career at the studio.

Today, one quietly observes Horne’s Metro performances with a twinge of sadness. Apart from her delicious 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-land stardom as a bona fide actress. Horne’s second marriage to one of Metro’s most brilliant musical conductors/arrangers, Lennie Hayton in 1947 was a mercenary decision to advance her career. And although the couple appeared happy at the time (separating in the early sixties, though never to divorce), during their run as a couple, Horne indulged in various affairs with the likes of Artie Shaw, Orson Welles, Vincente Minnelli, and 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 the real Richard Rodgers approved) informs Rooney’s Hart about the prospect of 'doing a play’ with Kelly, implying he was an established stage star. But Kelly was a virtual 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 Words and Music with a soundtrack album (one of the first of its kind), 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 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 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 for 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, he manages to bounce from one hit Broadway show 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, 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 as well as the stunning autonomy MGM once wielded as peerless purveyors of musical extravaganzas like this one. 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.

Two years separate Till the Clouds Rolls By from Words and Music. In that interim, Mayer’s dream factory illustrated a well-oiled, though somewhat ‘assembly line’ approach to re-treading familiar territory. Comparatively, Words and Music is a more homogenized and streamlined picture than ‘Clouds.’ But does this make it, its’ lesser? Not necessarily. In absence of being able to tell the tale as it actually occurred, the screenwriters have done an enviable job of masking Hart’s homosexuality with alternate vices, eventually to prove lethal…and not only to
Hart’s happiness. Though Mickey Rooney’s trademarked ‘Andy Hardy-esque exuberance makes him an awkward fit for the real Hart’s opaque and mousy mien, it is Rooney’s monumental talent and professionalism that really sell this Hart as a tragic figure. No attempt has been made to present the musical accomplishments of Rodgers and Hart as they actually occurred. ‘There’s a Small Hotel’ is suggested as one of the boys’ first entrées when, in fact, it hails from the middle act of their collaborative efforts. Hart’s duet with Judy Garland – playing herself at a Hollywood party – would have been virtually impossible, as Garland was barely 10-yrs.-old at the time this story is supposedly taking place.  

The pas deux between Rooney and Garland offers audiences a reprieve for two songs shorn from the stagecraft of Babes in Arms, ironically, another Garland/Rooney musical, before it was translated to film in 1939.  And while the real Richard Rodgers set Arthur 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 entirely satisfied with the way his song-writing tenure with Hart had been laid out. Words and Music 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 best work and, in the annals of movie ‘biopics’, proved both a template as well as a real tough act to follow. That it also became one of MGM’s biggest and brightest money makers of the season was, at the time, mere icing on the studio’s already well-frosted cake.

The forties, and more directly, the war years, had seen MGM’s profits soar, in part, due to Mayer’s streamlining of the ancient Thalberg motto, ‘do it right, do it big, and give it class.’ Thalberg was passionate about conjuring to life the finest escapisms ever put on celluloid. Mayer was more the mogul than the magician. In an all-inclusive fiefdom like Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, such creative control was not only possible, but preferable. Alas, at war’s end, the klieg lights were dimming on Mayer’s magic kingdom. More than half a century later, audiences are not left wanting by the sheer professionalism on tap in Words and Music. 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 reimagining of On The Town (1949), to immediately follow it, Words and Music sustains a joyful vigor that every blue-chip movie musical ought to possess. Better still, its tune-packed 2-hours create a colossus of song and dance with MGM’s glitterati assemblage elevating the exercise to sheer perfection.

Decades ago, MGM/UA Home Video released a LaserDisc of Words and Music that sported a refurbished image, aligned from original Technicolor negatives. Unfortunately, when Warner Home Video – the ‘then’ new custodians of Metro’s library, opted to release a DVD version in 2002, the results abysmally failed to recapture this former glory. Instead, we were given anemic colors and an overall soft-ish look that belied the gorgeous, razor-sharp imagery captured by cinematographers, Charles Rosher and Harry Stradling.  Well, prepare to make your old disc a Frisbee. Because the Warner Archive’s new-to-Blu of Words and Music is a revelation. Colors pop, contrast is uniformly excellent, and, image clarity and crispness could scarcely improve. This is a magnificent presentation of a titanic musical. The 2.0 DTS mono sounds wonderful too.

Ported over, Richard Barrios’ sincere commentary. Also, the nearly 20-min. featurette, hosted by Barrios, on the creation of the movie, with vintage and ‘then’ newly recorded interviews with Dick Rodgers’ daughter, Mary, archivist, Ted Chapin, author Noel Taylor, Mickey Rooney, and Gene Kelly’s widow, Patricia. We get several deleted takes of Como’s ‘You’re Nearer’, and ‘Lover’, plus outtakes of the Blackburn Twins singing, ‘I Feel at Home with You’, Betty Garrett warbling ‘It Never Entered My Mind’ and, ‘My Funny Valentine’, Como cooing, ‘My Heart Stood Still’, and complete versions of ‘The Lady is a Tramp’, ‘Way Out West’ and ‘With A Song in My Heart’. Two shorts – one animated, one live-action, and a theatrical trailer round out the goodies. Bottom line: Words and Music is an exceptionally well-tailored, if totally fictional musical bio. The joy of it easily exceeds its narrative shortcomings. The Blu-ray is exceptional. Very highly recommended!

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

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

5