THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT: 50th Anniversary Remastered Edition (MGM, 1974) Warner Archive
Upon its
release, Variety – the showbiz Bible – astutely eulogized Jack Haley Jr.’s That’s
Entertainment! (1974) with a glowing review, adding “It’s more than a
movie…it’s a celebration! While many may ponder the future of
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer no one can deny it’s had one hell of a past.” And
indeed, this bumper crop of classic numbers and songs from the studio’s
unimpeachable treasure trove, became the biggest and brightest money maker of
1974. Little wonder, since, in just a little over two hours, audiences were
magically teleported into a world just the other side of the rainbow. There
really was magic in the air, if not – tragically – enough to save the studio
from a hostile corporate takeover by Las Vegas financier, Kirk Kerkorian that
would, in a very brief span, plunder all of MGM’s loot, selling off its props
and costumes to the highest bidder in a much-publicized auction, demolishing its
acreage of incredible backlots, and, selling off Metro’s mind-boggling classic
movie catalog to cable television mogul, Ted Turner.
Haley had
appealed to MGM’s top brass to consider making such a movie as early as 1969.
But it was only after Haley’s own hour-long TV tribute, Hollywood: The Dream
Factory, hosted by Dick Cavett, was nominated for an Emmy that the powers
that be green lit his full-scale ‘dream project’ for a relatively paltry
$3,200,000. Daniel Melnick, then the latest in an increasingly forgettable and
ineffectual line of studio executives placed atop Metro’s increasingly unstable
empire, afforded Haley and his editor, Bud Friedgen the run of the back lot,
his choice of old-time stars to co-host the various self-congratulatory
segments, and, unprecedented access to the vast un-air-conditioned sheds and
warehouses harboring these golden ticket memories from Hollywood’s
yesteryear. As ironic as it seems
incongruous to consider today, Leo’s iconic roar was preceded by the optimistic
tagline, “Beginning our next 50 years…”
Alas, Metro’s
fate had already been sealed six years earlier when Kerkorian gained a
controlling interest in the company he had zero interest in managing as a film
studio. What appealed to Kerkorian was
MGM’s Culver City real estate and the marketability of its namesake, grave-robbing
45-years of Hollywood gold to line the plywood trappings of his newly
inaugurated MGM Grand casino in Vegas. With the appointment of television
maverick, James T. Aubrey in charge of Metro’s daily operations, Kerkorian
wasted no time pillaging for franchise-able assets, slapping the MGM logo on
his private airline and Vegas hotel, while drastically reducing the studio’s
output to one or two home-grown, and, modestly budgeted programmers per annum. The
rest of the yearly spate would be padded out by low budget, independently-made
movies purchased outright for a song under lucrative distribution deals.
To those who had
spent their lives behind these hallowed gates of Hollywood’s premiere ‘dream
factory’, Kerkorian’s corporate takeover proved the final insult. The family atmosphere
of the place was gone. Retirements were ‘encouraged’ with Aubrey orchestrating
the sell-off of Metro’s mind-boggling assortment of props and costumes in a
heart-breaking auction, the ‘profit for profit’s sake’ rape of Louis B. Mayer’s
once invincible kingdom filmed for posterity. Chariots from Ben-Hur
(1959) Garbo’s gowns from Camille (1936), Judy Garland’s Oz-bound ruby
slippers and thousands of other ‘relics’, meticulously archived for decades
were suddenly put on the chopping block for the highest bidder. Yet, these were
the ‘lucky’ sacrifices.
More tragic –
and frankly, idiotic - was the hasty purge occurring inside Metro’s stills,
animation and music publishing departments. Original compositions with
hand-written annotations by the likes of Arthur Freed, Conrad Salinger and
Lenny Hayton, screenplays with revisions from Victor Fleming, George Cukor,
Vincente Minnelli, etc., hand-painted Tom & Jerry cartoon cells, and,
stacks and stacks of production stills, documenting every movie ever made at
Metro, including glamor shots photographed by such artisans as Laszlo Willinger
and George Hurrell, impeccably crafted images of all of the studio’s glitterati
and contract players, plus original artwork for lobby cards and posters; these
were assessed as having virtually no resale value prior to the nostalgia craze
soon to hit Hollywood. Hence, Aubrey gave instructions for this priceless
heritage to simply be boxed up and junked in dumpsters out back. With all the
sadistic glee of a maniacal playground bully eager to pulverize his latest
target into the dust, Aubrey liquidated MGM Records and sold off the company’s
overseas theater chain. Next, he turned his attentions to real estate closer to
home, the iconic Lot 3 - an acreage containing byways, streets and lagoons
where every Andy Hardy picture, Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and Show
Boat (1952) – among countless other classics – had all been photographed
were slated to be razed.
Thus, even as
Haley was preparing to shoot his ‘then’ present-day star cameos for That’s
Entertainment! the rumblings of bobcats and bulldozers could be heard in
the distance, mowing down these fiberglass and plywood facades. That’s
Entertainment! would be the last time audiences saw the fictional town of
Carver, the streets of old Verona built for Romeo and Juliet (1936) or
the train depot where Fred Astaire had once sauntered along ‘by himself’ in The
Band Wagon (1950). In less than a month these invaluable objet d'art, so
nicknamed by co-cost, Bing Crosby as a “sort of scruffy… illusion on an
illusion”, slightly dilapidated ruins, having resisted the passage of time,
would be leveled to make way for future condo and housing development.
“I went to
Aubrey and said you can’t tear it down,” Debbie Reynolds reflected years
later, “Lot 3 is like a Disneyland. You just put in a turn style…I’ll get
stars to come every day and sign autographs. It’ll be great.” Alas,
Reynolds pleas fell on deaf ears, the actress then turning her efforts to the
auction, scooping up as many of bits of memorabilia, later hoping against hope
to establish a more permanent home for these irreplaceable movie-land
memorabilia. “Later on, Universal did it. You know, if a little dumb girl
from Burbank could see it why couldn’t they? And the shame of it is - why
didn’t they see it? It’s too late now!” To add insult to injury, Kerkorian
inaugurated his Vegas hotel with an inauspicious statement to his stockholders,
in part reading “MGM is a hotel company and a relatively insignificant
producer of motion pictures.”
It had taken
Louis B. Mayer nearly 40 years to will Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer into the greatest
purveyor of ‘make-believe’ this world had ever known, but only a little over
six-years for Aubrey and Kerkorian to break it down to bedrock. MGM’s
distribution offices were shuttered. Its creative personal and groomsmen laid
off, the rights to its vast library outsourced for a period of ten years to
television. Mercifully, these were later snatched up, ridiculously colorized,
but ultimately – and lovingly – preserved for posterity by cable network
impresario, Ted Turner. Reflecting on MGM’s sad last chapter as a film company,
alumni June Allyson remember L.B. Mayer, first and foremost. “I think when
he died, he took the studio with him,” Allyson mused, “So he didn’t
really lose in the end!”
In the wake of
all this carnage, That’s Entertainment! hit theaters with much fanfare
and even more unanticipated interest from audiences who made it the most
successful release of 1974 grossing more than $26,890,200. If Aubrey and
Kerkorian had mis-perceived no interest in the past, That’s Entertainment!
sparked an overnight cottage industry for collecting, revisiting and treasuring
Hollywood’s national heritage. Underground movie buffs, long knowing the giddy
excitement of squirreling away whatever they could salvage of their movie-land
memories, now had major competition, as That’s Entertainment! was a
complete vindication of their eccentricity. The general public wanted in on the
action. And Aubrey and Kerkorian were stumped. Worse, they had liquidated far
too many assets far too quickly to make yet another quick buck now. Apparently,
there was a lot of ‘marketability’ in these otherwise easily discarded remains
than had first met the eye. MGM was hardly in a position to launch a glitzy
Hollywood premiere. And yet, the stars of yesteryear turned out in droves,
bedecked and bedazzled for the occasion. The retro appeal of seeing so much
megawatt star power on the red carpet was capped off with a star-studded dinner
and photo-op at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel where many of these almost forgotten
names L.B. Mayer had made legendary, assembled to break bread together for the
first – and arguably, last – time since the studio’s much touted 25th
anniversary in 1949.
That’s
Entertainment! ought to have been the launch of another majestic era
in MGM’s stellar history. Instead, it served only as a glorious, if poignant
reminder that the real/reel glory years were a thing of the past. Directed with adroit – if self-congratulatory
– aplomb and concision by Jack Haley Jr. (son of Oz’s Tin Man), That’s
Entertainment! was the sort of spellbinding all-star extravaganza,
virtually unseen elsewhere in the grittier realism afflicting the cinema
firmament in 1974, reinforcing MGM’s once galvanized motto of “ars gratia
artis” (or art for art’s sake) and “more stars than there are in
heaven.” In an era before home video, where else could one hope to see
Eleanor Powell tap and spiral her way down a series of drums, into a throng of
thousands from Rosalie (1937), or witness the mammoth revolving
cake-like edifice of ‘A Pretty Girl is Like A Melody’ from The Great
Ziegfeld (1936)? Here again, Esther Williams swam, Gene Kelly and Fred
Astaire danced apart and together, and, Mario Lanza projected ‘Be My Love’
with a raw resonance, perfectly to compliment his co-star, Kathryn Grayson’s
soprano trilling. The Cotton Blossom sailed under Cap. Andy’s steam from Show
Boat (1951), Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney ‘put on a show’ as mere ‘babes
in arms’ and ‘on Broadway’ and Bing Crosby crooned Cole Porter’s
immortal ‘True Love’ to Grace Kelly from High Society (1956).
Seven potential brides danced with seven backwoodsmen, Tony Martin proclaimed ‘Hallelujah!’
aboard ship, and, Maurice Chevalier ‘thanked heaven’ for little girls –
and one in particularly, Gigi (1958).
In all, some 150
clips and snippets from MGM’s mind-boggling array of perfectionism gave
audiences the sort of walloping ‘one/two’ knockout in utterly fabulous
entertainment that, even today, can scarcely seem fathomable to have all come
from one studio. Acting as the film’s MC, Frank Sinatra gave a brief overview
of the early sound era; Elizabeth Taylor shared moments ranging from her own
awkward musical debut in Cynthia to the sumptuous staging of the Varsity
Drag from everyone’s favorite college musical, Good News (both released
in 1947); Peter Lawford explained some of the pitfalls and perks to being a
studio contract player, and, James Stewart illustrated them more definitively
with quaint examples as diverse as Jean Harlow’s whisky-voiced warbling in Reckless
(1935) to his own thinly cooed ‘Easy to Love’ from Born to Dance
(1936). From here, That’s Entertainment! effortlessly segued into
Metro’s real ‘golden’ period.
Mickey Rooney
shared his poignant remembrances of Judy Garland, further embellished elsewhere
by a tribute to Garland’s post-Rooney movies, lovingly introduced by her
daughter, Liza Minnelli. Gene Kelly paid homage to Fred Astaire, with Astaire
returning the favor later on. Between them, there followed Donald O’Connor (a
real curious choice to pay homage to Esther Williams, as he never actually
appeared opposite Williams in any of her 26 aquacades). Debbie Reynolds
championed some of Metro’s finest films pre-Cinemascope. Bing Crosby gave a nod
to his own brief career at Metro (Crosby’s tenure devoted to Paramount) and
Sinatra’s, jokingly discounted as ‘his competition’, before capping off the
jubilation with a series of widescreen spectacles from the mid to late fifties,
the Barn Raising Ballet from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
(1954) among these highlights. Sinatra returned to conclude the show,
introducing ‘the best number’ from possibly ‘the best musical ever
made’ – a truncated rendition of the ‘An American in Paris’
ballet.
At its gala
premiere, Jack Haley Sr. declared, “This isn’t nostalgia. This is art.”
And rightly so, since by 1974 the MGM musical had been dead for some time; the
studio, teetering on the verge of a devastating restructure that would
ultimately reduce its holdings to ‘garage sale’ status. But at least in That’s
Entertainment! such nearly forgotten treasures were resurrected from near
oblivion and exalted to their rightful place in film history. Not everyone was pleased with the results.
Esther Williams famously sued the studio for unauthorized use of her clips – a
suit later settled out of court. Evidently, Williams had buried the hatchet by
1994, not only allowing further clips from her films to appear in That’s
Entertainment III, but also to appear as a cohost.
That’s Entertainment! had its red-carpet
premiere at the Loew's Beverly Theater in Beverly Hills on May 17, 1974, its
star-studded attendance by old-time Hollywood greats billed as the most
monumental in the latter quarter century. Important to note, That’s Entertainment!
is more than just a compilation or ‘anthology’ of MGM highlights. It’s
pioneering of the ‘doc-u-tainment’ eulogized the passing of an epoch in the
picture-making biz that had, until That’s Entertainment!, been reflected
upon as quaintness for nostalgia – or rather, in praise of a time, sadly, never
to return. Since its time, Hollywood has made other musicals. But they haven’t
been MGM musicals (although some have been marketed under that licensed
trademark). What virtually every musical since lacks is that seemingly
bottomless investment of time, talent, energies and expenditures to create
illusions in musical art that are, apart from being mind-bogglingly star-laden,
intricately hand-crafted spectacles in which no detail was left to chance. This
sort of meticulous craftsmanship was only possible in the days when studios
controlled every aspect of the process, and, overseen by the now long-retired
inspirations of an iron-fisted mogul at the helm, determined, at considerable
expense, to top the competition.
Like everything
else in our post-modern age, the stature of the Hollywood musical has been diminished
with time and a complete lack of understanding for the intimate care so
transparently having gone into each of the confections on display herein. Today,
musicals are ‘product’ – marketable – occasionally, but designed to appeal to a
certain demographic who remember, with longing, what better work has been done
elsewhere and still hoping, against hope, to find it again. Moreover, the stars
who narrate That’s Entertainment! are aligned in a sort of unabashed
sentimental reflection of the past without slavishly doting upon it. It’s fun
to remember. Even better to have a really good time doing it. In the final
analysis, That’s Entertainment! reveals itself as the rarest of
gemstones, made up of other, as brightly polished and glistening baubles, justly
celebrated in their own time, but since gone to have a muchly deserved life of
their own. It’s a classic about classics, and a story of a studio that truly gave
us ‘art for art’s sake’. Permit us to smile…and worship from afar.
One of the first
box sets to arrive on Blu-ray via Warner Home Video, That’s Entertainment!’s
auspicious debut in hi-def left a great deal to be desired. The original
theatrical presentation was in 70mm to accommodate the constantly varying
aspect ratios of the vintage clips. While some were allowed to remain framed in their
original format, others were optically zoomed in at precise moments to punctuate and fill the screen. The Warner Home Video release of yore was culled from a 35mm
reduction of that 70mm roadshow...and looked it. Colors were wan.
Contrast was anemic. And fine details were left wanting throughout. While some
clips appeared to be the benefactors of a digital clean-up, most showed a remarkable
amount of age-related wear and tear. There where even minute traces of mis-registration
of some of the Technicolor sequences. And the sound, having been carefully
remixed in ’74, seemed also to suffer from a tinny characteristic on Blu.
Well, you can thoroughly
forget about all those shortcomings. Because Warner Archive’s 50th
Anniversary Remastered Edition is a revelation. Not only has WAC gone back to provide
a thorough upgrade of the ‘then’ new star introductions, with much improved
color, contrast and detail, but it has actually gone back to the bedrock of the
movie, re-inserting many, if not all, of the vintage footage from since ‘restored’
and ‘remastered’ OCN’s wherever possible. What this means is that That’s
Entertainment! now arrives on Blu-ray in a condition that not only recaptures
the magic that must have been felt on its premiere in 1974, but arguably, bests
that experience by offering all the bells and whistles of a native ‘digital’
clean-up and presentation that the photochemical wizardry of 1974 could only
guess at. Seeing That’s Entertainment! now on Blu is to experience it
with fresh eyes. It really is a thrilling showstopper once again.
Likewise, WAC
has gone back into the weeds to remaster the DTS 5.1 stereo mix, obliterating age-related hiss,
while sacrificing none of the original integrity in these ancient recordings. Wherever
possible, great pains have been taken to combine surviving vintage ‘stems’ from
the mono mixes into an immersive, stereo-sounding blend that provides for a
truly seamless transition from the early sound era into the bombastic mid-fifties’
full-orchestral stereo tracks that round out our feature. The one shortcoming
(and it is a minor one here) is the exclusion of TCM’s intro to the movie,
hosted by the late Robert Osbourne. For the rest, we get the junket ‘Just One
More Time’ produced to whet the appetite in 1974, and the lavish ’50 Years of
MGM’ hosted by George Hamilton and his wife, Alana, interviewing Hollywood’s
surviving alumni. There’s also a
theatrical trailer. Bottom line: That’s Entertainment! was always a very
special movie. It now is an as impressive hi-def release for which movie
lovers the world over should be rejoicing. The only thing better than this
would be to have the remaining movies featured herein, but still MIA on home
video, given as much consideration on Blu-ray in the coming year. To be
continued…
FILM RATING (out
of 5 – 5 being the best)
5+
VIDEO/AUDIO
5+
EXTRAS
2
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