THE DVD SHELF: "Playing Shakespeare," "Benjamin Button" and Samuel Goldwyn Movies
By Steven Suskin
24 May 2009
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Two Samuel Goldwyn musicals have also come along.
A Song Is Born [M-G-M] features Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo in a 1948 remake of the 1941 Howard Hawks classic "Ball of Fire." Hawks himself was on hand to redraft the story. The burlesque queen who takes refuge in a house of professors (who are compiling an encyclopedia) becomes a nightclub singer taking refuge in a house of musicologists (who are compiling a musical encyclopedia). Danny Kaye is Danny Kaye, and the music is jazz (with Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey leading the musical contingent). Fans of Kaye and fans of '40s jazz will find plenty to like, but I certainly miss Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. And screenwriter Billy Wilder, needless to say.
It is safe to describe the 1938 extravaganza
The Goldwyn Follies [M-G-M] as a hodgepodge. The
Ziegfeld Follies was still very much a powerful title, with two successful editions on Broadway and the road in the mid-1930s; Sam Goldwyn presumably figured that he could boost the allure of this typical backstage — or rather back soundstage — story by naming it after himself. Instead, the grandiose moniker might have served to make the film look even weaker than it was. Coming from Broadway — and, in fact, from
Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 — were choreographer George Balanchine, composer Vernon Duke, and lyricist Ira Gershwin. The similarity ends there, though. Balanchine also brought along Broadway ballerina Vera Zorina (his soon-to-be-wife, for a while); the Balanchine/Zorina/Duke ballets are interesting, at least. The score was credited to George and Ira Gershwin. This is what George was working on when he started developed the blindingly painful headaches that turned out to be an inoperable brain tumor; he died on July 11, 1937, six months before the film was released. Four Gershwin-Gershwin songs were used, including "Love Walked In" and the imperishable "Our Love Is Here to Stay." As a viewing experience, "The Goldwyn Follies" is hard-going; Ms. Zorina and Edgar Bergen (with Charlie McCarthy) are the highspots, along with some eye-opening visuals courtesy of one of Technicolor's early feature-length forays.
(Steven Suskin is author of "The Sound of Broadway Music: A Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations" as well as "Second Act Trouble," "Show Tunes," and the "Opening Night on Broadway" books. He can be reached at Ssuskin@aol.com)
