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Lady Be Good
When I sit down to watch a classic movie musical and I see the names Eleanor Powell and Busby Berkley in the credits, I have certain immediate expectations. They were not met with a 1941 MGM musical called Lady Be Good, but I did get a surprisingly entertaining movie musical.
This is the story of a composer named Eddie Donegan (Robert Young) who writes Broadway music while his wife, Dixie (Ann Southern) writes the lyrics. They do achieve a modicum of success, but they find that working together puts a strain on their marriage leading to, not one, but two, divorces. After the first divorce, they get together and write a smash hit song that sends their careers soaring again and Eddie wants to give their marriage a second try, but Dixie has decided that she likes things the way they are.
The screenplay for this film is rather clever, with the film opening up with the Donegans in divorce court and the majority of the story unfolding in flashback. It's a little corny the ay Eddie sits at the piano and plays music and then Dixie just tells him to stop for a minute she instantly comes up with words for the last 16 bars that he played, but we accept it because we are supposed to understand that Eddie and Dixie belong together and we are willing to accept the slightly longer than necessary journey to their reconciliation.
What surprised me here was the thankless role assigned to Eleanor Powell, who plays a Broadway dancer who starred in several of the shows that the Donegans wrote and even appears on the stand during the opening courtroom scenes. For some reason, Powell's role as Dixie's best friend is rather thankless, playing Dixie's wisecracking best friend, the kind of role you would expect Eve Arden, Mary Wickes, or Thelma Ritter to play, but this was definitely not Powell's forte. She doesn't dance until the final third of a film and in only two numbers: She does a compact number in her apartment with a dog as a partner and, then with the aide of Busby Berkley, provides a sparkling finale with "Fascinating Rhythm", a number that was featured at the opening of That's Entertainment III.
Young and Southern make a smooth musical couple (Young actually does some pretty convincing faking at the keyboard) and the film also features an appearance by the Berry Brothers, a dance specialty trio who were just as talented as the Nicholas Brothers but never quite achieved the fame than Harold and Fayard did. The film features some terrific songs, especially the title tune and "The Last Tim I Saw Paris", which won the Oscar for Best Song of 1941. It's not top tier MGM, but it certainly held my attention.
When I sit down to watch a classic movie musical and I see the names Eleanor Powell and Busby Berkley in the credits, I have certain immediate expectations. They were not met with a 1941 MGM musical called Lady Be Good, but I did get a surprisingly entertaining movie musical.
This is the story of a composer named Eddie Donegan (Robert Young) who writes Broadway music while his wife, Dixie (Ann Southern) writes the lyrics. They do achieve a modicum of success, but they find that working together puts a strain on their marriage leading to, not one, but two, divorces. After the first divorce, they get together and write a smash hit song that sends their careers soaring again and Eddie wants to give their marriage a second try, but Dixie has decided that she likes things the way they are.
The screenplay for this film is rather clever, with the film opening up with the Donegans in divorce court and the majority of the story unfolding in flashback. It's a little corny the ay Eddie sits at the piano and plays music and then Dixie just tells him to stop for a minute she instantly comes up with words for the last 16 bars that he played, but we accept it because we are supposed to understand that Eddie and Dixie belong together and we are willing to accept the slightly longer than necessary journey to their reconciliation.
What surprised me here was the thankless role assigned to Eleanor Powell, who plays a Broadway dancer who starred in several of the shows that the Donegans wrote and even appears on the stand during the opening courtroom scenes. For some reason, Powell's role as Dixie's best friend is rather thankless, playing Dixie's wisecracking best friend, the kind of role you would expect Eve Arden, Mary Wickes, or Thelma Ritter to play, but this was definitely not Powell's forte. She doesn't dance until the final third of a film and in only two numbers: She does a compact number in her apartment with a dog as a partner and, then with the aide of Busby Berkley, provides a sparkling finale with "Fascinating Rhythm", a number that was featured at the opening of That's Entertainment III.
Young and Southern make a smooth musical couple (Young actually does some pretty convincing faking at the keyboard) and the film also features an appearance by the Berry Brothers, a dance specialty trio who were just as talented as the Nicholas Brothers but never quite achieved the fame than Harold and Fayard did. The film features some terrific songs, especially the title tune and "The Last Tim I Saw Paris", which won the Oscar for Best Song of 1941. It's not top tier MGM, but it certainly held my attention.