Grable, Hutton, Kelly, Astaire and Powell: TCM Goes Musical All Night Long

On this, the last Thursday of December 2017, Turner Classic Movies offers one last selection of "Great American Songbook" films. Or, in other words, musicals! Musicals to brighten your evening and make you forget just how horribilis this annus has been. It's hard to be grumpy when people are singing and dancing all over your TV.  Got no mansion, got no yacht... Still I'm happy with what I got...

The marquee movie airing at 8 pm Eastern/7 pm Central is The Dolly Sisters, the 1945 pseudo-bio-pic from 20th Century Fox, starring Betty Grable and June Haver as a highly fictionalized version of Jenny and Rosie Dolly, Hungarian-American twin sisters who were major stars in the U.S. and Europe in the early 20th century. John Payne plays Harry Fox, Jenny Dolly's dancer husband, but it's S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall who steals the show every time he appears as the adorable but irresponsible Uncle Latsie. Standards that qualify for the Great American Songbook like "Carolina in the Morning" and "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" are performed in the movie.

After the Dolly Sisters take a bow, Miss Annie Oakley is up in Annie Get Your Gun, the big, boffo 1950 Hollywood version of Irving Berlin's stage musical. With "more bounce per ounce" Betty Hutton as Annie instead of Broadway's Ethel Merman, this technicolor extravaganza definitely has energy to burn. Howard Keel is handsome and tuneful as Annie's husband and shooting rival, Frank Butler, and Berlin's dandy score, stuffed with hits like "There's No Business Like Show Business," "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun" and "Anything You Can Do" can't be beat. Annie Get Your Gun airs at 9:15 pm Central time tonight on TCM.

The Bronx is up and the Battery's down when Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin dance all over Manhattan in On the Town, the 1949 film musical based on the Broadway show with music by Leonard Bernstein and book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Kelly, Sinatra and Munshin play sailors looking for fun and romance during their 24 hours of leave, with Vera-Ellen, Betty Garrett and Ann Miller providing the romance part. "New York, New York" is the song you'll know from this one, which begins tonight at 11:15 pm Central time.

The Band Wagon, often listed as one of the best movies ever made about theater, follows at 1 am Central time. Fred Astaire plays Tony Hunter, a star with his best years behind him, cast in a new Broadway show with a much younger, more serious leading lady, played by Cyd Charisse, with Jack Buchanan as an artiste of a director who plagues them with strange ideas. Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant are Lily and Les Marton, stand-ins for Comden and Green, who got story credit for the film. The soundtrack is first-class, with gems from Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz like "That's Entertainment," "A Shine on Your Shoes" and "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan." This 1953 Band Wagon, directed by Vincente Minnelli, took its name from a 1931 Broadway revue with a Dietz/Schwartz score that starred Fred and Adele Astaire. Other than borrowing a few songs like "New Sun in the Sky," "I Love Louisa" and "Dancing in the Dark," the film Band Wagon is a new cinematic creation.

After a short called MGM Jubilee Overture, TCM's Great American Songbook ends in the wee hours of morning with Broadway Melody of 1936, scheduled to begin at 3:30 am Central time. The plot is convoluted, circling around Eleanor Powell as a dancer who wants to be in Robert Taylor's new show, but they were sweethearts in the past and he doesn't want her anywhere near Broadway, so she falls in with a crazy scheme concocted by meanie show biz columnist Jack Benny but hijacked by Taylor's snappy secretary Una Merkel, who likes Powell. To get her chance, Powell pretends to be a made-up French star visiting New York, complete with terrible accent. It's all pretty crazy, but it's backed up by music like "You Are My Lucky Star," "I've Got a Feelin' You're Foolin'" and "Broadway Rhythm," as performed by the likes of Buddy and Vilma Ebsen, Frances Langford, June Knight and, of course, Eleanor Powell.

When Broadway Melody of 1936 is over, TCM moves on to The Beast with Five Fingers and other decidedly non-musical fare. As we celebrate the death of net neutrality and skyrocketing cable bills, we'll have to content ourselves with these last moments of 2017. Got no diamonds, got no pearls...

Sunday on TCM: Celebrating Scores with Fred Astaire, ON THE TOWN, SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE

Turner Classic Movies is pulling out an array of wonderful musical movies during the day tomorrow, then turning to some Academy Award winners as part of Day 29 of its 31 Days of Oscar celebration. The musicals that form TCM's schedule from 5:30 am to 7 pm Central time were also touched by Oscar, with multiple nominations for their music and scoring, and wins, too.

At the crack of dawn, it's Gold Diggers of 1933, one of the best backstage musicals from Warner Brothers. This dizzy, fizzy delight gives us Joan Blondell and Ruby Keeler as wannabe chorus girls, Dick Powell as a songwriter enamored of Ruby, and Ginger Rogers as the girl who sings "We're in the Money" in pig latin.  If you can get up at 5:30 am Central time (or set the VCR), Gold Diggers of 1933 is well worth your time. If you're keeping score, it earned a nomination for Best Sound Recording in 1934.

At 7:15 am, Ginger and Fred Astaire take center stage in Shall We Dance, the seventh musical Fred and Ginger made at RKO. The songs are by George and Ira Gershwin, including "They Can't Take That Away from Me" and "They All Laughed." Fred and Ginger even dance on roller skates to "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off." It doesn't get better than that. "They Can't Take That Away from Me" was nominated as Oscar's Best Song in 1938.

If you prefer Fred with Rita Hayworth, you're in luck -- You Were Never Lovelier follows at 9:15 am. In that one, Fred is a hoofer who romances rich girl Rita in Argentina, with songs ranging from "Hungarian Rhapsody" to a series of tuneful Jerome Kern tunes with lyrics by Johnny Mercer. We've moved into the 1940s now, and you can see it in numbers like "The Shorty George." Rita truly is lovely throughout, making the title right on the money.

After that, TCM turns to On the Town, the 1949 movie version of a Broadway musical that happens to be playing right now in a well-regarded revival. On the Town won an Oscar in 1950 for its music. You know the drill -- three sailors on leave, Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, Gene falls for Miss Turnstiles, lots of high-energy dancing and hijinks, "New, New York, what a wonderful town, the Bronx is up and the Battery's down... " Turner Classic Movies shows On the Town at 11:15 am.

The Music Man is up next at 1 pm, followed by Fiddler on the Roof at 3:45. Although both musicals take place around the turn of the 20th century, Meredith Wilson's score, all "Ya Got Trouble" and "76 Trombones," keeps us in small-town America, while Bock and Harnick's "If I Were a Rich Man" and "Tradition" move us across the ocean to the small village of Anatevka in Russia, where a Jewish milkman tries to figure out how to stick with what he knows in the face of change at every turn.  

Fiddler won three Oscars, while Music Man and On the Town each took home one, for Music Man's "Scoring of Music-adaptation or treatment" and On the Town's "Scoring of a Musical Picture." That's the same category where You Were Never Lovelier was nominated in 1942, although it didn't win.

In prime time, Life Is Beautiful, the Italian film that won three Oscars -- Best Actor for Roberto Benigni, Best Original Score and Best Foreign Language Film -- takes the 7 pm slot, with the murderous 1920s musical Chicago -- a big winner as Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Catherine Zeta Jones), Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Editing and Best Sound -- at 9:15.

But I'm all about Shakespeare in Love, the magical movie that imagines what Will Shakespeare was doing when he was young and impetuous and trying to write Romeo and Juliet. Or Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter. For me, Shakespeare in Love is just about the perfect movie. It's smart and sweet, enchanting and effervescent. Joseph Fiennes is ever so attractive as Shakespeare, Gwyneth Paltrow is better than she's ever been as his love interest Viola, and the depth of the ensemble, which includes Colin Firth, Judi Dench, Geoffrey Rush, Tom Wilkinson, Antony Sher, Simon Callow, Imelda Staunton, Jim Carter and Ben Affleck, is simply astounding. Yes, Shakespeare in Love is pretty much perfect.

The Academy agreed with me, handing over seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Paltrow), Best Supporting Actress (Dench), Best Screenplay (Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard), Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design and Best Score. TCM isn't broadcasting it till 11:30 pm, but it's worth staying up for.

All day and all night, TCM is showcasing movies that were nominated or won for their scores. But there's more than just music to recommend these movies. You gotta see these!