A flimsy, superficial story about a family with a history in showbusiness provides an excuse to put on a series of old-fashioned showtunes, including the title number, You’d Be Surprised, the best-forgotten A Sailor’s Not a Sailor (‘Til a Sailor’s Been Tattooed) and a seemingly hundred-minute version of Alexander’s Ragtime Band. Yet somehow it got a best-story oscar nomination, beaten out by a Spencer Tracy western.<\/p>\n
The women were good in this, at least. Ethel Merman (more of a stage actress, only her second movie since the 30’s) plays the mom. I see she did an early version of Anything Goes<\/em> and a movie called Alexander’s Ragtime Band<\/em> – remind me not to rent that one. She and Dan Dailey (It’s Always Fair Weather<\/em>, My Blue Heaven<\/em>) play vaudeville performers who weather out the decline portrayed in Cradle Will Rock<\/em>, start performing at movie theaters, and gradually expand their act as they have children who grow into Donald O’Connor (couple years after Singin’ in the Rain<\/em>), Mitzi Gaynor (Donald’s gal in Anything Goes<\/a><\/em>), and a horribly wooden Johnnie Ray, in just about his only movie role.<\/p>\n Drama (barely): Donald falls for young upstart Marilyn Monroe then he and Mitzi follow her on tour instead of sticking with the parents, Johnnie leaves showbiz entirely to become a priest, and they all happily reunite for a revival show at the end. Katy and I were not impressed. The same group – director Lang, writers the Ephrons, cinematographer Leon Shamroy – made Desk Set<\/a><\/em> a couple years later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A flimsy, superficial story about a family with a history in showbusiness provides an excuse to put on a series of old-fashioned showtunes, including the title number, You’d Be Surprised, the best-forgotten A Sailor’s Not a Sailor (‘Til a Sailor’s Been Tattooed) and a seemingly hundred-minute version of Alexander’s Ragtime Band. Yet somehow it got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[342,108,80,1179,1090],"class_list":["post-5349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1950s","tag-marilyn-monroe","tag-musical","tag-vaudeville","tag-walter-lang"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5349"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5505,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5349\/revisions\/5505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}