Sunday, July 28, 2013

Get Happy On a Rainy Day

I pre-empted the Beatles this morning in favor of more Judy Garland. Started the day off with For Me and My Gal. This rousing World War II-era musical was the only one of the four films on the set I'd seen straight through before (in college, to be exact). (It's also the only black-and-white film on the set.) Kelly's debut film has him and Garland as vaudevillians in the years just prior to and during World War I. Charming Kelly does his best to get Garland out of her former partner George Murphy's act and into his act...and his arms. Their romance develops as their careers do. When Kelly is drafted to head over to France, he takes drastic measures to make sure he can continue his act...which doesn't put him over well with Garland. While she sings to all those swell doughboys in France, he does what he can to restore his name and prove that he can be as patriotic as anyone.

I've always liked this one. Busby Berkley directed this charming excursion into Americana. It gets melodramatic towards the end, when the war tears Garland and Kelly apart, but before that, it's mostly an enjoyable ride. Garland glows in her first adult role. Kelly's slightly stiffer in his first film, but shows enough of the charm that would make him one of the most popular musical stars of the late 40s and early 50s. Great fun for fans of Kelly, Garland, Murphy, Berkley, or the real World War I era.

Called Mom while the first half of the movie was on. She sounded a little tired, but happy. I told her about the long ride to Stockton and how it all worked out in the end, about what I intend to do next, and all the hours I've gotten lately. She mentioned that she's hoping to get a new computer soon. Her current one goes back almost as far as my old laptop, and she's afraid it's on the verge of crashing.

I headed to work around 1. At that point, it was just cloudy, cool, and very, very humid. It was also very busy when I arrived. We had long lines for most of the afternoon...until around quarter of 4-4PM, when suddenly, it started raining. Hard. Very hard. And kept on raining and thundering, even after I got out.

I was hoping it would pass quickly, but no dice. Not this time. I finally got tired of waiting around 5:30 and called Dad for a ride. He couldn't get there, either. His car was in the shop. Not to mention, the other reason I waited a half-hour after work to call him was all the roads were flooded. There were police barricades around the Black Horse Pike near the entrance to Audubon Park, due to the flooding.

Dad finally picked me up in Jodie's truck around 10 after 6. I felt horrible about making him go out in such nasty weather, especially on his birthday, but I really had no other way of getting home. Despite the traffic, we were able to get down a busy Nicholson Road and onto Manor. While the section of West Clinton that goes under the train tracks were under water, Manor was perfectly fine. I got home with no more problems. (I just hope he did. He had to go around Manor to the White Horse Pike. Atlantic Avenue was flooded, too.)

When I got in, I had leftover chicken, rice, and Cucumber Salad for dinner while watching the remaining movie in the set, Summer Stock. Garland's last movie at MGM reunites her with Kelly for an adult variation on her old "let's put on a musical in a barn" vehicles. Garland owns the barn in question, which is on a New England farm that's heavily in debt. The owner's ditzy younger sister (Gloria De Haven) wants to be an actress, and insists on her current boyfriend, a stage director and performer (Kelly) using the barn for their show. Garland's not thrilled. Her nerdy fiancee (Eddie Bracken) and long-time housekeeper (Marjorie Main) are even less so. When Kelly gets Garland swinging at a local dance, she begins to rethink her stance towards show business...and he rethinks his stance towards her.

Like The Band Wagon, this seemingly light entertainment ran into major trouble on the road to filming. Intended as a reunion between Garland and her old pal Mickey Rooney, MGM turned the male role over to Kelly when Rooney was assumed to no longer be enough of a star. Garland had just been fired from Annie Get Your Gun, and while she dried out enough to enjoy the initial filming, she had problems all through the shoot. It's amazing the movie came out as well as it did. "Get Happy" is probably the best known number, but there's some other nice ones too, including Kelly's dance with a squeaky floor and a newspaper and Garland's lovely rendition of "Evening Star." Once again, for fans of Garland, Kelly, or MGM musicals.

Oh, and while the rain sounds like it's off at the moment, it's been off and on - sometimes heavily - since I put on Summer Stock.

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