First Annie Gun Misfires

 

MGM Musicals Make Blu-Ray Landing

If we must lose Warner Archive, at least let them exit singing, MGM musicals arriving plenty on Blu-Ray for whatever is left of disc service, five lately out, perhaps more I’ve overlooked: Annie Get Your Gun, Good News, Showboat, The Great Caruso, and Broadway Melody of 1940, Annie gold-encrusted since NBC had a single 1965 play, the picture less easy to see after until clips turned up in That’s Entertainment Part Two. To have a 16mm print was like snatching a Rembrandt off the Metropolitan’s wall. There came confetti and pinwheels when TCM brought Annie out of comparative hiding prior to Warners making it available on DVD. Annie is a favorite for those who embrace, or will endure, Betty Hutton, my being of latter persuasion, but as willing to enfold her for a part few could play so well, which raises matter of who MGM initially bought the source play for, Judy Garland their most valued musical asset melting down first in gossip columns, then on front pages, across the land. Leo lost grip of talent understood to be irreplaceable, plain evidence they could not control property East Coast management and stockholders relied on for continued profits. To stake so much on such an unstable resource … no wonder banks and cooler corporate heads shunned this industry, or dealt with it cautious.

I watched Broadway Melody of 1940 and Good News by way of warm-up to Annie. Both can be, are, enjoyed, provided you have a bent for musicals, specifically ones from Metro. We (at least I) tend to think of theirs in terms of That’s Entertainment, as if the features themselves don’t exist apart from those compilations. Musicals tend toward joyous spots set amidst hidebound storytelling and foolish misunderstandings that take forever to sort out. This had been formula on Broadway, “book” sections a price paid for enjoyment of the scores. Most musicals from the 20’s aren't stage-revived, certainly not in toto, even ones crowded with loveliest song. Movies would be much the same, rescue and continued relevance coming of personalities we still enjoy, thus Fred Astaire to make Broadway Melody of 1940 viable, DVD providing menu select for highlights, result many viewers shaving the show from 102 minutes to whatever one liked of dance and tunes. That amounted for me to Begin The Beguine with Fred and Eleanor Powell against mirrored black walls and floor, That’s Entertainment using the piece as sole picking from Melody-’40. Think of numbers plucked from B’way shows and not seen in original context again. No wonder Hollywood did such overhaul on musical plays when adapting them. Two good glimpses of legit in the raw: The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers, early enough for talkies not to trust anything other than simple porting-over from the stage, a boon for us getting closer approximation of the Marx Bros. live than we could have if the films had been made even a few years later.

 

MGM was known for its vast assemblage of talent, but how vast were individual talents, and how many of these could singly carry a musical? There was but one voice, one with capacity to lift story out of formula and give it appearance of genuine heart. No actress or singer was presumed to be so good as Judy Garland. All were of tier or tiers beneath her: June Allyson, Jane Powell, Kathryn Grayson, Cyd Charisse, on this point both they and handlers were of like mind, Garland’s ability viewed as almost supernatural. She’d be billed above Fred Astaire and he would not complain. Nor would Kelly, or anyone of prominence. Whatever your opinion of Garland, there is no taking from her a status not achieved by others who did musicals at Metro, or for that matter, anyplace else. That this vessel of cheery consensus should break down so completely was a source of unease, true despair, for infinite number whose livelihoods were tied to hers. Garland made life hell for many, but few kept a grudge, at least of those who worked, or tried to work, with her. Lots saw coming the debacle of Annie Get Your Gun. Still, no matter how dire her delays or behavior, they knew magic would not be instilled other than from her. Garland was the specialness of casting, a reason why Irving Berlin was willing to sell, and what Broadway, no matter who they had, in this instance Ethel Merman, could not approach. Garland had become for the 40’s what Marilyn Monroe would be for the 50’s, an increasingly impossible mission each time out. So did MGM have any choice but to settle the artist's contract and let her go? I’d say not.

The Annie Get Your Gun Blu-Ray has footage of Garland doing two of the numbers, less boisterous than Betty Hutton would be (observers said JG was “too elegant” for the part). Though she was said to want this role badly, it wasn’t long before Garland realized she was wrong for it. She tried saying so, but everyone discounted that for nerves, or usual craziness by reckon of those less sparing. What do actors do where obliged to act even when they know they will act badly? Happens all the time, surely among studio serfs this was endemic, but how many had leave to stop the show, walk out, cost their employer thousands, then be taken back with all forgiven? This was Garland’s status and no one else’s. Leo did not otherwise tolerate such conduct. The Lion could dash a career and not look back, every career, that is, but Garland’s. She stood for what made their musical unit truly exceptional. To rely on Allyson, Powell, Grayson, left MGM little better off than Fox or Warners, and even they had Betty Grable and Doris Day, respectively. MGM was obliged to negotiate with a person who was not sane. Stress Garland caused must have been ungodly. Mayer even sent Katharine Hepburn to the Minnelli residence after Judy tried cutting her throat, idea being that Hepburn as a most stable among actress ranks could somehow talk reason to her. Mayer asking the favor was recognition of Hepburn’s having the most maturity, the most authority, of any performer on the lot, whether her tough love approach was tactful or not (“Your ass has hit the gutter. There’s no place to go but up. Now Goddammit. Do it!”). A person like Hepburn could never understand the mind of a person like Garland, the difference between one who felt eternally put upon and sorry for herself, confronted by another who had not known a self-pitying day in her life.

Good News is evidence of MGM on musical autopilot. It is adequate, pleasing at times, staff talent augmented by high-volt hopefuls brought from Broadway to show Hollywood some things or two. June Allyson, for appeal she had, operated at a level of expected competence and seldom more. Same with Peter Lawford, who could get by on looks but not voice or dance. Production and choreography was relied upon to dazzle, if being dazzled was within reach. Young talent with fizz had left with Mickey Rooney, so what was left … Mel Torme? I can’t think of an exceptional singer among male ranks at Metro, Astaire and Kelly not really pretending to that (although with time, we learned to embrace their voices), Nelson Eddy by the 40’s going, then gone, and Frank Sinatra, great as he was, did not become so as Lion property, him nobody’s property as was forcefully evident from early on. Howard Keel and Mario Lanza came to eventual rescue, but late to MGM’s party, both to witness the genre fade. Other studios were as blighted, Paramount blessed with Crosby, while Fox had Dick Haymes, terrific where poised before the mike, thudding when not. Dennis Morgan sounded fine for Warners, but something lacked … he’d never be a Bing to Jack Carson’s Bob. Maybe Metro should have taken a leaf from their old Dogway Melody shorts and teach Lassie to sing.

Start It Again ... Start It Again

I thought of Annie Get Your Gun this time in train wreck terms, even though things turned out largely fine. There was less profit than it should have had, due to bloated negative cost thanks to they-knew-who. $8.1 million in worldwide rentals was cork off of champagne, but profit stuck at $1.3 million, still good, but the tab, plus what Irving Berlin took (lots), otherwise expense of the property, Betty Hutton borrowed for $150K flat from Paramount, well, it all adds up. Again to those outtakes, unexpurgated form of which were once a rarest object of grim curiosity, pieces seen on authorized terms per DVD or Blu-ray, cloudier glimpse afforded on You Tube. More of what survived, Judy and others fluffing lines, stopped numbers, her provoked by a clapper board, this was stuff of fascination to go with what we heard of disaster that was Judy Garland as aborted Annie. A collector friend in Greenwich Village had got the footage, all the footage, from a guy who made a print off a print that MGM lab techs had made up for Liza Minnelli after That’s Entertainment --- very hush-hush. We watched in anxiety that the hovel might be pinched. This was around 1985, Annie as a feature yet withheld. I do miss collecting as forbidden pursuit, blood quickened with each find. “Doin’ What Comes Naturally” was a number Judy completed (she in fact pre-recorded most all of the score), and it’s part of Blu-extras, but her doing the song is also on You Tube, and with one of the support kids blowing a line, to which lifelong pro Garland reacts but quick, spreads her arms in director mode, says “Start it again … Start it again,” which they do. It is a moment where we see her capacity to take completely over where needed, for who else present had even half her grasp of getting a performance right?

Garland kept being promised vacations she never fully got. After a couple weeks of what was understood to be months off, they’d call and want her back to just do this, pre-record that, try on costumes … and before she knew it, principal photography was upon her. Corporate, then and now, knives out always. Read the Charles Walters bio by Brent Phillips and learn how music personnel regularly took brunts. As long as she breathed, Leo figured Judy should work. Contract folk never got a rest, unless they went out in the woods somewhere and couldn’t be found, like Gable or Robert Taylor. Judy should have taken up camping, or duck hunts. MGM did at least cover her medical costs, a sort of Workman’s Comp before there was Workman’s Comp. Stress caused Garland’s hair to fall out, and she was only 27! Don’t you want to just reach back and hug this poor creature? Not everyone did at the time, Mary Astor fed up early as St. Louis and said so (to Judy response: But … I don’t sleep!), and Anita Loos, who thought JG “a compulsive weeper … a great bore.” Judy also didn’t mind sticking it to a colleague who got in her way, as director Fred Zinnemann recalled in a letter to Vincente Minnelli after the latter took Fred’s chair on The Clock (“I think Judy has behaved pretty badly in this whole set-up …”).

MGM initially put Busby Berkeley to directing Annie Get Your Gun. Someone (Arthur Freed?) must have liked or felt sorry for him, as Buzz was thought washed up by many if not most. He was exacting, impatient, especially with Garland, whose teen dreams, plus ones after, this martinet had haunted, him having done several of the Mickey-Judys. Mere sight of Buzz gave Garland migraines. She lacked nerve to give as good as she got from this monster of her past. Wish I could have fed her a retaliatory line when he got nasty: Hey Buzz, shouldn’t you be in the penitentiary for second degree murder? (see L.A. DUI deaths circa 1935) That might have shut him up and got Garland a round of on-set applause, from Howard Keel certainly, who had an ankle broke thanks to Berkeley making him do over and again a horseback entrance. Garland was a settled genius, if unsettled as custodian of it, a quickest study, her delays/upset largely reason for The Pirate losing money in 1948, so some had to ask if this juice was worth the squeeze. Significant was her last for Leo, Summer Stock, also finishing in the red. Maybe it was easier seeing her go than stay, at least for Loew’s East Coast accounting division. Off immediate topic a sec: Mike Cline and I were in Atlanta, on the way to, or coming back, from a poster show, and heading up the escalator as we were going down --- Howard Keel! Too far away for us to annoy him, and in motion besides, so his defenses were not down.

Hardly an oasis of stability herself, Betty Hutton saw what opportunity Annie was and behaved as if she’d been as meek for Paramount (they knew better). She would complain decades later to Osborne at TCM of cold treatment after taking Judy’s place, Hutton a most fragile of interviews toward the end. She was another of stars dealt-out, not long after Garland from Metro, Betty insisting on a present husband to co-star for her next, Paramount naturally opposed and finally washing hands of her. Hutton was from there a ghost at banquets, comeback trying (Spring Reunion), a TV series that didn’t last, talking here and there for documentaries (one on Preston Sturges). Next stop was said to be scrubbing floors at a rectory somewhere, therapy more the object than income. Hutton would credit a priest at the place with saving her sanity, so good for her, and him. Walter Matthau later got argumentative Barbra Streisand’s goat on the Hello Dolly set by loudly warning Remember what happened to Betty Hutton! Judy Garland meanwhile had gone from Metro exit to triumph of A Star Is Born. All show biz revered her for being an absolute best the art afforded, plus cautionary fable for what results when that biz consumes you. Star premiere footage, done for TV, shows mixed emotion as biggest names fete Judy, even as none would pay dear price she did. Nobody had fans so devoted, one I knew an autograph dealer who told me an amazing story of when Garland (always broke) couch-slept at a small L.A. apartment he shared with a pal. She was grateful, enough so to load up double LP Judy At Carnegie Hall on their phonograph and sing the whole thing to her hosts’ astonished joy. I asked my guy to repeat the story to be sure I heard it right. Hollywood … you wacky, wonderful town.

There used to be constant info and anecdotes about MGM musicals thanks to so much personnel being still around to tell them. Ann Miller actually went to work again for Metro to spread gospel of That’s Entertainment. But it’s 2021 now, and they’ve all shuffled off. We might as well be talking of figures from past World Wars. Books are filled with testimony on Annie Get Your Gun and the rest, but there will not be any more testimony. It seemed once that whatever old stars did not reminisce about MGM musicals were riding The Love Boat. A story told on Lana Turner illustrates. She arrived for the LB cruise expecting rose petals strewn before her, an illusion put to rout by fellow guest, and always-realist Stewart Granger, Look sweetheart, we’re not at MGM anymore. Old Hollywood itself sort of sailed away on the Love Boat and similar rickety crafts. Judy Garland's legacy proved to be as delicate for what happened to The Wizard of Oz, once an annual event, now just another plug-in to TCM schedules, Oz having become sort of the Our Gang of features. When there’s not a Munchkin left to tell what Judy was really like, well, we know it’s time for us all to throw in our dice.