User reviews

Musicalization of Ah! Wilderness is okay with Mickey one of the oldest high school graduates you'll ever see. This was a huge flop upon release and coupled with Rooney's next film Words and Music, also a significant money loser, it signaled the end of his reign as a box office champ and a long slide until he reemerged as a character actor in his up and down career.

It's the supporting cast of Huston, Morgan, Selena Royale and Marilyn Maxwell that make the picture worth seeing. Agnes Moorehead, who looks great in the period costumes, is wasted in the part of Cousin Lily which has been reduced from the original.

Even though it's O'Neill's only comedy the original has touches of drama and pathos all of which have been drained from this. Still a pleasant film with gorgeous color and MGM's accustomed quality production values, the clothes in particular are beautiful, but as musicals go this is minor with no memorable songs nor dances.

"Ah, Wilderness!" should make a great musical--in fact, it made a very good one on Broadway, as "Take Me Along" in 1959--and this Freed Unit special has some greatness in it, which keeps being undercut. It's beautifully cast, the Technicolor is extraordinary, and the director, the always underrated Rouben Mamoulian, shows a lot of feel for the small-town turn-of-the-century setting and the small crises in the Miller family. But it was a troubled production, and it suffered some ruinous cuts. The editing's frankly sloppy, and misguided things happen that you don't expect to happen in MGM musicals. Mickey Rooney (10 years too old for the part, but he hides it well, and not doing those Mickey Rooney overacting things that often annoy me) and Gloria De Haven (lovely, with a lovely voice) dance fetchingly to "Afraid to Be in Love" on an emerald park lawn, and the number just fades out, no payoff, no resolution. Rooney gets drunk with Marilyn Maxwell in a cheap saloon, and there's supposed to be an Omar Khayam dream ballet (there are production stills), but it doesn't happen, and that scene, too, just fades out. The always-exemplary Walter Huston, who's charming here, rolls up the movie with the curtain line, "Well, spring isn't everything, is it, Essie?", and it's supposed to resonate because he was supposed to sing "Spring Isn't Everything," a sweet ballad similar to the "September Song" Huston introduced in "Knickerbocker Holiday," but that, too, has been cut, so it just seems an odd way to fade out. What's left of the Harry Warren-Ralph Blane score isn't great, but it's quite integrated into the action, and well performed. I caught this again on TCM recently and it's better than I remembered, but I keep wanting it to be better still.

... Eugene O'Neil's heartwarming masterpiece, "Ah, Wilderness". Unfortunately, the Technicolor beauty just covers up a bland production ponderously directed by Rouben Mamoulian who has many fine credits to his name.

I had high hopes for this film, mainly because of its great cast and the fact that it is from producer Arthur Freed, who was responsible for the best musicals of the 1940s and 1950s. Mickey Rooney, Walter Huston, Agnes Moorehead, and Frank Morgan are all fine actors who are capable of much better than this. The film's screenplay had no spark to it, and the scenes that were supposed to be pivotal to the characters' development garnered no reaction from me as a viewer. The actors seemed to know the script wasn't that good because in each scene, they recited their lines without enthusiasm or conviction. As a musical it was mediocre. The songs are not catchy or memorable and are largely talked rather than sung. I guess every producer and studio is entitled to a stinker. If you want to see a really good family based musical, try "Meet Me in St. Louis", or if you want to see Mickey Rooney at his best in a musical try "Strike Up the Band."

Quite bland musical version of Eugene O'Neill's gentle comedy play about a family in rural America before the first world war.

MGM made the first (non-musical) version in 1935 under the play's original title, AH, WILDERNESS! That film, which stars Eric Linden, Lionel Barrymore, and Wallace Beery is superb.

Here we get Mickey Rooney (aged 28 playing a high school senior), Walter Huston, and Frank Morgan. Huston and Morgan are OK, but Morgan can't hold a candle to Beery's Uncle Sid.

The rest of the cast here is competent but all the "edge" has been taken out of the original story. Agnes Moorehead plays the old maid aunt, Selena Royle is the mother, Gloria DeHaven is the girl next door, Butch Jenkins is the kid brother (Rooney played the role in the '35 film), and John Alexander plays the blowhard neighbor.

Not helping is the bland and forgettable music score. They would have been better off using real songs from the period.

The main problem is that Rooney is simply too old for this, and his acting is pretty bad. By 1948 he was already about to end his second marriage (first was to Ava Gardner). And here he is trying to play a virginal high schooler. It gets really sticky when he rebels and meets Belle.

In this version Belle is a chorus girl rather than a prostitute. Marilyn Maxwell is a breath of fresh air as the salty, plain-talking, overly made-up woman trying to take the green kid for a few bucks ... until another guy shows up. This is a nicely lit and interesting scene as Belle is "transformed" in Rooney's eyes from the cheap chorus girl into a colorful woman of the world. Maxwell is terrific. It's a great small role; in the '35 version Helen Flint was also terrific.

Bottom line is that this is just a so-so film. It can't compare with the '35 version of the story, and it certainly doesn't come up to the MGM standard for its '40s musicals. The movie was not a box office success.

A perfectly enjoyable bit of mid-era Freed Unit MGM, with many of the hallmarks of their greatest musicals. But the real surprise in this film is the extended bar room sequence in which Mickey Rooney is led astray by a wanton showgirl named "Belle," played in an extraordinarily vivid way by Marilyn Maxwell. She positively glows in her many extreme close-ups as she tries to vamp Mickey Rooney down the path of corruption. Her Technicolor costume changes color throughout the scene, reflecting Rooney's increasing drunkenness. As mentioned by other reviewers here, the number is sort of a stand-alone scene that seems rather transplanted from another film altogether...but for this viewer, it's a welcomed shot of "oomph", incongruous or not. One is left wondering why it is that Miss Maxwell is largely forgotten today and wasn't really handed any other roles that fulfilled the promise she showed in "Summer Holiday" (with the possible exception of her equally vivid showing in "The Lemon Drop Kid"). She had a long and busy career, mostly in television...yet her name rings few bells today. Could it be that a certain "Norma Jeane Baker," in largely co-opting her name, sort of pulled the rug out from under her in the process? Bottom-line: If you don't want to see the whole film, tune in about halfway through and catch an indelible star-turn by an indelible star: Marilyn Maxwell. It's her film.

With Mickey Rooney having died about a month ago, I went to the library to see if any of his films were there. I managed to find both this and Thoroughbreds Don't Cry there and checked them out. I just reviewed TDC so this is what I think of this one: It's quite good with the musical numbers and some of the atmosphere of both clean-cut small-town Americana and the more brassy charm of low-rent bars when the Rooney character goes to meet some dance hall girls and has an eye-popping' encounter with Marilyn Maxwell. Gloria DeHaven has her own wholesome charms as his girl-next-door partner. Walter Huston is fine as his wise father. And Frank Morgan is charismatic as his drunk uncle. The songs by Harry Warren and Ralph Blaine are tuneful enough. And the screenplay by Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett-who also wrote my favorite movie, It's a Wonderful Life-has some nice humorous touches. Not great, but Summer Holiday was entertaining enough for me.

It's 1906 in picturesque Dannville, Connecticut. Mature-looking 17-year-old Mickey Rooney (as Richard Miller) is looking forward to college and thinking about his first kiss with pretty high school sweetheart Gloria De Haven (as Muriel McComber). She's afraid to kiss Mr. Rooney because they might fall in love. Rooney, who has been named class valedictorian, prepares a rebellious, anti-Capitalist speech. During the summer, he goes to a bar and gets drunk. Rooney's behavior threatens to disgrace the family and end his relationship with Ms. De Haven...

This musical version Eugene O'Neill's "Ah, Wilderness!" (1933) was no fun for MGM. Its main strength is vibrant Technicolor, which serves many musicals well, but not this "Summer Holiday". Most obviously, Rooney is embarrassingly miscast. He was in MGM's superior 1935 version, in the role played herein by freckle-faced Jackie "Butch" Jenkins. Director Rouben Mamoulian uses paintings interestingly, before Rooney's graduation speech and during the Fourth of July celebration. Cedric Gibbons and his crew designed some nice streets. Still, the production is a mistake...

You're better off watching the 1935 version.

*** Summer Holiday (2/23/48) Rouben Mamoulian ~ Mickey Rooney, Walter Huston, Frank Morgan, Jackie 'Butch' Jenkins

Summer Holiday is the forgotten musical version of Eugene O'Neill's Ah Wilderness and deservedly so with the Broadway musical adaptation of Take Me Along. With the exception of the Stanley Steamer song, none of the other Harry Warren-Ralph Blane songs are worth remembering and even that one is questionable.

It was right after the release of this film that MGM let Mickey Rooney go and I don't think it was a coincidence. The film was made in 1946 and released in 1948, so Mickey was 26 playing an Andy Hardy like teenager. He was just way too old for the part of the 17 year old who was affecting radical ideas in a spirit of youthful rebellion.

Rooney made four films for MGM from 1946 to 1948, this one, Killer McCoy a remake of Robert Taylor's A Crowd Roars, Love Laughs at Andy Hardy and Words and Music. In all of them Rooney was playing an adult part. Even in the Andy Hardy film, Mickey played an adult Andy Hardy returned from World War II. Why he was in this Louis B. Mayer only knows.

Rooney's bad casting makes Summer Holiday all the worse because in the original Ah Wilderness the emphasis is on the father's character played here by Walter Huston. And in the Broadway show Take Me Along which won a Tony Award for Jackie Gleason, the Great One played the inebriated brother-in-law Uncle Sid here played by Frank Morgan and that's the central character.

Gloria DeHaven steps in for Judy Garland as Rooney's sweet and adorable girl friend and Marilyn Maxwell plays the show girl who gives Rooney an adult education. In the original play O'Neill has her as a prostitute, but this was the Hollywood of the Code so all Marilyn does is get young Rooney soused.

A lot of really talented people had a hand in this one and they do their best, but Summer Holiday fades rather quickly into a chilly autumn.

There are problems with this big-budget Arthur Freed production, directed by Rouben Mamoulian. It's a musical adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's play, Ah, Wilderness!, which was first filmed by director Clarence Brown in 1935.

There's a good cast. You can't find much fault with people like Selena Royle, Agnes Moorehead, Frank Morgan, etc. But for a big MGM musical, Summer Holiday is underpopulated with song-and-dance talent. Marilyn Maxwell and Gloria DeHaven are real singers. Rooney, in the lead, is not. Huston (who had a hit record of September Song), has a few good musical minutes, but at least one of his songs was cut. And anyway, you can't expect Walter Huston to carry the male singing chores in a screen musical.

Mickey did star in musicals before this. But he probably shouldn't have been expected to carry this kind of film. He was a huge talent, but as a musical lead, he was a different type, a showman (as he proved in the hit Broadway show, Sugar Babies, years later). He wasn't a song and dance man, like Donald O'Connor. You don't find yourself eagerly awaiting his next vocal or dance number.

As for his being too old, he is. But even when he was a lot younger, he just wasn't really the type to pull off this naive, bumptious character. He's a good actor, he tries, and he does well, overall. It's just that I didn't buy it and you probably won't, either.

The songs are good, but they don't have a lot of zing. They're pleasant. The numbers themselves are sometimes truncated. The cuts are rather obvious, at times.

The thing I enjoyed most was the recreation of various American paintings (like Grant Wood's American Gothic) in one sequence. It was both charming and satirical.

By the way, I don't know if anyone else noticed, but director Rouben Mamoulian chose to have the costumes and sets done almost entirely in whites, light grays, tans, and other soft, neutral tones. I'm guessing this was in order to contrast with the film's colorful Omar Kiam fantasy sequence.

But the sequence was cut, resulting in a colorless, drab-looking Technicolor film. Only the scene with Marilyn Maxwell, whose costume becomes more flamboyant the more drunk Mickey Rooney gets, remains as a contrast to all that colorlessness.

Mamoulian was clearly a man of talent, and his cast and technical crew were the finest the studio could provide, so it's a shame to report this film was less than the sum of its parts.

The play on which it was based was a piece of homey Americana and this version continues that. True Mickey Rooney sometimes overacts but he is a real personality and believable. The idea of singing some of the speeches is what's unusual and I believe it works. It sets this film apart from the rest. I always felt the bar room scene was almost a different play and it's done well especially by M. Maxwell. Have you noticed that her hat and dress changes color depending on how Mickey sees her in that scene?

It's Danville, Connecticut in middle America during the summer of 1906. Richard Miller (Mickey Rooney) is graduating and headed for Yale. He has his girlfriend Muriel McComber (Gloria DeHaven) and his father knows best (Walter Huston). His recent readings have turned him into a armchair revolutionary. Uncle Sid (Frank Morgan) and Cousin Lily (Agnes Moorehead) are courting.

This is based on Ah, Wilderness! (1933) play by Eugene O'Neill and remake of the 1935 movie. It's brightly colored Technicolor and this time, it's a musical. It's a vision of another time during another time. It's hokey Americana and there is something fascinating about that. It's fake almost to the point of celebrating it. I almost overdose on Americana until it goes downtown to the music hall although that's a different Americana. Mickey is also getting up there to play a teenager. Turning it into a musical only accentuates the artificial aspect of the movie.

This musical adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's "Ah, Wilderness!" takes place in the town of Dannville, where the senior class is about to move on with their lives, the fireworks are ready for the celebration of the Fourth, and class valedictorian Richard Miller (Mickey Rooney) is dealing with affairs of the heart.

The film begins with music-a sing-song introduction of the characters-which leads to the high school graduation ceremony, full of school spirit and traditional values.

Richard has his eye on Muriel McComber (Gloria DeHaven). Uncle Sid (Frank Morgan) has his eye on Cousin Lily (Agnes Moorehead), who spurns his attentions due to his love of the bottle.

This is a story of a family, a town, a way of life, and America itself. It is a reaffirmation of small-town values. This film comes on the heels of the Hardy Family series and, in many ways, mirrors those stories.

Dannville, surprisingly, has a dark side. Richard finds himself at the Dannville Saloon, where singer and temptress Belle (Marilyn Maxwell) threatens to educate him in the ways of sin. She delivers a strong performance that is captured in beautiful close-up.

This may be an uneven production, but it has many moments worthy of being watched.

'Summer Holiday' was yet another film that had a lot of potential and a fair share of reasons for me to want to see it. While the play it's based on ('Ah Wilderness') is not one of the great Eugene O'Neill's best, it is a good place to start getting to know his work as it is a charmer and one of his more accessible works. With a cast with this many great performers too, one could say this couldn't go wrong. Have also liked some of director Rouben Mamoulian's other films.

Unfortunately 'Summer Holiday' is one of my least favourites of his, in a filmography that includes brilliant films such as 'Queen Christina', 'The Mark of Zorro', 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' and 'Applause' (which revolutionised the development of early talkies). On the most part, the cast are good and the film looks great. A more suitable leading man and a more memorable song score would have helped making 'Summer Holiday' a better film though.

There are quite a number of things working in 'Summer Holiday's' favour. As said, it is a great looking film on the whole. The vibrant Technicolor especially is absolutely glorious and the scenery is also full of colour and beautifully designed. There are a few moments that do stick in the memory for a while afterwards, the highlight is the bar room sequence that has been mentioned in other reviews. Close behind is the catchy "The Stanley Steamer", the musical number that has the most spirit and it's the song in the film that stuck in my head the most.

Furthermore there are some amusing lines. The cast are fine on the whole, with truly lovely and spirited Marilyn Maxwell stealing the film. Gloria DeHaven also has the mouth-watering value. Walter Huston could always be counted upon to give a good performance and he charms the socks off. Frank Morgan is amusing.

Mickey Rooney didn't work for me though, and no it was nothing to do with his age. My problems with him were his tendency to try far too hard and he comes over as annoying and that it was difficult to root for his character. A big problem as he is the lead. Have always liked Agnes Moorhead very much, but by her standards while very professional this was pretty subdued and doesn't have her usual sparkle. There are moments of energy and entertainment value, but too much of the film dramatically is rather plodding and Mamoulian's unusually uninspired direction doesn't help.

Have seen very mixed reviews on the song score, both vehement defense but indifference. The songs to me were pleasant enough but only "The Stanley Steamer" is memorable and has much spark. They could have been better choreographed, the staging is never amateurish but nothing dazzles or has quite the right amount of energy. The editing also could have been a lot better, it's very sloppy in places and too many transitions came over as abrupt and unfinished.

In conclusion, definitely worth a one-time look but a bit lacking for me. 5/10

Of all the major studios, MGM is most associated with musicals and they made a ton of them. However, in the case of "Summer Holiday" they had a rare flop...and shortly after the film began, I could see exactly why. Despite having a bazillion excellent singers under contract, almost none of them are in the movie. What's worse....many of the actors in the film simply couldn't carry a tune and sounded god-awful. Butch Jenkins (who wasn't particularly a good actor), Walter Huston, Agnes Morehead and Frank Morgan all should have done ANYTHING other than sing...and they all sing in the opening number....which is just baffling! What's even more baffling is Mickey Rooney...who COULD sing but the style of the songs make even him seem untalented!

The bottom line is that as a musical, "Summer Holiday" , just sucks. See the non-musical version instead. While it's not in color, at least it makes sense...."Summer Holiday" simply is confusing and dumb.

"Summer Holiday" is a summer treat that has become an annual ritual at our house. I never fail to slip the video tape into the VCR as May morphs into June and the last days of school are rolling into summer vacation.

Mickey Rooney is exuberant as Richard, and Gloria DeHaven is cute and charming as his timorous girlfriend Muriel. Walter Huston is at his reassuring best as Richard's wise and rock-steady father, while Frank Morgan plays the likable, avuncular family drunk who can never quite overcome his dependence on the bottle.

The scenery is gorgeous, particularly in the opening scene as protagonists Richard and Muriel sing "Afraid to Fall in Love" to one other then go dancing off into a summery green field together - and also in the celebratory Fourth of July number "Independence Day," shot at the lush Busch Gardens in Pasadena.

My one complaint is that the extended barroom scene in which Richard is lured into a night of drunkenness by the temptress bar-girl (Marilyn Maxwell) doesn't seen to match the wholesome tone of the rest of the movie.

But it is the Harry Warren/Ralph Bane music that compels me to return for more and more re-viewings. (I must have watched this movie over twenty times since I first spotted it - then taped it - on TNT in the late eighties.) Honestly, I cannot fathom what drives certain reviewers to term the score as "uninspired" or a "dud" except perhaps that they have not listened to the songs enough times or with sufficient earnestness.

A disappointing score? Quite the contrary. The Warren/Blane music is extraordinary - even those songs that meddling MGM executives chose to delete from the final version of the film. As it turned out, gorgeous numbers such as "Never Again," in which the rueful but determined Morgan character sadly recounts his battles with alcohol; the exquisitely haunting "Omar and the Princess"; Muriel's lovely confessional, "I Wish I Had a Braver Heart"; and Huston's wistful "Spring Isn't Everything" were inexplicably cut. (One needs to buy the CD soundtrack to hear those and other excised numbers.) Mere disappointment turned into artistic tragedy when a nitrate-vault fire in the mid-fifties destroyed the musical outtakes, rendering impossible any possible restoration of the film to the version envisioned by Warren and Blane. That huge chunks of the score were slashed from the film left Warren so embittered he refused to view the film for over thirty years.

Perhaps, the critics should listen to the score a second, third, or fourth time, for a few of the melodies may strike some ears as somewhat subtle and may require repeated hearings. I remember being unimpressed the first time I saw the film and heard the score but have since come to adore the music. I'd categorize the uniquely delightful "Afraid to Fall in Love" as one of the songs that needs to be heard more than once to be fully appreciated.

Despite the meat-cleaver cuts, what remains of the score makes for luscious listening. From the brief but tuneful overture while credits are rolling, to the winsome "Our Home Town" - extended opening-scene dialog set to music, to the rousing anthem "Dan-Dan Danville High," to the gloriously catchy "The Stanley Steamer," the music lilts. One of my personal favorites is "While the Men Are All Drinking," a brief number sung by the ladies as they organize their picnic food in the park while their men are off competing in an Independence Day beer-drinking contest and the children are off diving into a nearby pond.

To my ears, the music is stunning beautiful and the reason I place "Summer Holiday" in my top ten, all-time-favorite movie list and why I consider Warren one of the top seven or eight composers of popular music that ever lived. He considered this score his best, and I enthusiastically concur.

"Summer Holiday" is old-fashioned in the worst sense of the phrase. O'Neill's "Ah, Wilderness!!" is bland-ed out by the MGM factory into 'homespun' niceties with no edge and no basis in reality. The acting is exaggerated in the extreme, with everyone overreacting to everyone and indicating their characters with sledgehammer finesse. Rooney, often a very fine performer, is at his overacting worst here, far too old to play a teenager and trying far to hard to be an innocent. It's totally unbelievable. The songs are instantly forgettable and the direction is downright weird at times. There's a reason that this film sat on the studio shelf for two years, flopped upon release and ended Rooney's career at MGM. It's awful.

If you are a fan of Mickey Rooney, or if you loved "Ah, Wilderness!" (1935 movie) and "Take Me Along" (Broadway musical version of "Ah, Wilderness!"), you will find this version of Eugene O'Neill's only comedy worth seeing.

Mickey Rooney is in both films. In "Summer Holiday," he does a good job as the older brother, but I liked him better as the little brother in the 1935 movie. Butch Jenkins plays the little brother in "Summer Holiday" (the Mickey Rooney role in the 1935 movie). Somebody must have decided the role was not cute enough, so they gave poor little Butch a lot of extra lines and cutesy costumes. Remembering Mickey's robust performance in the earlier version, I found Butch embarrassing.

The music in "Summer Holiday" is not very inspired. "Take Me Along" has better songs. I don't dislike "Summer Holiday." It just doesn't live up to my expectations of it.

MGM is known for producing some of the finest musicals in the 40s and 50s. The Arthur Freed production unit typically put together high calibre teams of the best stars, writers and directors. Summer holiday features Mickey Rooney, an experienced musical star who was also adept at comedy and a good actor to boot, music by popular songwriters Harry Warren and Ralph Blane, a screenplay by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett (It's a Wonderful Life) adapted from a Eugene O'Neill play and direction by Rouben Mamoulian, a director with a somewhat patchy record but whose forte was in musicals. This ought to be good.

Unfortunately Rooney was past the peak of his career, and he is not best used here in any case. It wouldn't be surprising if the actor, by now in his late twenties, was starting to get fed up with being Hollywood's perpetual teenager. As it is, he gives a rather daft, cartoonish performance, lots of ape-like gestures and walking with his bottom sticking out, a constant caricature of an eager young man. This may well be the sort of thing that was intended. The costume department has fitted him with ridiculous baggy trousers, making him look a real prize prat. I know he is supposed to be a boy on the verge of manhood, and that this is supposed to be a comedy, but this clownish look is simply in the wrong vein.

I'm not familiar with Eugene O'Neill's Ah Wilderness! so I'm sure how much of it has survived in Summer Holiday. Going by the other work of O'Neill's I do know, which is usually quite literate and rather edgy, I'd guess not very much. Goodrich and Hackett have done a good job of injecting some jokes that only work cinematically (such as Walter Huston suddenly realising how Rooney's speech is going to develop) and the picture is worth a giggle or two. At times it rallies for American conservatism to an extent that is almost self-parody, and it's hard at times to decipher exactly what message the movie is supposed to be given. My guess is that while it was seen as acceptable to go all out on bashing socialism, some of O'Neill's other libertarian views have been excised or toned down, attacking the one thing blindly without offering any sort of alternative. There are here and there hints of a message, but it's all a bit vague really. I'm not denouncing or advocating any particular politics here, just saying that this smacks of disorganised screen writing.

Director Rouben Mamoulian brings some nice touches to the musical numbers, having the actors move from place to place as a song progresses, moving rhythmically to make a dance out of ordinary actions. There's a truly sublime moment during the school song where the film segues into a montage of living recreations of Grant Wood paintings. It's not quite perfect; while most of those images are naturalistic nods toward the original pictures, the rendering of American Gothic is far too literal, and as such it's a bit false and jarring. This is perhaps Mamoulian's biggest fault at this time. He didn't have the good taste to know when to tone down an idea.

And the fact that Summer Holiday does seem to rely a lot of visual tricks does in many ways betray its weaknesses as a basic work. Even the songs by the promising pairing of Warren and Blane sound like rejects from Meet Me in St Louis. There are some good things about it – some nice ensemble pieces, Walter Huston's steady performance – but as a whole piece it is rather disappointing. Creative minds don't always merge to best effect, and putting together a dream team doesn't always guarantee spectacular results.

PRETTY DANGED AWFUL in first five mins. I was interested in its premise and its credit notes state based on Eigene O Neill play "Ah, Wilderness".... but GAG