There's No Business Like Show Business

Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think of this film, my biggest complaint with it is Marilyn Monroe. The studio shoehorned her into this film in their attempt to make the biggest musical extravaganza ever, and she just doesn't fit. She's so out of sync with the other characters that she might as well be from a different planet.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a huge Marilyn fan, but she was good (and well-cast) in "Some Like It Hot". She's just all wrong for "No Business Like Show Business", and she looks and sounds ridiculous.

To be fair, Johnnie Ray often doesn't hold up well before modern audiences, either, when he sings. It's not that he's bad; it's that his style has come and gone and hardly been seen since. Everything in this movie tends to be at least a little overdone, and asking Johnnie Ray to exaggerate his singing does not produce flattering results.

Still, Donald O'Connor and Mitzi Gaynor are as brilliant and exuberant as you could hope. Ethel Merman is, well, Ethel Merman, and exactly right for her part. Dan Dailey is like a reliable locomotive that never disappoints.

The story is a bit plodding at times, but it only exists to set up one gala musical number after another. It only really bogs down when it gets caught up with Marilyn's character. If the studio had just left Marilyn out of it, perhaps giving Mitzi Gaynor the love interest role, and toned down the general effort level just a hair, this would've been one of the all-time greats.

It's still absolutely worth seeing -- in widescreen format, if you possibly can.

This CinemaScope musical follows the lives and loves of the Donahues, a family of vaudeville performers: father Terrance (Dan Dailey), mother Molly (Ethel Merman), elder son Tim (Donald O'Connor), daughter Katy (Mitzi Gaynor), and younger son Steve (Johnnie Ray). They persevere through changing tastes, the stock market crash, and the start of WW2. Tim falls for co-star Vicky (Marilyn Monroe), while Katy finds romance with writer Charles (Hugh O'Brian), and Steve pursues a different calling.

The threadbare story merely serves to connect a series of elaborate musical numbers designed to make the best of the new widescreen CinemaScope format. Director Lang and choreographer Robert Alton turn in some excellent work, and Donald O'Connor reportedly called this his favorite of his films (over Singin' in the Rain?!?). I watched this for Monroe, who doesn't impress much here. She supposedly didn't want to appear in this, but did so in order to win the lead in The Seven Year Itch. This was one of Fox's most expensive productions to date, and despite selling a lot of tickets, it ended up being a money-loser. It earned Oscar nominations for (inexplicably) Best Story (Lamar Trotti), Best Score (Alfred & Lionel Newman), and Best Color Costumes (Charles Le Maire, Miles White, Travilla).

Two scenes surprise, both with Marilyn Monroe: her singing of the "After You Get What You Want..." number in a ultra-tight, combination flesh-colored/white gown. It's obvious that the image portrayed is that she could be nude, with the frilly white covering her talents. The second is the famous "Heat Wave" number, in a skimpy outfit, with her navel appropriately covered, yet below is a flesh-colored "window" for more erotic symbolism. In 1954 nudity could NOT be shown, but those scenes probably BARELY squeaked by the censors. The film depicts the traveling, singing/dancing Donahue Family, headed by brassy Ethel Merman and Dan Dailey, with sons Donald O'Connor, Johnnie Ray (who wants to be a priest), and daughter Mitzi Gaynor. It's obvious the Monroe character was an afterthought to boost the film's success; the actress really didn't want to do the part, the studio allegedly counteracted by upping her salary and promising her the lead in "The Seven Year Itch" (1955). Nevertheless, Monroe looks great and is unforgettable, comedically, dramatically and musically. O'Connor is great fun and Gaynor is a knockout dancer. Between some slow stages, musical numbers are expertly staged, with magnificent sets and superb color schemes all throughout. The finale is surprisingly touching with a rousing title tune reprise by all; only way to watch this is on the pristine-restored widescreem (2:55 to 1) DVD.

The film was, perhaps, the splashiest of the year's musicals… It dealt with the joys, loves and heartaches experienced by a vaudeville family called the Donahues (spending their lives singing and dancing and touring) with Merman and Dailey as mother and father, and Ray, Gaynor and O'Connor as their talented offspring…

All of them get to perform a large catalog of new and old songs by Irving Berlin in sumptuous arrangements, beautiful settings and on a big Hippodrome extravaganza…

Daily and Merman hit the top; O'Connor—who had liked to build a barbed-wire fence around Marilyn—did it Scottish and came with some fine dances; Gaynor's love was dancing… and she was really cute; and while Ray got some thinking to do, he sells a very beautiful song ("If You Believe").

Marilyn (appearing after 29 minutes screening) was deliciously charming, seducing and very appealing… She sang "After You Get What You Want" and "Lazy," and did that tropical version of 'Heat Wave.'

When Darryl F. Zanuck virtually forced exhibitors and most of his fellow studio mogul rivals to adopt CinemaScope as a panacea for TV's devastation of Hollywood's weekly box office bonanza, he dictated that virtually all of Twentieth's output was to be filmed in that eye-stretching process. "There's No Business Like Show Business," directed by that old pro, Walter Lang, seems to be the prime example of Darryl's minions saying to their boss: "You want wide? We'll give you W-I-D-E!!"

Everything about it was designed and lensed to emphasize the original ratio of the CinemaScope process and viewing it on a video that isn't letterboxed must look like what a one-eyed person must experience in everyday life. I never did see it in a theater but I have seen it on a TV broadcast which more-or-less recreated its widescreen ratio. It's a glorious mish-mash. Every Berlin tune that could be stuffed into it is given at least one run-through; John de Cuir's production design must have occupied every inch of several of Twentieth's West Los Angeles soundstages; Ethel Merman, after her terrific movie repeat of her Broadway success in "Call Me Madam" for Fox (and now, as of 2005, available on video), trumpets away in number after number (Must have been an ear-rending experience over those original four-track stereophonic sound systems.); Dan Dailey, Donald O'Connor and Mitzi Gaynor give it their energetic best; and then there's Marilyn. What can we say, with all that so sadly, in her personal life, came after she reluctantly fulfilled her contractual obligation in this one? She dazzles in, let's face it, a rather vulgar way, and seems shoehorned in to boost the potential box office. And they even added Johnnie Ray, a huge jukebox success at the time (and, due to his hearing deficiency, performing his songs at an even greater volume than La Merman.)

All in all this one shouldn't be missed if you want to view an example of Hollywood at its brassiest, in a production fairly bulging with elements that may not coalesce very harmoniously but which was, no doubt, worth the price of admission to those movie palaces before they were carved up to become the precursors of today's sterile multiplexes.