There's No Business Like Show Business

There's No Business Like Show Business has the distinction of being the last of the Irving Berlin songbook musicals filmed. It came out the same year as White Christmas, also of the same genre.

Take a listen to the background music of films like Holiday Inn, Blue Skies, Alexander's Ragtime Band, and this one. I defy you to find one non-Berlin note in the film and that's no accident. The more songs of Irving Berlin used, the more money he made. He was one shrewd businessman Irving, most of the time.

The title song is identified with Ethel Merman and it was introduced in Annie Get Your Gun. Merman like Mary Martin had a conspicuous lack of success in Hollywood as much as she was an icon on Broadway. She only did the screen version of two of her Broadway hits, Anything Goes and Call Me Madam. That's two more than Mary Martin did.

Anyway, I think the genesis of There's No Business Like Show Business probably came about when Call Me Madam became such a hit and the movie money people saw how the chemistry was between her and Donald O'Connor. So O'Connor was signed to play one of her three children. The other two children were Johnnie Ray and Mitzi Gaynor.

The plot such as it is, is the story of the Donahue family between both World Wars. The father of the aforementioned children is Dan Dailey and he and Merman do some good Irving Berlin numbers together. I've always marvelled at how graceful Dan Dailey moved on the screen in his musical films. He was not a creative sort in the same way Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly were. Probably if he had been, his reputation would be higher today. But he was a pleasing entertainer every time you saw him.

By all accounts it wasn't a happy film for Ethel. Marilyn Monroe is in the film and Ethel was jealous of her. Not that Monroe wasn't her usual difficult self. Probably that helped the plot because it does call for the two to be at odds. Merman believes that Monroe has led Donald O'Connor astray.

Mitzi Gaynor was a wonderful talent as well. Too bad she wasn't born twenty years earlier, what a big star she would have been in the thirties and forties in Hollywood musicals then. Good singer and one fabulous dancer.

The plot does get kind of sticky in spots and Johnnie Ray didn't set the screen on fire when he wasn't singing. No accident he didn't become a film star.

Still for those of us who bless the day Irving Berlin put down his first notes of an original song, it's worth watching.

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.'

"There's No Business Like Show Business" was never intended to be great film-making or storytelling, so please do not watch it with those things in mind.

Sure, it was over-staged, over-produced, in some cases over-acted and any other "overs" you can think of, but it's just fun to relax and watch and listen to. I've seen the film maybe dozens of times (I own the DVD) and it's obvious to me that despite a few on screen gaffes and off-screen problems for at least a couple of the actors, Hollywood had a whale of a good time making it. Some of the characters are unrealistic and I'm sure if you could ask the actors, all would say it was by far not their best work.

Furthermore, if we didn't know it before, "Show Business" proved that Johnnie Ray, the part crooner, part rock belter of the era, couldn't act his way into or out of a paper bag. But so what?? This ain't Hamlet. Ray was cast to do here what he did best: sing the heck out of a couple of songs that were arranged precisely to suit his performing style. And he also just managed to pull off an unusual plot twist that I'm sure audiences of the era did not expect.

We're all asked to suspend temporarily all logic and reason when we turn on our TVs or go to the movies. Why stop with "There's No Business Like Show Business"? So grab the munchies, sit back and let Ethel Merman and Gang entertain you for a couple of harmless, gaudy hours.

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.