M-G-M Jubilee Overture

MGM Jubilee Overture (1954)

*** (out of 4)

Johnny Green leads the MGM Orchestra in this short, which was showing off the studios 30th Anniversary by playing some of the music from their most famous films. We get the title track from SINGIN' IN THE WIND plus the songs "I've Got You Under My Skin", "The Last Time I Saw Paris", "Over the Rainbow" and "Baby, It's Cold Outside" among others. If you're a fan of any of these songs then you'll certainly want to check out this 9-minute short as the orchestra is very tight and Green does a great job bringing this old classics to life. The cinemascope doesn't hurt things either as we get a grand view of the band at work.

A full orchestra in formal attire plays a medley of songs made famous in MGM films through 1954. Oddly, there is no music from "Gone With the Wind." As shown on Turner Classic Movies, the music was in stereo and the picture in Cinerama but unrestored. Hopefully it will run again so I can record it. To my knowledge, this short has not been released on DVD or Blu-Ray as an extra with an MGM movie.

It remained me of the prologue to 20th Century Fox's "How to Marry a Millionaire" in which Alfred Newman led an orchestra playing "Street Scene." This came out the year before the MGM film and was also in stereo and Cinerama.

This is basically an early Cinemascope music film, with the MGM studio orchestra performing well-known numbers from several of their films as a 30th anniversary tribute. Missing was the most obvious, "Tara's Theme" from "Gone With The Wind", perhaps because GWTW was not originally an MGM production.

For some unknown reason, they decided to use a voice-over narration to tell us what each number was as it started, in an otherwise seamless concert. Audiences in the 1950s surely knew what these selections were, and even if they didn't, a superimposed title would have been a preferred way to handle it. What were they thinking?