Good News (1947)

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Good News (1947)
Topic Started: Sep 12 2009, 09:07 AM (254 Views)
Laughing Gravy	Sep 12 2009, 09:07 AM Post #1
Revered in the UK Posts: 11,070 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: August 31, 2005	Okay, so I'm reading some essays on movies and Hollywood of the golden age (whenever that was) and come across a "My Favorite Movies" section and there's TCM's Robert Osborne raving about Good News, a film of which I have never heard anything -- good or bad -- much about, but it has Allyson and Lawford in it so I'd always assumed I would hate it. Anybody?



Frank Hale	Sep 12 2009, 11:01 AM Post #2
Balcony Gang, Foist Class Posts: 828 Group: Members Member #59 Joined: October 6, 2005	You’re right, you would hate it. It does feature a very young Mel Tormé, which is at least historically interesting.



panzer the great & terrible	Sep 12 2009, 06:34 PM Post #3
Mouth Breather Posts: 10,340 Group: Members Member #13 Joined: September 3, 2005	I don't hate it, though I do hate parts. The worst thing by far is that Allyson does her own singing in one scene, and I'm so sorry she did. When she figures out what key she's in, she goes flat. The insanely wholesome quality she brings to all her characters is present here, but in a college setting is somewhat less offensive than in, say, The Glenn Miller Story where she's the wife of a bandleader, for Heck's sake, but sleeps through a Louis Armstrong club date because, after all, she's just a tweet widdle girl and it's past her bedtime. I'd have done anything to sit five feet away when Satch performed. The ending of Good News, with the whole cast doing the "Varsity Drag," is fine though, and it's cool that MGM did one of the 20's musicals, sort of, before they ruined Show Boat. Not one of the bad MGM musicals, but not a Roger Edens production either. It's typical of the director, Charles Walters, who can be dull for a half hour but then gets to the part that interests him and brings everything to life. He did Jumbo, which I think you've seen, Mr. G, and this one's like that -- but, alas, no Durante.
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Frank Hale	Sep 13 2009, 06:24 AM Post #4
Balcony Gang, Foist Class Posts: 828 Group: Members Member #59 Joined: October 6, 2005	I forgot to mention yesterday that the 1930 version still exists, minus the last reel. Some excerpts were included in one of the old Dawn of Sound collections. Overall, it looked a lot more sprightly.



panzer the great & terrible	Sep 13 2009, 01:35 PM Post #5
Mouth Breather Posts: 10,340 Group: Members Member #13 Joined: September 3, 2005	That's exciting news; thanks, Frank.
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CliffClaven	Sep 14 2009, 10:52 AM Post #6
Balcony Gang, Foist Class Posts: 231 Group: Members Member #712 Joined: March 30, 2009	Have to say the 47 Good News felt entirely too white bread for me. Perhaps my opinion is tainted -- I have fond memories of being in an amateur version with a clever revival script ("Keep Your Sunny Side Up" is performed by battered football players during halftime, for example). Beyond the songs, the show's greatest charm is raucous 1920's energy. Peter Lawford and friends came off as too domesticated to get down and shimmy. And they messed up a perfectly good nonsense plot by trying to make it sensible. It was like turning Tiger Rag into elevator music.



panzer the great & terrible	Sep 14 2009, 11:21 AM Post #7
Mouth Breather Posts: 10,340 Group: Members Member #13 Joined: September 3, 2005	I agree with every word of that, but it's equally true of almost all musicals, and of course any June Allyson movie is going to be white bread by definition. That woman was the essence of white bread and about as sexy as a moose. One thing I like is that Peter Lawford is so obviously not undergrad age. He cracks me up trying to act young.
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JazzGuyy	Sep 14 2009, 01:33 PM Post #8
Balcony Gang, Foist Class Posts: 2,178 Group: Members Member #110 Joined: June 1, 2006	Yes, and Lawford's singing is more painful even than Allyson's. I never quite figured out what Lawford's talent was. He couldn't sing or dance and wasn't much of an actor. I guess he could sort of do light comedy.



CliffClaven	Sep 14 2009, 07:11 PM Post #9
Balcony Gang, Foist Class Posts: 231 Group: Members Member #712 Joined: March 30, 2009	Music Man, My Fair Lady, Carousel, Oliver . . . those movies may have been overblown and a tad stagebound, but they didn't feel washed out like Good News. And while they're definitely products of when they were made, they still deliver a strong sense of time and place. Good News is too smooth, too subdued and more committed to the 1947 hit parade than the Roaring 20s.



panzer the great & terrible	Sep 14 2009, 11:47 PM Post #10
Mouth Breather Posts: 10,340 Group: Members Member #13 Joined: September 3, 2005	In a TV show called Dear Phoebe Lawford was great as a guy kind of guy who had to do an advice to the lovelorn column. It only lasted one season ('54 or '55) because whoever produced it wouldn't use a laugh track; people didn't go for that for some dumb reason. I loved the show and was a Lawford fan. He had a light touch with dialogue, like William Powell, and I thought of him as the second string Cary Grant. Marcia Henderson, the ultra-cute lady in the show, was about to be a Broadway star in the underrated musical Fanny): she lives in my heart. The horrible boss was Mr Fosdick, played by Charles Lane. You'd remember him if you saw him -- he was all over the place on TV back then. Lawford turned a little sleazy later, and downright pitiful after the Kennedys had him walk the plank, but he had his day in the sun. I won't try to defend Allyson though. She was unqualified for stardom, like Betty Hutton and a few of today's actors.
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panzer the great & terrible	Sep 15 2009, 12:30 AM Post #11
Mouth Breather Posts: 10,340 Group: Members Member #13 Joined: September 3, 2005	Quote: Music Man, My Fair Lady, Carousel, Oliver Cliff, They aren't in the same category. Music Man is agreeable corn, My Fair Lady is a film masterpiece, Carousel is an imperfect rendering of a stage masterpiece, and Oliver is crap.
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CliffClaven	Sep 15 2009, 12:24 PM Post #12
Balcony Gang, Foist Class Posts: 231 Group: Members Member #712 Joined: March 30, 2009	panzer the great & terrible Sep 15 2009, 12:30 AM Quote: Music Man, My Fair Lady, Carousel, Oliver Cliff, They aren't in the same category. Music Man is agreeable corn, My Fair Lady is a film masterpiece, Carousel is an imperfect rendering of a stage masterpiece, and Oliver is crap. Perhaps not, but all of them kept their distinctive virtues when translated to the screen. Oliver may not be in a class with the first three, but what was good about the original show (and, you'll probably agree, what was bad about it) survived intact to the movie screen. Even now, Hollywood's usual impulse is to make movies look like other movies. Grease, almost viciously funny onstage, was fluffed into a giant episode of Happy Days.



panzer the great & terrible	Sep 15 2009, 07:00 PM Post #13
Mouth Breather Posts: 10,340 Group: Members Member #13 Joined: September 3, 2005	I haven't seen the play or the movie of Grease and can't comment. The movie Carousel is candified Hollywood compared to the stage version, though, if that's what we're talking about. Carousel's one of the darkest of all musicals, and R & H's best -- probably the most influential musical after Show Boat, but the movie's like Mary Poppins, and the authors couldn't blame anybody but themselves. It's a botch, poorly cast and repulsively prettified. They took solid material and turned it into goo, the word Time used to describe the film when it came out -- something that stuck in my memory bank all these years because it was so true. Hammerstein invented the modern musical theater. Without the 12-minute park bench scene in Carousel we might never have had Sweeney Todd and the other Sondheim masterpieces. The movie wrecks that scene and others. It's very hard to understand why the Dynamic Duo made a mess of their best work at the peak of their fame, but there are rumors that Rodgers was drinking in a big way, an unusual thing for an upper-middle-class Jewish guy. The stresses of being King of Broadway must have done him in. Ah well. Such is fame.
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CliffClaven	Sep 15 2009, 09:26 PM Post #14
Balcony Gang, Foist Class Posts: 231 Group: Members Member #712 Joined: March 30, 2009	I knew the movie Carousel was in trouble with the opening spot. The two lovers and their world have to seem real to make those sung scenes work, and to ground the fairy-tale fantasy that kicks in after Billy's death. Instead, we open with a cheesy soundstage heaven -- Heavy-handed whimsy and symbolism up front, and there goes the startling shift late in the show -- plus a dead hero telling his life in flashback -- and there goes any suspense about the HIS future. Still, even in this form it's still Carousel and not an Alice Faye vehicle. Ironically, R&H got a bit more conservative after Carousel. Solid shows, great songs, some interesting story choices, but a slight step back to the Oklahoma model. Edited by CliffClaven, Sep 15 2009, 09:27 PM.



panzer the great & terrible	Sep 16 2009, 09:15 AM Post #15
Mouth Breather Posts: 10,340 Group: Members Member #13 Joined: September 3, 2005	Actually the show after Carousel was Allegro, their most experimental (and their best flop). After that failed they got cautious, and you might call The King and I a step back -- it's a dance show like Oklahoma! -- but Me And Juliet and Pipe Dream weren't like Oklahoma! in any way. I'd say the team's decline started with Flower Drum Song, which was squeaky-clean, had a weak structure and no good songs. Whole scenes seem penciled in with an idea to go back and fix them later, which never happened. I'd be interested to see the recent revival and find out if somebody straightened that out (there's a woman with a crush on the hero who doesn't interact with anybody and disappears after her song). The public adored The Sound of Music, but Ocky didn't write the libretto so it doesn't really count as an R&H show, and besides, the movie cut the best song. For me the R&H pictures were all duds. If you clean a Broadway show up you ruin it, and that's never been more true than Oklahoma! If it weren't for Gloria Grahame's cute Ado Annie, the movie would be impossible to watch. It sputters fitfully to life in the dance numbers. South Pacific is the worst of all, with everybody miscast and awful color filters (why not just use gels on the lights?). The King and I is the only one with some flavor of the stage production, and fortunately preserves a Jerome Robbins ballet, but peters out after that. I don't know why you can skip ten years in a musical play but not in a movie, but that seems to be how it is, going by this movie. The end scene where the King dies seems tacked on. It's staged poorly and shot without flair. Flower Drum Song has a few good points -- the lighting is excellent -- but it was timid, dull, and miscast on stage and the film heightened these flaws.
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