There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)

The first time you watch this movie, you'll think it's long, boring, and stupid. The second time you watch this movie, you'll love it. I can't begin to tell you why, but it's the truth. (I had the chance to show this film to an audience during a Donald O'Connor film festival. People came up to me weeks later to say that they had caught it again on cable, and loved it the second time through.)

Marilyn is definately "ehh". This movie was filmed during her worst years of personal abuses, and it shows all over her face and her work, lending a shadowy sadness to her character for modern audiences. Donald O'Connor's character also takes on a new depth for modern viewers familiar with his own life's history, oftentimes with a sharp poignance that helps him grab control of so many scenes, and turn his character's story into the strongest sub-plot of the film.

Merman is BRILLIANT as the real head of this family, giving us a wonderfully unique character. Her role as the strong, smart, powerful, and loving mother is truly a standout for the 50's in general, and musicals in particular.

Fmovies: This is one of my favorite movies. It's a nice portrait of a show business family. It's a little on the corny side, but that's what's great about it. This is a great look at a family that began in Vaudeville, and worked their way up to headliners in their own act. The Film does a good job portraying the families closeness, and while it's a little hard to swallow a good looking actor like Dan Daily with someone like Ethel Merman for a wife, the two share a definite chemistry and a lot of humor.

This is probably the best that Ethel Merman ever looked and she is fantastic as the family matriarch and her comic talents work great with her hard-to-handle brood.

Although her part is pretty much left to singing and dancing, Mitzi Gaynor gives a spirited performance that we later see her give in the hit movie "South Pacific" as Nellie Forbush.

Donald O'Connor takes a more dramatic turn as the troubled son Tim. I have to admit, while some of his attempts to act like a drunk are a little hard to believe, his performance is one of his best, and his dancing in the film is almost as good as it was in "Singing In The Rain".

The odd duck out is the eldest brother Johnny Ray, who could certainly belt out a song with all the flamboyance and gusto that made him a star in the fifties. However, his acting skills left a lot to be desired. Still, his bad acting works for the character who was struggling to find his own identity when he decides becomes a priest. Perhaps Johnnie projected his own struggles with his bisexuality to guide him.

The most memorable aspect of this movie is Marilyn Monroe, who star was at it's zenith when this movie was being made. In a smart move, Monroe agreed to star in the film if the studio allowed her to also star in "The Seven Year Itch", but in a lot of ways, I feel this is one of her best movies.

First of all, she was clearly head and shoulders above the rest of the cast in terms of molten sexuality.

An example is in the number "Heatwave", which was initially intended for Mitzi Gaynor. The studio made a wise decision handing it over to Monroe who performed the number with so much heat that it's hard to envision the sweet Gaynor conveying that kind of performance.

The number "After you get what you want you don't want it" was also a standout and Marylin's costume was amazing and a precursor to the outfit Britney Spears would later make famous.

Marilyn also brings her tremendous vulnerability that no other comic actress could convey with believability, Marilyn could play wounded characters, perhaps because she was so wounded herself.

Watching her character suffer over her love for Tim and her desire for a career is very believable.

For me, the most amazing part of this movie are the gorgeous costumes. This movie, surprisingly has fantastic costumes made by the famous Travilla, who had already worked with Marilyn in almost all of her films including "River Of No Return", "Monkey Business" as well as "Gentleman Prefer Blondes" and "The Seven Year Itch".

Every costume seemed tailor made for every character.

This is a treat of a movie, with great music, great dancing, wonderful costumes and mostly Marilyn, who proves she could make anything work. It ranks right up there with some of her greatest work.

Yeah, yeah. It's hokey, it's sentimental, it's gaudy and it's loud. It's also the most entertaining, involving and unpretentious movie about Show Business ever filmed. The cast is perfect, particularly Merman, Daily and O'Connor. (Ethel Merman and Dan Daily as Donald O'Connor's Mom and Dad? Well, maybe it shouldn't have worked, but it does.) Marilyn is not at her best in the "dramatic" scenes, but all 3 of her big numbers are memorable. Johnnie Ray plays a priest(!) Well, at least he could sing. And Mitzi Gaynor hardly sings at all (thankfully), but is given the opportunity to dance quite often (thankfully). It's big, it's garish and it wear its great big heart on its sleeve. A movie to love and watch over and over.

NOTE: For all TNBLSB buffs, one of the numbers that was deleted from the release print for time, has recently been unearthed. It is included in an American Movie Classics' special documentary, entitled "Hidden Hollywood". It includes many musical numbers that were edited out of 20th Century-Fox musicals of the 30's, 40's and 50's. This one is "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better", and is the ONLY number to feature the FOUR Donahues: Ethel, Dan, Mitzi and Donald. It's great. (I don't think anybody would mind sitting through an extra 5 minutes of running time to catch this delightful musical moment.)

There's No Business Like Show Business fmovies. 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.

"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.

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.