That's Entertainment! Page #2

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You're much sweeter, goodness knows

Honeysuckle rose

I don't buy sugar

You just have to touch my cup

You're my sugar

It's sweet when you stir it up

When I'm takin' sips

From your tasty lips

Seems the honey fairly drips

You're confection

Goodness knows

You're my honeysuckle rose

You're my honeysuckle rose

- 'Cause it's one

- Two

Three strikes, you're out

at the old ball game

When Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly

teamed up for a series of films...

the results were irresistible.

This is one of their best. ;

Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

Thou swell, thou witty

Thou sweet, thou grand

Wouldst kiss me pretty?

Wouldst hold my hand?

Both thine eyes are cute, too

What they do to me

Hear me holler,

I choose a sweet lollapalooza in thee

June Allyson, MGM's most popular

musical sweetheart...

in Rodgers and Hart's Words and Music.

Two rooms and kitchen

I'm sure would do

Give me just a plot of

Not a lot of land

And thou swell

Thou witty, thou grand

Everybody's favorite college musical...

Good News starring June Allyson

and Peter Lawford.

Those sure were the good old days.

The boy, "garcon"

His girl, "la fille"

It's good, "c'est bon"

The show, "fini"

The moral to this tale

Is not just "parlez-vous"

Send her a billet-doux

Tell her her eyes are blue

They sure are blue.

"Je vous adore"means

I love you

What wonderful years those were at MGM.

One day, I remember meeting a terribly

handsome young man from England.

He'd just started work at the studio.

Naturally, I fell wildly in love with him.

I still adore him.

He's still one of my closest

and dearest friends.

Peter Lawford.

This building, or what's left of it...

was, among other things,

Tait College in Good News.

You might say that June Allyson,

Mel Torm, and I graduated from here.

We were all under contract to MGM

in those days.

And the studio pretty much told us

what pictures we were gonna appear in.

They put us in dramas, comedies

and in my case...

don't ask me why, an occasional musical.

As a singer or dancer, I was ill-equipped

to compete with Astaire or Kelly...

but we did what we were told to do.

When I first came to MGM,

the world was at war.

For the Gls overseas and the audiences

here at home...

the musicals were

a very special kind of escape...

both during the war and afterwards.

The films we made here

had a certain style.

A look that was unmistakable.

Whether it was the directing,

or the writing, or the scenery...

the costumes, the lighting,

I don't really know.

But somehow you could always tell

that it was an MGM movie.

Especially the musicals.

All right, cut it.

Print it, Jane.

All right, take me into No. 1.

Okay, No. 1.

Can you see your marks, Joe?

- Okay, everybody.

- Quiet! We're rolling.

Speed. Action.

The studio was constantly experimenting,

constantly showcasing new talent.

Like Debbie Reynolds

and Carleton Carpenter...

in Two Weeks:
With Love.

Said the chimpy to the monk

Said the monkey to the chimp

All night long they'd chatter away

All day long they were happy and gay

Swinging and singing

in a honky-tonky way

Means, "Monk, I love but you"

Bab-a dab-a dab in monkey talk

means, "Chimp, I love you, too"

Then the big baboon, one night in June

He married them, and very soon

They went upon their

aba daba honeymoon

Elizabeth Taylor starred

in A Date With Judy.

One of the first in a new wave

of teenage musicals...

most of them produced by Joe Pasternak.

That isn't Elizabeth's voice you're hearing.

MGM kept her too busy

to rehearse and record.

But her co-star, Jane Powell,

quickly became one of the studio's...

most popular young talents.

As an old

native-born

Californian would say

It's a most unusual day

There are people meeting people

There is sunshine everywhere

There are people greeting people

And a feeling of spring in the air

It's a most unusual time

I keep feeling my temperature climb

If my heart won't behave in the usual way

Well, there's only one thing to say

It's a most unusual, most unusual

Most unusual day

Here she comes!

Hey, Jim, you better get the rig

She's got a list of passengers

that's pretty big

And they'll all want lifts to Brown's Hotel

'Cause lots of them been travelin'

for quite a spell

All the way from California

On the Atchison, Topeka

On the Atchison, Topeka

On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe!

George Sidney's The Harvey Girls

starred Judy Garland and Ray Bolger.

And this Oscar-winning song was written

by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer.

In this day and age

Girls don't leave home

But if ya get a hankerin'

You wanna roam

Our advice to you is run away

On the Atchison, Topeka

and the Santa Fe

All aboard!

We came across the country lickety-split

rolling ninety miles an hour

I can't believe I'm here at last

When you go traveling, it's best for you

To take the Atchison, Topeka

and the Santa Fe

I can't believe that anything

would go so fast

Then you pull that throttle

Whistle blows

A-huffin'and a-puffin', and away she goes

All aboard for California

On the Atchison

On the Atchison, Topeka

On the Atchison, Topeka and

On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe

By the 1950s the movie musical

was reaching a level...

of inventiveness and sophistication

that was pretty hard to top...

even by today's standards.

But it wasn't always like that.

Here's someone to tell you about it.

And he's pretty hard to top, too.

Mr. James Stewart.

In the late 1920s and early '30s...

these 200 acres of real estate

were seeing a panic, pandemonium.

Sound pictures had replaced silent films

virtually overnight.

The only actor in town that wasn't worried

was Rin Tin Tin.

As long as he could bark,

sound was no threat to him.

For MGM and the rest of Hollywood,

there were gloomy days ahead.

Some of the biggest silent stars

spoke with thick foreign accents.

Others had a lisp

or talked through their noses.

The early microphones seemed

to exaggerate the flaws...

that silent film had hidden.

As quickly as the sound stages went up,

careers collapsed.

The studio heads were desperate.

Where would the new stars, the new

personalities come from, they wondered.

The answer was obvious.

From the theater, from Broadway.

Theatrical experience suddenly became

a passport to Hollywood...

even if it meant no more than

a few weeks of summer stock.

Over the next few years,

a steady stream of hopefuls...

marched through the gates of every studio

in town, including MGM.

I should know, I was one of those

hungry young actors from the East.

- Sam, is everything all right?

- Okay, Fred.

- How are the cameras?

- All right.

Bob, how are your lights?

All set, whenever you are.

Good. How's the music...

Musicals were the most popular

commodities in the early '30s.

And they were cranked out

at an incredible rate.

Most of them really weren't very good.

But if audiences suffered,

they didn't complain.

The real victims were the dramatic actors.

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