I'm as much a fan of the musicals of Hollywood's Golden Age as anyone - probably more than most - but this one stumps me.
Playing radio husband and wife personalities, Dan Daily and Betty Grable, who inexplicably dance on their radio show, lurch through 90 minutes+ of mediocre songs and dances, melodrama and good ol' 1950's sexist hilarity for no discernible reason.
The movie opens with a shot of Grable in her underwear, talking to a man, who we see as the camera pans, is her doctor, who gives her the good news: she's pregnant. She rushes from the office straight onto the stage of her radio show, where she proceeds to tell Dan, live on the air, through a series of vague hints, never uttering the word "pregnant".
Cut to a baby shower given by their show-biz cronies during which the mother is all but ignored while the husband is subjected to a series of tasteless jokes regarding his part in the proceedings. Dan of course gets crocked - it's 1950 and everyone drinks like a fish and smokes like a chimney - and Betty has to drive them home. On the way she slams into another car and into a fire hydrant, which is played for a laugh before we discover that Betty is injured. She loses the baby, and a rather unsympathetic doctor tells her it's unlikely that she will ever have another. This is a musical comedy?
This plot twist starts the couple on their quest to adopt, but the head of the agency disapproves of show folk - too unreliable. Nevertheless, they hand Betty a baby; then almost immediately snatch it back on the grounds that they are not suitable after all. There goes baby number two.
The couple distract themselves by going into television and a series of lame musical numbers that not even Grable and Daily can salvage, all broadcast in brilliant color - in 1950. There is one rather bizarre spoof of the musical "South Pacific" which had opened on Broadway the year before, complete with lines taken directly from the score, and a very bad impersonation by Daily of Ezio Pinza, the Broadway lead. The question is, "Why?" The show was not brought to the screen for 8 more years, and one has to wonder just how much of the movie audience had any idea what they were doing.
There is a side distraction in the person of a very young Mitzi Gaynor in her first major role, as a predatory dancer on the show with her eye on Dan. When Betty catches them playing house in his dressing room, she takes the attitude that boys will be boys and shows Mitzi the door.
Another baby comes and goes - don't ask - and the whole mess ends with the original adoption agency deciding that they can have a baby after all, and Betty discovers that she's pregnant again. Now they have three babies.
If you haven't given up long ago, that's their idea of a happy ending.
Add a lackluster David Wayne and Jane Wyatt as a poor man's Comden and Green and the wonderful Louise Beavers in the thankless role of yet another maid, and you have a whole that is far less than the sum of its parts.
Taken all in all, "My Blue Heaven" is a time capsule that you enter at your own risk.
Playing radio husband and wife personalities, Dan Daily and Betty Grable, who inexplicably dance on their radio show, lurch through 90 minutes+ of mediocre songs and dances, melodrama and good ol' 1950's sexist hilarity for no discernible reason.
The movie opens with a shot of Grable in her underwear, talking to a man, who we see as the camera pans, is her doctor, who gives her the good news: she's pregnant. She rushes from the office straight onto the stage of her radio show, where she proceeds to tell Dan, live on the air, through a series of vague hints, never uttering the word "pregnant".
Cut to a baby shower given by their show-biz cronies during which the mother is all but ignored while the husband is subjected to a series of tasteless jokes regarding his part in the proceedings. Dan of course gets crocked - it's 1950 and everyone drinks like a fish and smokes like a chimney - and Betty has to drive them home. On the way she slams into another car and into a fire hydrant, which is played for a laugh before we discover that Betty is injured. She loses the baby, and a rather unsympathetic doctor tells her it's unlikely that she will ever have another. This is a musical comedy?
This plot twist starts the couple on their quest to adopt, but the head of the agency disapproves of show folk - too unreliable. Nevertheless, they hand Betty a baby; then almost immediately snatch it back on the grounds that they are not suitable after all. There goes baby number two.
The couple distract themselves by going into television and a series of lame musical numbers that not even Grable and Daily can salvage, all broadcast in brilliant color - in 1950. There is one rather bizarre spoof of the musical "South Pacific" which had opened on Broadway the year before, complete with lines taken directly from the score, and a very bad impersonation by Daily of Ezio Pinza, the Broadway lead. The question is, "Why?" The show was not brought to the screen for 8 more years, and one has to wonder just how much of the movie audience had any idea what they were doing.
There is a side distraction in the person of a very young Mitzi Gaynor in her first major role, as a predatory dancer on the show with her eye on Dan. When Betty catches them playing house in his dressing room, she takes the attitude that boys will be boys and shows Mitzi the door.
Another baby comes and goes - don't ask - and the whole mess ends with the original adoption agency deciding that they can have a baby after all, and Betty discovers that she's pregnant again. Now they have three babies.
If you haven't given up long ago, that's their idea of a happy ending.
Add a lackluster David Wayne and Jane Wyatt as a poor man's Comden and Green and the wonderful Louise Beavers in the thankless role of yet another maid, and you have a whole that is far less than the sum of its parts.
Taken all in all, "My Blue Heaven" is a time capsule that you enter at your own risk.