Jane Falbury (Judy Garland) is trying to make a go of her failing farm while mostly ignoring her wealthy longtime fiancĂ©, Orville (Eddie Braken), when her flighty actress sister (Gloria DeHaven) shows up with an acting troop that includes Joe D. Ross (Gene Kelly) and sidekick Herb (Phil Silvers). Joe is under the impression that the farm is going to be the stage for his new show. Naturally thereâs lots of confusion and lots of singing and dancing.
Summer Stock is more famous now as a documentary of Judy Garlandâs physical and mental health than as a musical film. Garlandâs drug habit was at its worst, or at least as bad as it got where she was also partially functional. Somehow her singing voice is solid. Otherwise, things arenât so good. When she showed up for filming at all, she couldnât follow direction, so her characterâs emotional state has little to do with the movie and more to do with how Garland was feeling at the time. This is a light-as-fluff movie, so her extreme outbursts feel uncomfortable. Since she didnât always show up when she was needed, numbers had to be re-choreographed on set, to remove her. It also meant that proper coverage wasnât filmed leading to some odd editing and lots of continuity errors. And her weight swings are impossible to ignore, apparently leading to her costumes needing to be altered on a consistent basis. Her over-sized collars were meant to draw attention away from her fluctuating waist, but as I find the changes in her face more distracting, they donât do their job. The change in her between 1948âs Words and Music, where she seems healthy, and this is shocking. Sheâs aged at least a decade.
So even if everything else was great, Garlandâs condition was going to pull it down. And it isnât great. ItâsâŠOK. It was meant as an homage/return to the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney âLetâs put on a showâ pics, so weâre not exactly starting with Shakespeare. But Rooney had lost his luster, so they brought in Kelly when Garland got out of the sanatorium.
The songs are nice, but the musical numbers (with one exception) are not good enough to carry the show on their own. Garlandâs voice and Kellyâs dancing help a lot. And Kelly seems to understand the type of film heâs in. When heâs onscreen I donât feel like cringing, so thatâs a plus. Phil Silversâs goofing doesnât make me laugh, but it does fit the tone of the movie.
After theyâd wrapped filming, the powers-that-be decided (rightly) that the movie needed a big musical finish, so they called back Garland and filmed Get Happy. Three months had put her in a less troubling mental place, and she was in remarkably better shape. That number is the high point of the film and a classic. It doesnât fit with the rest of the movie, and her dramatic physical change is impossible to ignore, but Iâd rather have this number in the movie than have it make sense. If you donât stumble upon the entire film on free TV, then just look up this one number. Iâll help:
My other reviews of Gene Kelly films: Cover Girl (1944), Anchors Aweigh (1945), Ziegfeld Follies (1946), The Pirate (1948), Words and Music (1948), On the Town (1949), An American in Paris (1951), Brigadoon (1954), It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), Les Girls (1957), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967).