Words and Music (1948)

Lyricist Lorenz Hart (Mickey Rooney) was deeply, tragically upset about being short, which is a little odd since he was actually an alcoholic homosexual, but since no one was either of those things in 1940s cinema, it’s being short that bothered him. He teams up with the composer Richard Rodgers (Tom Drake), who is too dull to be any kind of human but loves Hart like a brother, which is awkward since Rodgers was none-too-happy with his partner’s troubled ways. Hart gets turned down by Peggy (Betty Garrett), while Rodgers has better success with Dorothy (Janet Leigh). They also time travel as that’s the only way to explain how they wrote songs more than a decade early (or late) and how they became friends with adults who ought to be children.

Yes, this is a film you need to see. It’s also laughably bad, as a film. In case it isn’t clear, it’s an inaccurate account of Hart’s life. Everything is wrong. People dress wrong, speak wrong, and behave in ways they didn’t. I suppose there can be an excuse for that if the changes make for a more dramatically satisfying story. They don’t, however, I’m guessing they saved a lot of money on wardrobe by dressing everyone in 1948 fashions.

Drake and Rooney don’t help. Together they’d equal one actor as Drake hardly acts and Rooney acts enough for two. Or six. This is comedy stuff, when it’s supposed to be serious. The big death scene would fit into a slapstick parody. Was Rooney over-dosing on cocaine?

So we’ve got an unevenly paced picture, filled with lies, expressed in lame dialog, and filled with interesting acting. It’s a mess as a narrative movie. However, as a musical review, it’s pretty good, and if you watch it from home and can skip from song to song, it’s great. These songs have nothing to do with the “story,” which is all to the better. So we get some of the best performances of the day popping in to do a song. June Allyson does a light and bubbly version of Thou Swell. Mel Tormé matches that with an emotional Blue Moon, which fades next to Lene Horne’s sexy The Lady is a Tramp. Even better is Judy Garland at the top of her game with two songs: I Wish I Were In Love Again and Johnny One Note. (It’s amazing how good she is considering her fragile health at the time; she took the gig to pay off half of her debt to the studio and when it turned out so well, they asked for a second song several months later to pay off the rest.) Best of all is Gene Kelly and Vera-Ellen dancing a jazz ballet to Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. These, and others, are great renditions of great songs. So I’ll give the whole 3-Reels, and suggest you see it at home with your remote control handy.

 

My other reviews of musicals including Gene Kelly: Cover Girl (1944), Anchors Aweigh (1945), Ziegfeld Follies (1946), The Pirate (1948), On the Town (1949), Summer Stock (1950), An American in Paris (1951), Brigadoon (1954), It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), Les Girls (1957), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967).