Babes In Arms (1939)

Toronto Film Society presented Babes In Arms (1939) on Monday, July 8, 1985 in a double bill with Sunny Side Up as part of the Season 38 Summer Series, Programme 1.

Production Company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.  Producer: Arthur Freed.  Director: Busby Berkeley.  Screenplay: Jack MacGowan and Kay Van Riper, based on the musical by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.  Art Director: Cedric Gibbons, Merrill Pye.  Wardrobe: Dolly Tree.  Photography: Ray June.  Editor: Frank Sullivan.

SONGS:  “Babes in Arms,” “Where or When,” “The Lady is a Tramp” (Rodgers and Hart), “You Are My Lucky Star” (Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown), “I Cried For You” (Freed, Gus Arnheim, and Abe Lyman), “God’s Country” (E.Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen).

Cast:  Mickey Rooney (Mickey Moran), Judy Garland (Patsy Barton), Charles Winninger (Joe Moran), Guy Kibbee (Judge Black), June Preisser (Rosalie Essex), Grace Hayes (Florrie Moran), Betty Jaynes (Molly Moran), Douglas McPhail (Don Brice), Rand Brooks (Jeff Steele), Leni Lynn (Dody Martini), Henry Hull (Madox), John Sheffield (Bobs), Barnett Parker (William), Ann Shoemaker (Mrs. Barton), Margaret Hamilton (Martha Steele), Joseph Crehan (Mr. Essex), George McKay (Brice), Henry Roquemore (Shaw), Lelah Tyler (Mrs. Brice), Lon McCallister (Boy).

1939 was an (perhaps the) annus mirabilis of the American popular film.  Gone With The Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Ninotchka, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Dark Victory, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Wuthering Heights, Stagecoach–these are films which would appear on anybody’s list of the finest fruits of the Hollywood system.  However, though 1939 was only just beyond the first decade of sound, the musical film was rather in the doldrums, and at another turning point.  Gaynor and Farrell (hardly singers anyway) were no longer partners, and Fred and Ginger and Nelson and Jeanette were past their primes.  Babes in Arms is not only the first important film to pair Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.  It was Busby Berkeley’s first film for MGM, coming off the colossal budgets he had had as both choreographer and director at Warners.  And, most important of all for the history of the musical film, it was Arthur Freed’s first film as producer.

Berkeley’s contribution to the film is plainly apparent, but apparently plain when compared to the opulent production numbers for which he is so famous–in such films as the Gold Diggers series, Footlight Parade, 42nd Street, Roman Scandals.  While modern critics deride the finale in Babes in Arms, “God’s Country” (“wince-inducing,” “this rather flabbergasting reevaluation of the relative importance of the world situation”), it is near-vintage Berkeley, even to the young pair’s climactic scaling of a gratuitous but handy ladder.  But the smaller budget forced Berkeley away from the elephantiasis of the earlier films towards a greater concern with the characters and their interactions (a tendency already visible in his earlier film that year, They Made Me a Criminal).

If Berkeley’s career was in decline, Freed’s was emphatically on the rise.  A lyricist (“Singin’ in the Rain,” “Temptation,” and, from this film, “You Are My Lucky Star”) and occasional singer (Leon Ames’s singing voice in Meet Me in St. Louis), Freed put his name, between 1939 and 1960, on most of the best MGM musicals, which means, with few exceptions, the best musicals on film:  not only the best of the later Rooney-Garland films, but also Meet Me in St. Louis (surely her best film after she left the yellow brick road), Till the Clouds Roll By, Summer Holiday (one of his best films), The Pirate, Easter Parade (another of her best), On the Town, An American in Paris, Singin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon, Silk Stockings, Gigi.  In Babes in Arms, we see his organizational capacities at their beginning.

Babes in Arms took little more than the story outline, the title, and three songs (one as background music) from the stage musical by Rodgers and Hart.  And it left out at least three of R. and H.’s best numbers:  “Johnny One Note,” “I Wish I Were in Love Again,” and (most regrettably) “My Funny Valentine.”  The film was largely transformed into a vehicle for the two leading players, with Rooney’s frenetic (and to some tiresome) antics predominating.  For his omnipresence, Variety used an interesting word:  “one of the most extensive performances ever given on screen,” and he was nominated for Best Actor.  But both he and Gable (as Rhett) lost to Donat’s Mr. Chips.

Babes in Arms was the third pairing of Rooney and Garland, whose ages did indeed confirm the title; he was 19, though with more than fifty pictures behind him, including Captains Courageous, and Boy’s Town; she was 17, this her eighth film.  She had made her name as Dorothy the year before; he had confirmed his as Andy Hardy, and their second film together had been Love Finds Andy Hardy (in which she had to compete with both Ann Rutherford and–Lana Turner!)  The film endorsed MGM’s wisdom in bringing the two together as musical and comic partners; and they went on to rack up in all ten films together (if Thousands Cheer and Words and Music count)–including two more Andy Hardys and, most notably, Babes on Broadway and Girl Crazy.  Only less than for Arthur Freed, it was for the two, though separately as well (one can think of either without the other), the beginning of a productive period under the wholesome eye of Louis B. Mayer.

Notes by Barrie Hayne