Team Experience is revisiting a dozen Judy Garland movies for her Centennial. Here's Nathaniel R...
A behind the scenes shot of Judy's first scene in "Babes on Broadway". She's a fountain of tears in the scene but laughing between takes.
History has a way of shifting truth from facts to a more universally agreed upon fiction. Though The Wizard of Oz is now the movie most associated with Judy Garland, it was not as universally beloved in 1939 when it first premiered. Though it was ostensibly "a hit," the sixth highest grosser of Hollywood's most mythic year, it also carried the whiff of failure since its large budget prevented initial profits. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayor got a much much bigger immediate return on their Garland investment through her other 1939 musical. Babes in Arms (1939) opened just two months after Oz and proved a slightly bigger hit (again "at the time"). The Wizard of Oz proved that Judy could carry a massive picture all on her own but as follow up, the studio didn't get ambitious but reverted to the easier sell -- more "Mickey & Judy!'; Andy Hardy Meets Debutante (1940), Strike Up the Band (1940), Life Begins for Andy Hardy (1941) and today's topic Babes on Broadway (1942) followed...
Hollywood's risk aversion isn't new. They've always chased every success with more of the same. Today they milk every IP for all its worth with "universes" meant to contain multiple individual franchise (more sequels for their money!). Franchises existed back in the Golden Age, too, but they weren't the A list projects and didn't suck up all the media and public adoration oxygen. Instead each studio mostly ran their stable of movie stars and directors ragged and repeated winning pairings, genres, and story formulas. Babes on Broadway completed an unofficial trilogy following Babes in Arms and Strike Up the Band. All three were "let's put on a show!" style musicals (sometimes called 'barnyard musicals') directed by wunderkind Busby Berkeley in which eager teens Mickey & Judy are out to prove their super-sized talents by mounting their own productions. In Babes in Arms they're motivated by trying to save Vaudeville, in Strike Up the Band they're staging shows in high school aiming for big band careers. And in Babes on Broadway they're doing a charity show to send impoverished city children to the country while dreaming of success on... you guessed it, Broadway. All three films were hits and all received at least one Oscar nomination.
The third film takes its time getting to Judy's introduction but it's a fun intro, making comic use of her prolific tears. Mickey meets here in a diner and though she immediately tells him to go away she's soon smitten and takes him right back to her place for a piece of cake. Not a euphemism. The film is 24 minutes in before Judy sings her first song, the Oscar-nominated American songbook classic "How About You?". But the conversation that precedes it is particularly sweet and actually moving in the context of Judy's overall career. It speaks the truth about Garland as a movie star and as an innately lyrical actor. Mickey says she's going to inspire him and bring him good luck...
Judy: That's quite an assignment
Mickey: Not with what you have?
Judy: And just what have I?
Mickey: Well, it's a combination of something sweet, warm... plus a quality that's far away from everybody. It's a reflection of talent, something special lighting everything around you.
Judy: Gee, I didn't know I had that.
and then...
Mickey: Will you sing me a song?
Judy: How do you know I can?
Mickey: Because you sing when you talk, when you walk. Why your eyes are singing right now
Judy: They are? Well, I'll be darned.
Aside from Judy's gorgeous vocals, Busby Berkeley's always capable musical direction, and a very impressive tap dancing solo for fifth-billed Ray McDonald (in one of his four Garland pictures) there isn't a lot to recommend the last of the three Rooney/Garland barnyard musicals. Mostly the picture seems strung together with disconnected bits and bobs: a brief nod to world events in a sequence involving British children separated from their parents those concerned about World War II; a noticeable wig change for Judy Garland in two offstage sequences (why?); lots of manufactured setbacks in staging the musical involving the always welcome Fay Bainter as the assistant to a big Broadway producer and in the Mickey/Judy romance. The disconnections extend to the musical sequences which are fun on occassion but always utterly random, especially a long and unsatisfying sequence where Mickey & Judy imagine themselves as stage stars of the past in famous roles. It's unsurprising to hear that the film had production setbacks involving Judy's always tumultuous personal life -- this time it was an elopment with her first husband in the middle of filming.
Judy, Mickey, Ray McDonald, and Richard Quine in a promo still
Well how about a minstrel show...🎵 does that appeal to you? 🎵
(actually no, Mickey & Judy, it very much does not)
Babes on Broadway may be a relatively happy and then-successful musical but it was the beginning of the end of an era in more than one way and not just because Judy was starting to have movies built around her rather than always being Rooney's girl. Today the film's reputation, what little it still had given the more popular members of the trilogy (Babes in Arms and Strike Up the Band), has tanked courtesy of its highly offensive 12 minute blackface finale. Not that any of those earnest 'backyard musicals' have endured in the way Garland's later musicals have. Which is not to say that this highly specific genre didn't worm its way into popular culture. You don't get Glee, for example, without these antecedents.
For all their dated and/or offensive moments, the 'let's put on a show' musicals do provide a fascinating peak into a long lost Hollywood during the studio era when whole units specialized in specific genres. Like the fabled "Freed Unit" here, at MGM, which could churn out 2-3 musicals a year. It wasn't just their incredible stable of A list musical stars like Garland, Rooney, Kelly, and Astaire, but vast teams and lots of day players trained specifically for this genre. Films like Babes on Broadway represent not just a bygone era, but a largely lost and once widely held skill set.
More for Judy's Centennial
• The Wizard of Oz (1939)
• Babes on Broadway (1942)
• Meet Me in St Louis (1944)
• The Clock (1945)
Tomorrow: Easter Parade (1948)