Strike Up the Band (Busby Berkeley, 1940)

Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in Strike Up the Band

Cast: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Paul Whiteman, June Preisser, William Tracy, Larry Nunn, Ann Shoemaker, Margaret Early, Francis Pierlot, Virginia Brissac, George Lessey, Enid Bennett, Howard Hickman, Sarah Edwards, Milton Kibbee, Helen Jerome Eddy. Screenplay: John Monks Jr., Fred F. Finkelhoffe. Cinematography: Ray June. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons, John S. Detlie. Film editing: Ben Lewis. Music: Leo Arnau, George Stoll.

At one point in Strike Up the Band, the kids put on a show that's a burlesque of a "Gay Nineties" melodrama. Which might remind us that 1890 and 1940 were not so remote from each other as 2020 is from 1940. We might even look at a film like High School Musical (Kenny Ortega, 2006) or a TV series like Glee (2009-2015) as a burlesque of Strike Up the Band, except they took the subject matter more seriously than the kids in the 1940 movie did the material of old-time melodrama. Strike Up the Band is a still-honored subgenre, the "hey, kids, let's put on a show" musical. It has all the caricaturable excesses of its kind: big musical numbers that would never fit on an actual stage; the struggle to raise money for the show; the setback when one kid gets sick; the protagonist struggling with whether to become a musician or a physician; the teen romance that isn't quite gelling; the kindly, understanding mother; and even a rousing finale that actually waves the flag. Unfortunately, it's also something of a dud, especially considering the talent involved: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, and direction by Busby Berkeley. But this is the Berkeley of the MGM years, not the unfettered "choreographer of space" of the Warner Bros. musicals of the early 1930s -- or even the Berkeley who snuck over to 20th Century Fox in 1943 and gave Carmen Miranda a tutti-frutti hat in one of the craziest moments in The Gang's All Here. At MGM he was reined in too much, though you can sense him yearning to break free in numbers like the title sequence and "Do the La Conga." Garland sings some mostly unmemorable songs well -- though MGM bought the rights to the 1927 stage musical by George and Ira Gershwin, it retained only the title song; the rest are by Roger Edens and the film's producer, Arthur Freed, along with some period oldies for the melodrama sequence. And Rooney is as manic as he ever got on film: dancing, mugging, and frenetically playing the drums. Still, at 120 minutes, Strike Up the Band sags a little too often, especially in a stop-motion puppetry sequence in which Rooney imagines conducting an orchestra made up of fruit -- an idea that Vincente Minnelli came up with and producer Freed enthusiastically adapted. Better songs and a brighter supporting cast might have helped, and the 40-year-old hairlines on some of the supposed high school students are too much in evidence.

Anchors Aweigh (George Sidney, 1945)

Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in Anchors Aweigh

Cast: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, José Iturbi, Dean Stockwell, Pamela Britton, Rags Ragland, Billy Gilbert, Henry O'Neill, Carlos Ramirez, Edgar Kennedy, Grady Sutton, Leon Ames, Sharon McManus. Screenplay: Isobel Lennart, Natalie Marcin. Cinematography: Charles P. Boyle, Robert H. Planck. Art direction: Randall Duell, Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Adrienne Fazan. Music: George Stoll.

Anchors Aweigh is not in the top tier of MGM musicals. It doesn't have the smooth integration of story with music found in Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and An American in Paris (1951) or Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain (1952). What it does have is Kelly in his breakthrough film, blazing with his uniquely muscular dancing style in some great set pieces, not only the famously beloved sequence in which he dances with Jerry the Mouse, but also in the charming "Mexican Hat Dance" with little Sharon McManus and the spectacular "La Cumparsita" that has him doing stunt leaps and swinging from a curtain to a balcony occupied by Kathryn Grayson. Kelly did the choreography for these numbers, and they depend heavily on long takes that show the dancing to best advantage. But the film also has Frank Sinatra, still in his skinny idol-of-the-bobby-soxers phase, which earned him top billing -- Grayson is billed second and Kelly third. He's in fine voice, and the phrasing that would make him one of the best singers who ever lived is already in evidence; he was also coached by Kelly into being a more-than-passable dancing partner. Unfortunately, the film also has Grayson, the least charming and talented of the run of Hollywood sopranos that began with Jeanette MacDonald and encompassed singers like Grace Moore, Lily Pons, and Deanna Durbin before fizzling out with Jane Powell. Plus there's José Iturbi, the pianist and conductor whose movie stardom remains a mystery (at least to me); he hashes up the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in a number shot at the Hollywood Bowl where he's accompanied by a stage full of young pianists. The plot, such as it is, hangs on Kelly and Sinatra getting Grayson, with whom both have fallen in love, an audition with Iturbi at MGM and then figuring out which of them will get Grayson. The whole thing unaccountably earned an Oscar nomination for best picture, but it also landed Kelly his only nomination as best actor. It was also nominated for cinematography and for Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn's song "I Fall in Love Too Easily," which Sinatra introduced, and it won for George Stoll's scoring.