Babes in Arms (1939)

Crappy film

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

The story for this film is that Mickey Moran (Mickey Rooney) and Patsy Barton (Judy Garland) are aspiring entertainers and the children of vaudeville performers. Vaudeville has lost its popularity do to movies! Mickey and Patsy's parents are are trying bringback Vaudeville but they are failing . Now Mickey and Patsy now decide to produce their own show in a bid to reach their dreams of stage stardom and save their homes and not end up in a work camp!.I am not sure if this the first movie that has the plot of "Let's Save the ______" by putting on a show. Now the best musical number is at the begging of the film and its the "Good Morning" number. What is great about this number is that is just "Judy" and "Mickey". No fireworks or special effects. ITs two very talented people and a piano. Other numbers in this film range only from "Barely Tolerable" to "Awful". Worth watching once. Funny thing is that this film made more money (At The Time) than "The Wizard of Oz"

Mickey Moran (Mickey Rooney) was born in 1921 to vaudeville stars but vaudeville itself fails in 1928 with the arrival of the talkies. Mickey writes "Good Morning" and plays the piano with singing partner Patsy Barton (Judy Garland). With his parents going on the road by themselves, Mickey proposes for the kids to put on a show themselves.This has the great pairing of Rooney and Garland although they're not always together. It has great songs including "Good Morning" which would hit much bigger in the musical "Singin' in the Rain". I do have to warn about some full-on blackface minstrels due to its era. It's generally Rooney at his youthful height. It has some great song and dance although a big one is the minstrels.

Babes in Arms (1939) ** 1/2 (out of 4) MGM musical was clearly produced to try and show off their young talent. Kids of vaudeville families need to raise some cash because the talkie's are killing their parents careers. Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland play two of the teens who decide to put on a show to raise money and show that vaudeville can be popular like it once was. I had heard a lot of great things about this film but in the end it was rather middle ground more than instant classic. There's a lot to enjoy here but in the end the story itself is rather weak. I guess you really can't blame the studio too much as they were clearly just using this as a way to check their young stars and see who could cut it and who couldn't. The funny thing is that we've got Rooney acting just like he did in BOYS TOWN and Garland acting sweet and innocent, which would become her staple. There's also Margaret Hamilton playing the same type of character that she'd also play in THE WIZARD OF OZ. Rooney and Garland do great work together and their chemistry really jumps off the screen and that includes the film's greatest moment where the two sing "Good Morning". "Oh, Susanna" makes for a very strange moment near the end where we get a minstrel show with Rooney and Garland in blackface. This sequence really stands out and is quite strange to watch today but if you watch enough of these old movies you'll see that many A-list stars appeared in blackface. Guy Kibbee, Charles Winninger, Henry Hull, Grace Hayes and Joseph Grehan round out the cast. One of the more interesting scenes is one where Rooney acts out a scene and impersonates Clark Gable and Lionel Barrymore. In the end, this is a pretty nice film that fans of the stars will want to see but this certainly isn't the masterpiece some make it out as.

For Mickey and Judy fans, Babes in Arms is an absolute must. It's the only one of their films in which one of the two got an Oscar nomination. Mickey Rooney was nominated for Best Actor, personally I think as an afterthought because his competition was Clark Gable for Gone With the Wind, Laurence Olivier for Wuthering Heights, James Stewart for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and the winner Robert Donat for Goodbue Mr. Chips. Not that Mickey's bad, but he really didn't belong with this field.What he and Judy do, they do better than anyone else, put on a show. In fact in this case the 'put on a show' gambit did originate in the original Broadway Musical. Babes in Arms was one of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's best shows it ran for 289 performances in the 1937 season and boasted such Rodgers&Hart classics as Johnny One Note, Way Out West, My Funny Valentine, I Wish I Were in Love Again all of which were discarded for the film. The Lady is a Tramp is only heard instrumentally, my guess is the Code frowned on that lyric. The title song and Where or When are retained. In fact when you come right down to it, only the basic idea the songs mentioned and a couple characters names came over from Broadway.Still Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed wrote Good Morning which is better known from Singin' in the Rain, but it was Judy and Mickey who introduced it here. And a whole lot of other Brown&Freed songs from MGM musicals got interpolated into the score.Douglas MacPhail and Betty Jaynes who were introduced in Sweethearts also are here and sing beautifully. They married, but the marriage and MacPhail's career fell apart and he committed suicide a few years later. He had a great baritone voice, what a shame. The following year he introduced my favorite Cole Porter song, I Concentrate On You in The Broadway Melody of 1940. This was the film Judy Garland did right after The Wizard of Oz and coming along right with her is Margaret Hamilton playing another Miss Gulch like character. One of those spinster ladies who forever pry into other people's business.Believe it or not there was still a lot of prejudice against theatrical people even in 1937. A lot of old vaudeville types like Charles Winninger, Rooney's father in the film, settle in the town of Seaport on Long Island and their presence apparently upsets the ruling families like Hamilton's. When times go bad and vaudeville goes to seed, things get kind of rough for them. The old timers try to take a last tour to raise some money, but instead it's the kids who are up to the latest trends in pop music who save the day.Guy Kibbee is in this also, playing against type as a wise and sympathetic judge, usually the parts MGM reserved for Lewis Stone or Lionel Barrymore. A more typical Kibbee type would be the oafish tycoon in 42nd Street, but he's fine here.Possibly director Busby Berkeley wanted Kibbee, maybe as a good luck charm from that other breakthrough musical of his from his days at Warner Brothers. Of course the musical numbers in the show are set with the usual Berkeley surrealism, a little tempered though from his high flying days at Warner Brothers. That same year Berkeley had done a surreal type number in the Jeanette MacDonald-Lew Ayres film Broadway Serenade and it laid an egg. Someone at MGM must have reined him in.Babes In Arms retains all its charms from 1939 mainly because Mickey Rooney is infectious and Judy Garland's singing is eternal.