There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)

Puttin' on a show has long been a successful movie plot. This 1954 take spins a different aspect of the premise. Terry and Molly Donahue had been a successful vaudeville team in the golden days of vaudeville. As vaudeville declined they raised two boys and a girl they hoped would take their place in show business. One son becomes a priest. The daughter and the other son make it big in show business. The show business son is soon sidetracked by an intent on making it in show business female performer. After much realistic behind the scenes look at the dark side of show business all turns out right in the end for Ethel Merman, Marilyn Monroe, Mitzi Gaynor, songwriter Irving Berlin, Dan Dailey, Donald O'Connor and Johnny Ray. Ethel rocks the boat in Tattooed and There's No Business Like Show Business. The wide screen version today marketed on commercial DVD is a joy to watch.

With Betty Grable slowly moving out of the film industry into live appearances and television, somebody had to take over the matriarchal stages of 20th Century Fox movies, and after her smash hit with the movie version of "Call Me Madam", Ethel Merman was just the one to do it. "There's No Business Like Show Business" is almost identical in one way or another to practically every Fox musical dating back to "George White's Scandals". It's a show business story, of course, focusing on a vaudeville family which started with mother and father (here played by Grable's former partner, Dan Dailey), and continued with their grown children (Donald O'Connor, Mitzi Gaynor, and Johnny Ray). Obviously, O'Connor and Gaynor have musical theater talents, while crooner Ray wasn't much of an actor, his character here taking a "higher calling" which for some reason upsets mama Merman.Coming into this wake of family drama with Irving Berlin music behind it is the sexpot Marilyn Monroe who wins the wrath of Merman by taking on their big number, "Heat Wave", for herself. Merman isn't too happy that other son O'Connor is obviously nuts about Monroe, but this is a 20th Century Fox musical, and nobody stays mad at nobody for long. To make this a bit different than all of the other similar musicals, 20th added Cinemascope into the mix, and packed every musical number with every available extra on the lot, especially for the lavish finale set in the now long gone Hippedrome.Musically, "There's No Business Like Show Business" can't be beat, with a blonde wigged Merman very funny while singing "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody" and being ignored by husband Dailey, squiring around the chorus girls as she falls off a stage bench. Merman and Dailey are also ripe for a little parody from their own children who amusingly imitate them in a reprise of "When the Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam". Monroe not only heats up with "Heat Wave" but serves more electricity with "After You Get What You Want". There will probably be a mixed reaction to Gaynor and Merman in military drag when they sing the somewhat tacky "A Sailor's not a Sailor 'till a Sailor's Been Tattooed". To add to the audaciousness of it all is a huge elephantine revisit to "Alexander's Ragtime Band" which, in set as well as length, seems to go on forever.Overall, this is a nice big entertainment that misses something if not seen in its original Cinemascope presentation, and should probably be caught on the big screen if revived. When the entire company gets together for the title song finale, you'll feel relieved that the lengthy movie is coming to a close. But I guarantee, you'll be humming one of the songs before you've even removed the tape or DVD from your player and shut off the T.V.

Despite her fabulous vocals, There's No Business Like Show Business is nearly bogged down by Ethel Merman's over-the-top acting style. Also, 20th Century Fox seems to be showcasing costar Marilyn Monroe much more favorably in this picture. For instance, scenes with Monroe give a generous amount of close-ups of her. But scenes with the other characters when she is absent from the action are devoid of close-ups. The viewers should have an intimate relationship with all the characters in the story, not just with Marilyn Monroe.Merman and costar Donald O'Connor previously appeared in Call Me Madam, a year earlier at Fox. And back in the 1930s, Miss Merman appeared in the studio's smash hit Alexander's Ragtime Band, which also featured her singing classic Irving Berlin tunes. She wasn't so flamboyant in that production, and Marilyn Monroe was still Norma Jean Baker in those days.

That expression, jumping the shark, refers to doing what you've done well just that one time too many. Suddenly the spell is broken and can never be recast.I'm a fan of MM sex comedies like "Blondes" and "Millionaire" but this one came across as overblown and shallow. It left a bad taste in my mouth. It was the Donald O'Connor character that I couldn't abide. He seemed like the creepiest kind of low-life, plying women with liquor and lies to get them into bed. And when a film makes a sunshine boy like O'Connor seem sleazy, it's got to have something wrong. The cast, score, musical production, none better anywhere. What brings the film down is its screenplay. The story centers around what men will do to win MM's sexual favors, and how she plays on their schemes to get what she wants.I couldn't find romance here. Or wit, or the sense that the people involved were enjoying themselves. Quite the opposite -- all the overdone Berlin tunes can't hide the weariness that lies just beneath what is so superficial.