Jane Powell

 

There are certain movies that are replayed a lot in our house hold.  The Nightmare Before Christmas, Jurassic Park, Jaws.  All for a variety of reasons.  Nightmare for Jude. Jurassic Park for 90's nostaglia.  Jaws once a year for Fourth of July.

There are certain types of movies that get played a lot too.  We watch a lot of musicals.  I'm a sucker for classic Dream Factory musicals when they are on TCM.  Even if the plot is bad, I love discovering the old songs.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is played a lot.  Not as often as Jamie watched it as a teenager, but a lot.  More than once a year. 

The cinematography that demands wide screen and letterbox television.  Michael Kidd's incredible choreography.  

And Jane Powell's best performance.

Powell's Milly is the glue that holds it all together.  Her rich and clear operatic soprano pared so well with Keel's bass-baritone.  Her comic timing was impeccable.  The role remained her signature and best performance, truly marking her transition from child to adult characters.

An MGM staple contract player, she made the Dream Factory shine.  Throughout her career, her youthful appearance allowed her to project the image of the innocent girl next door throughout her career.  

Career highlights include the previously mentioned Seven Brides and Royal Wedding, in which she played Fred Astaire's wise cracking sister, giving her a chance to keep up with Astaire in a six-minute musical number of witty banter, song, and dance.

Jane Powell passed away yesterday of natural causes in her home at the age of 92.   She was one of our last surviving links to that Golden Age of Hollywood.  

She will be missed.

I miss the studio system

To prove that this blog will be filled with very random musings, today I've been thinking of how I miss the Hollywood studio system.  Not the vertical integration part, where film studios owned the content, the distribution, and the cinema playing the movie.  There is a reason that was struck down as anti-competitive.

Instead, I'm quite fond of the "life on the lot" aspect.  Contract players, long term development contracts with creatives, the soundstages, and the backlot.

To the film viewer, the studio system made it easy to see your favorite players in multiple roles.  It was akin to having a resident acting company.  You can see those actors take on a variety of roles in a variety of pictures; particularly character actors.

Think about Warner Brothers in the early 1940s.  Let's say you loved Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, and Sydney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon.  You could see them all again together in Casablanca the very next year.  In 1943, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet appeared together in Background to Danger, and by 1944, Bogart, Greenstreet, Lorre, and now Claude Rains from Casablanca are together again in Passage to Marseille.  Finally, for a complete change of pace, you could see Greenstreet and  Szőke Szakáll (also from Casablanca) together in Christmas in Connecticut.

With Greenstreet as our through line, that's noir, wartime dramas, and screwball comedy, within rapid succession.  And these are in the first five years of his film career, with some of these films considered among the best ever made.

While the studio system had its abuses (I would point to the history of Judy Garland's life and career as Exhibit A), there were definite benefits to those involved.  Actors, even bit and character actors, could have long-term contracts, guaranteeing work and income.  Similar contracts existed for directors and other crew.  Publicity was controlled (which was a blessing and a curse).  With most production happening on the lot or at one of the backlot locations, there was stability of location provided for the company that rarely exists today.

I guess the big franchise films are the closest equivalents we have now.  The Marvel actors are locked into 3-picture/9-year deals, etc.  But I miss the days when the same players might meet again on a new story.  It can happen now, but no where near as expediently as it could then.

They don't call it the Golden Age for nothing.