Living in a Big Way

A good, little known Kelly effort
This movie has flaws (mainly its female co-star), but it is well worth seeing. This was the first movie Gene Kelly made after emerging from the Navy after WWII,and it was a flop (I think people were just tired of seeing movies about returning vets). Kelly is absolutely charming in this, and it should have been a much better movie than it turned out to be--it was directed by the same man who did the delightful classic "My Man Godfrey." Unfortunately, the "zany" humor just misses a lot in this one. However, Gene Kelly has a must-see dance number where he cavorts in and around a building site with a bunch of children, and another charmer called "Fido and Me" in which his partner is a little pooch. The worst flaw about this film, however, is that Kelly ends up with the WRONG GIRL at the end, and I truly believe that if the ending had been rewritten to pair Kelly with Philis Thaxter, the war widow who is in love with him, (and with whom he has a...

Thank Goodness for Gene!
Just how bad, I wondered, could a big MGM musical from 1947 with Gene Kelly really be? Had to see it.

MISGUIDED is the word that comes to mind. Louis B. Mayer's hot new "find" Marie McDonald isn't really awful --merely bad.

As intially filmed, the movie was NOT a musical; it contained the opening "pre-war" dance number to set up the relationship(it's actually very nice and atmospheric--real 40's-type romance); Gene's fabulous dancing is explained much later in the film when he say's "I might go back to dancing". After he returns from the war (the bulk of the story), the film then becomes a romantic comedy, with the understated, whimsical, and charming Mr. Kelly chasing after this dullard wife of his. The writers threw in all of the "clever" stock character types: daffy parents (Charles Winniger and Spring Byington), tough, wise old grandma (Jean Adair), cynical, supercilious butler (Clinton Sundberg), etc, etc...but the film never goes ANYWHERE with these people because it...

A Little Gem
This little gem needs to be released on DVD. Kelly has three great dances and his comic timing is superb. He is simply charming in the role of Leo Gogerty.

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