Classic of the Week: "It's Always Fair Weather"
8:00 p.m. Thursday on Turner Classic Movies
Is “Singin’ in the Rain” the best musical to ever come out of Hollywood? Sure, and it’s a great gateway drug for turning kids on to old movies. But favorite musicals are another matter, and mine has always been “It’s Always Fair Weather,” from 1955. It’s another gem from Arthur Freed’s musicals unit at MGM, with a script by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, music by a young André Previn, and Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen teaming up to direct for the first time since “Singin’ in the Rain.” The stars are Kelly, Dan Dailey, and Michael Kidd, the latter a gifted choreographer — he did the barn dance in “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” — in his only major dancing role in a movie.
The three play World War II G.I.s who paint the town red on their return home and who vow to meet again in ten years — at which point they have nothing in common. Kidd’s character runs a hamburger stand, Dailey’s an ulcerated ad executive, and Kelly’s a gambler and pool hustler just this side of a gangster. Naturally, they hate each other. Cyd Charisse plays the producer of a “This Is Your Life”-style TV show (hosted by a deranged and very funny Dolores Gray in the Lina Lamont role, more or less), and she books the three “friends” hoping to milk their reunion for sentimental value.
That’s the set-up, and if it was cynical enough to put critics and audiences off the movie in 1955, it’s just the right amount of jaded for a 21st century viewer, with potshots at the advertising business and early television that carry a sting, relevance-wise. More to the point, “It’s Always Fair Weather” features four of the most delightful song and dance numbers you’ll ever see: The three soldiers dancing with trash can lids on their feet (the movie was shot in Cinemascope for a reason), Charisse charming the pugs in a boxing gym (“Baby, You Knock Me Out”), Gray gunning down her suitors in a diva fit (“Thanks a Lot But No Thanks”), and Kelly doing a tap dance on roller skates that on a technical level is simply astounding.
I include the first of these to wet your whistle; after that you’re on your own. “It’s Always Fair Weather” is on the Turner Classic Movies channel today (9/16) at 8:00 p.m.; it can also be rented at Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, and elsewhere.
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