The folks that brought you Singing In The Rain, Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Cyd Charisse, and Arthur Freed combined their considerable talents to give us one of the last of the great MGM screen musicals in It's Always Fair Weather. The film got two Oscar nominations for Comden and Green for Best Original Screenplay and for Andre Previn for Best Musical Score. Previn also contributed the music for the original songs in this film.
I remember back in 1971 when I did the weekend warrior thing at Fort Polk and Fort Sam Houston I had a number of friends back in the day there. But a few years from now if circumstance ever brought a group of us together we'd find we have very little in common. In fact there are relatives of mine I barely keep up with because of the little we have in common.
Thus did army pals Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, and Michael Kidd find themselves after ten years earlier in David Burns's bar swearing that they would meet there ten years later and still be best pals in 1945 after V-J Day.
Well it's now 1955 and Gene Kelly is a native New Yorker. Michael Kidd actually comes down from Schenectady thinking his two friends will be there. Dan Dailey is an advertising executive working on a third ulcer and happens to be in from Chicago. Both Kelly and Dailey realize the day and half heartedly go to the bar and the three do run into each other. But life has led them down three different paths and they have nothing in common, but military service.
Dailey's firm advertises on a show hosted by Dolores Gray which seems to be a combination Queen For A Day, This Is Your Life, and Candid Camera. Her producer Cyd Charisse thinks the reunion of the veterans would be a great show and she contrives to make sure they're all there for the broadcast. Kelly she gives her personal attention to. He's got the most trouble. He's a fight manager whose heavyweight is going into the tank for gangster Jay C. Flippen.
Mix all those elements and you have a nice original story idea with some good songs, none of which became any kind of hit. The best numbers are by Gene Kelly dancing on rollerskates proclaiming his new found love for Charisse down the city streets just like in Singing In The Rain. I also liked Dolores Gray's numbers as well.
But I like her character as the overbearing TV host. I don't think it was any accident she bears some resemblance to Jean Hagen's Lina Lamont in Singing In The Rain as Comden and Green wrote that screenplay also. Hard to believe there were really shows like Madeline's back in the day.
It's Always Fair Weather, another quality product from the Arthur Freed unit at MGM. You can never go wrong there.
