Quote:
The movie was written by Natalie Marcin and Isobel Lennart and directed by George Sidney.It won the Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture. In 2001, Kevin Spacey purchased this Oscar statuette at a Butterfield & Butterfield auction and returned it to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Anchors Aweigh was also nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Gene Kelly), Best Cinematography, Color (Robert Planck, Charles P. Boyle), Best Music, Song (for Jule Styne (music) and Sammy Cahn (lyrics) for “I Fall in Love Too Easily”), and Best Picture.

The movie is famous for a musical number where Gene Kelly dances with Jerry the Mouse (the voice of Sara Berner). Kelly is live action while Jerry is animated. Tom the Cat appears briefly in the sequence as a butler. Originally, the producers wanted to use Mickey Mouse for this segment, but Walt Disney refused to allow his character to be used in an MGM film. Film buffs are still puzzled over Disney’s refusal to cooperate with MGM because Mickey Mouse had actually appeared with Jimmy Durante in MGM’s 1934 comedy Hollywood Party and Disney even produced a short Technicolor animated musical novelty for the same film.

The film offers rare glimpses of the MGM studio, including the Thalberg Building, the backlot, the commissary, and one of the soundstages, as well as an on-screen performance by the studio orchestra. There is also a memorable scene at the Hollywood Bowl, where Sinatra sings “I Fall in Love Too Easily,” after Iturbi and a group of young pianists have performed a spectacular arrangement of Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. In the audition scene with Iturbi, Grayson sings a special arrangement for soprano and orchestra of the waltz from Peter Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings. Many of the memorable scenes in this film were later featured in the That’s Entertainment tributes to MGM.

Anchors.Aweigh.1945.576p.BluRay.x264.AC3.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 19 min
Size: 	2.15 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	790x576 
Aspect ratio:  	1.372
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 681 kb/s
BPP: 	0.154
Audio
#1:  	English 1.0ch AC-3 @ 448 kb/s (Mono)

https://nitro.download/view/B5BB8631F8C51C8/Anchors.Aweigh.1945.576p.BluRay.x264.AC3.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English, French, Japanese, Spanish

The post George Sidney – Anchors Aweigh (1945) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

This MGM musical lifts the premise of Pride and Prejudice and plunks it down into the early 1900s. S.Z. Sakall is a restaurateur who has decreed that his seven daughters must marry in order of age — the oldest one first. Kathryn Grayson isn’t the oldest, but she has the sweetest singing voice, and it is she who bags the first husband (Van Heflin). For the record, the remaining six sisters are played by Marsha Hunt, Frances Rafferty, Cecilia Parker, Peggy Moran, Dorothy Morris and Frances Raeburn. Seven Sweethearts was produced by Joe Pasternak, who’d been doing much the same material when in charge of Universal’s Deanna Durbin vehicles. ~ Hal Erickson

Note: this is NOT set in the early 1900s. I think Hal needs to watch a bit more closely, if he watches at all.

1.46GB | 1h 37m | 720×480 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/14E700A2063CAD0/Seven.Sweethearts.1942.DVDRip.x264-FuFu.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:None

The post Frank Borzage – Seven Sweethearts (1942) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

In the film, Grayson plays Ina Massine, an opera diva, and Johnson is her ex-husband, Dr. Lincoln Bartlett, who is now engaged to Agnes Young (Paula Raymond), the daughter of a doctor. Ina wants Lincoln back and pulls all kinds of shenanigans to get her man. The film was really just an excuse to watch Grayson sing selections from La Bohème, although curiously, she was not the first actress cast in the role. June Allyson had the part but was later replaced. Likewise, Robert Walker was set to play Lincoln Bartlett but was replaced with Van Johnson.

Throat specialist Dr. Lincoln I. Bartlett is dismayed when his ex-wife, opera diva Ina Massine, returns to New York after three years and suggests that their divorce may have been a mistake. Although Linc is now engaged to Agnes Young, the daughter of his mentor, Dr. Carleton Radwin Young, Ina is determined to win Linc back. She arranges with her old friend, impressario “Delly” Delacorte, to be the featured singer for a doctor’s orchestra in which Linc plays the oboe, and pretends not to care when the flustered Linc introduces her to Agnes. A few days later, Ina lets herself into their old apartment while Linc is showering. He tries to make her leave, because his older brother Chris, a toy manufacturer who has always been attracted to Ina, and Agnes will soon arrive for drinks, but just as Linc grabs Ina’s arm to throw her out, Chris and Agnes come in. Although annoyed, Agnes accepts Linc’s explanation of what happened.

https://nitro.download/view/31EB2898F6CC79D/Grounds_for_Marriage.avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Robert Z. Leonard – Grounds for Marriage (1951) first appeared on Cinema of the World.