Film Series
That’s Entertainment!: MGM Musicals Part I
No studio did musicals better than MGM: theirs were bigger, splashier, more tuneful, and more innovative than any others. During Hollywood’s Golden Age, the MGM lot was home to a staggering array of talent: legendary producer (and lyricist) Arthur Freed; the writing duo of Betty Comden and Adolph Green; songwriter and arranger Roger Edens; stars like Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, and Fred Astaire; and visionary directors like Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen. Their work represents the Dream Factory at its dreamiest and the apotheosis of this quintessentially American art form.
MGM’s wondrous musical fantasy remains a pinnacle of studio-era craftsmanship.
Tap-dancing sensation Eleanor Powell displays superhuman hoofing in this tuneful romance.
DeMille’s outré Pre-Code whatzit is one of the most unclassifiable films of the 1930s.
The famed “Lubitsch touch” is on full display in this elegantly naughty Pre-Code operetta.
Judy Garland stars in Minnelli’s sublime evocation of early 20th-century America.
Laurel and Hardy run wild in this classic adaptation of Victor Herbert’s operetta.
Dynamic duo Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland propel this let’s-put-on-a-show charmer.
Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra are baseball-playing vaudevillians in this zippy farce.
The MGM musical meets Dali in Vincente Minnelli’s outlandish surrealist fantasy.
A who’s-who of legendary black entertainers star in Minnelli’s Faustian fantasy.
This melodrama was the first Hollywood film to star a cast of all black performers.
Three sailors on 24 hours leave see the Big Apple in this all-time classic.
Mickey Rooney stars in this rosily nostalgic slice of Americana.
The legendary Astaire-Rogers team reunited for one last time in this backstage comedy.
Judy Garland and Gene Kelly star in Vincente Minnelli’s dazzling celebration of artifice.
Judy Garland and Fred Astaire sing Irving Berlin in one of the Freed Unit’s finest.
Judy Garland’s star power carries this musical remake of The Shop Around the Corner.
Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra are sailors living it up on leave in Hollywood.
MGM’s galaxy of stars light up this surreally stylized, Technicolor revue.