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Created Jul 24, 2014 09:37PM PST • Edited Apr 08, 2018 10:13AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   There’s No Business Like Show Business and there was no show business phonier than vaudeville, till movies. So an overtly phony movie about vaudeville makes for a phony convergence. It was perhaps the last of the musical extravaganzas, a calorically rich compendium of Irving Berlin’s showstopping song n’ dance numbers, including Alexander’s Ragtime Band & After You Get What You Want You Don’t Want It.

   Marilyn Monroe – never sexier – performs that last, in one of several movie-stealing scenes. Of course, the entire movie is full of movie-stealing scenes by not just Marilyn, but Mitzi Gaynor, Donald O’Connor, Ethel Merman, Dan Dailey & Johnny Ray. Each is a spectacular song & dance performer and each gets a handful of showstopping numbers, the movie being essentially an Irving Berlin jukebox musical.

   An apotheosis of American cultural hegemony, TNB-LSB opens with the 20th Century Fox fanfare and features Ethel Merman belting out the title song – her signature song – as only she could do. It was 1954.

   Don’t think of it as heavy, ‘cause it’s anything but heavy, at least heavy in a serious way.

   It’s a two hour milkshake, which gets a bit rich for me, even if much of it is an utter delight.

   There’s No Business Like Show Business’s showiness ultimately wears on you halfway thru. After about a dozen spectacular song & dance numbers, you’re like “Oh no, not another number.” Then it’s a delightful number. Dancing With The Stars fans, as I once was, will be delighted by all the terrific numbers, the likes of which would mostly score a combined 33 from the Judges. If that makes sense, it’s your kinda movie.

4. Acting

   Perfect 5.0

   Vaudeville was the hardest-working form of show business ever. Vaudeville stars had to do both song & dance, and the stellar cast of TNB-LSB also had to act light comedy, at which they are very capable.

   The Five Donahues

   • Mitzi Gaynor does the sexiest song and dance number ever, even though another girl in the cast outshines her. No, not Ethel Merman as her Mother, though she’d be happy you thought so.
   • Donald O’Connor is simply money in song & dance comedies, as he proved in the greatest of them all – Singin’ in the Rain. He’s outstanding in TNB-LSB also. His number in a kilt created the first time I was happy to see a man’s skirt fly up.
   • Ethel Merman is indomitable, possesses big brass lungs and is a first rate comedienne. Legend
   • Dan Dailey is a revelation to 21st Century eyes as her husband and performing/business partner, or maybe that’s the other way around? Toothy and flat out terrific, he’s perhaps my favorite song & dance man in a movie that also stars Donald O’Connor.
   • Johnnie Ray was a real life teen idol – the Cry Guy. Steve Donahue, oldest kid in the Five Donahues, was his big movie moment. IMDb says “Johnnie Ray never appeared in another A-list motion picture.”

   Marilyn Monroe

   She is incandescent as usual in a movie she apparently hated making. No wonder, as Heat Wave is the first Marilyn Monroe number I’ve ever found myself not liking. Still she’s terrific in all the others, especially After You Get What You Want You Don’t Want It. Va, Va, Va Voom.

   Bit Players

   • Richard Eastham as bigtime vaudeville producer Lew Harris
   • Hugh O’Brian – handsome Hugh O’Brian – plays Irving Berlin’s proxy who declares he’s gonna marry Mitzi Gaynor’s super cute character. O’Brian became a big TV star 20 years later.
   • Frank McHugh as Eddie Dugan, Marilyn Monroe’s agent
   • Rhys Williams as a kindly Priest

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Perfect 5.0

8. Male Costars Perfect 5.0

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Irving Berlin is uncredited other than atop the poster, yet his unparralled songbook powers the picture. See the songs listed below. All Berlin. All Vaudeville.

    Exuberantly phony: vaudeville – the phoniest show biz – with a family who are as phony offstage as on.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

    Walter Lang! Hoorah!!

12. Play Good 3.0

    Phoebe & Henry Ephron, working from a story by Lamar Trotti, have their fingerprints all over the screenplay. Nora Ephron learned well from her parents, as did sisters Amy, Hallie and Delia Ephron.

    Thus we are treated to some brilliant lines amid a sea of preciousness.

    • “Look for some fancy hat tossing by the NY critics.”
    • “The corn is growing tall, spelled H.A.M.”

13. Music Perfect 5.0

    18 Outstanding Irving Berlin Songs, including Reprises

    • After You Get What You Want You Don’t Want It Performed by Marilyn Monroe
    • Heat Wave Performed by Marilyn Monroe
    • Lazy Performed by Marilyn Monroe, Mitzi Gaynor and Donald O’Connor
    • There’s No Business Like Show Business Performed by the cast
    • You’d Be Surprised Performed by Marilyn Monroe
    • Alexander’s Ragtime Band Performed by the cast
    • There’s No Business Like Show Business Sung by Ethel Merman
    • A Sailor’s Not a Sailor (‘Til a Sailor’s Been Tattooed) Sung by Ethel Merman and Mitzi Gaynor
    • A Man Chases a Girl (Until She Catches Him) Sung by Donald O’Connor and Marilyn Monroe. Danced by Donald O’Connor
    • A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody Sung by Ethel Merman. Danced by Dan Dailey
    • Simple Melody Sung by Ethel Merman
    • When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam’ Sung by Ethel Merman and Dan Dailey. Later performed by Mitzi Gaynor and Donald O’Connor as their grown kids
    • Alexander’s Ragtime Band Sung by Ethel Merman, Dan Dailey, Donald O’Connor, Mitzi Gaynor and Johnnie Ray
    • If You Believe Sung by Johnnie Ray
    • Let’s Have Another Cup o’ Coffee Sung by Ethel Merman
    • Remember Sung by Ethel Merman and Dan Dailey
    • Marie (Performed by an uncredited male trio on a nightclub’s stage when the family is searching for Tim)
    • I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm Instrumental performed by the nightclub orchestra prior to Vicky’s audition

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.6

    Satirically extreme normative sexual and social behavior.

17. Sex Titillating 2.0

18. Violence Gentle 1.3

19. Rudeness Salty 1.6

21. Reality

    Glib 1.8

    Seriously surreal circumstantially, this old-fashioned song & dance extravaganza is otherwise “normal”. Yet its production numbers are so over-the-top they’re virtually FX.

    Released in December 1954, TNB-LSB was a box office bomb, as were fellow beloved musicals Singin’ in the Rain and The Wizard of Oz. Unsaid in the Wikipedia reporting on this phenomenon is that Bill Haley’s Rock around the Clock was released six months earlier, and with it, the youth of America were suddenly less interested in a decidedly pre-rock and roll musical.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.9

23. Biological Glib 1.5

24. Physical Natural 1.0