GUEST REVIEW: GOOD NEWS

We are spotlighting another great review that my late friend Bruce Kogan posted. His reviews were always thorough and well thought out. This time we spotlight his review of 1947's Good News...

Good News was the best musical from the Roaring Twenties from the premier songwriting team of DeSylva,Brown&Henderson. It ran on Broadway for 557 performances in the 1927-29 season and gave the team a number of song hits identified with them like the title song, Just Imagine, Lucky In Love, and The Best Things In Life Are Free. All of those songs made it as well as one of the great dance numbers of the Roaring Twenties, The Varsity Drag.

The musicals of that era had the lightweight nonsensical plots which also was taken from the Broadway show. Big man on campus, Peter Lawford, has to get a passing grade in French to stay eligible for the football squad. He gets mousy student librarian June Allyson assigned as a tutor and the inevitable happens as it does in these films. After that Lawford has to choose between mercenary coed Patricia Marshall and Allyson. It's a struggle, but you guess who he winds up with.

This film is strictly about the music and dance numbers and it offers a rare opportunity to see Joan McCracken singing and dancing which she mostly did on the Broadway stage. She introduces a song especially written for the film Pass That Peace Pipe which was a big hit in 1947 and won for Good News its only Academy Award nomination. Pass That Peace Pipe lost to Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah for Best Song. But the number is one of the best dance numbers ever to come from an Arthur Freed produced MGM musical. Joan McCracken died way too young as oddly enough her dancing partner Ray McDonald.

Good News presents an idealized version of the Roaring Twenties and is the quintessential college musical which flooded Hollywood mostly in the years before World War II. It holds up well as entertainment and the songs are still fabulous.

BRUCE RATING: 7 out of 10

MY RATING: 10 out of 10

WHAT I'M WATCHING - JANUARY

Here is Pittsburgh it is cold and snowy, so in my household there has been a lot of television watching this month. This new feature will highlight some of the movies, series, and specials I have been watching on television for the month.

1. GOOD NEWS (1947) - When my son was born, I started to groom him to be a classic movie lover like myself. My son is all sports - all the time, and he has little time or interest for movies at all. My daughter is five years old now, and loves anything with music. So the one snowy Saturday I put on one of my favorite classic movie musicals Good News, and we both watched it. The musical has really two non singers as the leads - June Allyson and Peter Lawford, but the songs and numbers make it. My son looked up annoyingly from his tablet when my daughter and I started dancing to the number "Pass The Peace Pipe", which is one of my favorite numbers. The whole movie is full of gems from the 1920s including the show stopping finale "Lucky In Love". It was great to see such a young Mel Torme in the film as well. Peter Lawford was a good looking actor who would ruin his looks in a matter of 15 years after this movie from booze and pills. Nevertheless Good News was a great film to watch on a lazy afternoon.

2. THE SANDLOT (1993) - This is one of the few films my son does like to watch. Since it is on HBO On Demand now, we can watch it at anytime. The movie came out when I was 18, and I really don't remember the film. I didn't see it until a couple years ago. It is a great movie that shows life in the 1960s when baseball was king. A lot has changed though. It makes me sad seeing kids just running around their neighborhood and not worrrying about locking their doors, because that is certainly not the case anymore. In the past three months, I must have watched this film 20 times. If nothing else is on television, The Sandlot is the movie I put on! I love the story about a lonely boy called Smalls (I was Smalls!) that comes out of his shell when he meets the other boys in the neighborhood. He discovers his love of baseball to the backdrop of 1960s America. I wish I would have had a sandlot in my life when I was young. This is one of the few films that both of my kids agree to watch together!

3. GET OUT (2017) - This movie is not for everyone. It's another film that I missed when it was in theaters. My wife saw it first and recommended it to me. I was reluctant to watch it, but I did one night when everyone was asleep. It's considered a horror movie, but it is so much more!  It stars Daniel Kaluuya as Chris, a black man who visits the family of his white girlfriend (Allison Williams); at their home, the servants are black and act strangely. Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, Lakeith Stanfield, and Catherine Keener costar. I can't wait to see Daniel Kaluuya in more roles. The movie is not grusome and overly violent, but the tense suspense was great. The movie starts out as what I thought was a movie about racial profiling and it ends up being a movie about medical experiments! The movie isn't for the faint of heart, but I loved it!

This is what I'm watching this month...

GUEST REVIEW: GOOD NEWS

For a long time when I was first watching classic movies, the 1947 film Good News was my favorite musical. It's not my favorite any longer but it's still a pretty good film. Our guest reviewer Bruce Kogan makes his return to our pages reviewing this musical...

Good News was the best musical from the Roaring Twenties from the premier songwriting team of DeSylva, Brown & Henderson. It ran on Broadway for 557 performances in the 1927-29 season and gave the team a number of song hits identified with them like the title song, Just Imagine, Lucky In Love, and The Best Things In Life Are Free. All of those songs made it as well as one of the great dance numbers of the Roaring Twenties, The Varsity Drag.

The musicals of that era had the lightweight nonsensical plots which also was taken from the Broadway show. Big man on campus, Peter Lawford, has to get a passing grade in French to stay eligible for the football squad. He gets mousy student librarian June Allyson assigned as a tutor and the inevitable happens as it does in these films. After that Lawford has to choose between mercenary coed Patricia Marshall and Allyson. It's a struggle, but you guess who he winds up with.

This film is strictly about the music and dance numbers and it offers a rare opportunity to see Joan McCracken singing and dancing which she mostly did on the Broadway stage. She introduces a song especially written for the film Pass That Peace Pipe which was a big hit in 1947 and won for Good News its only Academy Award nomination. Pass That Peace Pipe lost to Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah for Best Song. But the number is one of the best dance numbers ever to come from an Arthur Freed produced MGM musical. Joan McCracken died way too young as oddly enough her dancing partner Ray McDonald.

Good News presents an idealized version of the Roaring Twenties and is the quintessential college musical which flooded Hollywood mostly in the years before World War II. It holds up well as entertainment and the songs are still fabulous...

BRUCE'S RATING: 7 OUT OF 10

MY RATING:9 OUT OF 10