GUEST REVIEW: IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME

Here is the usually interesting review from guest reviewer Bruce Kogan. This time he looks at the enjoyable 1949 Judy Garland musical In The Good Old Summertime...

Given how Judy Garland scored so well in another period piece, Meet Me In St. Louis, it was a natural that she be cast in In The Good Old Summertime even if she was a replacement for June Allyson. It's called serendipity.

The film is a musical adaption of MGM's The Shop Around The Corner in which James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan played the anonymous correspondents who love what each other write, but can't stand each other in person. It doesn't help that the two of them are co-workers in a department store.

Van Johnson takes the Stewart part in In The Good Old Summertime and early 20th century Budapest is transferred to early 20th century Chicago. Johnson and Garland work in a music store with Spring Byington, Clinton Sundberg, and Buster Keaton and that's owned by S.Z. Sakall. Sakall is far more lovable as he always is than Frank Morgan in the same part in The Shop Around The Corner. A bit thick, but lovable. He does think he has talent on the violin, the same way Jack Benny did on his radio program. He plays it as well as Benny did and even playing it on a Stradivarius doesn't help.

Except for one new song, Merry Christmas, the rest of the score is interpolated period favorites like Meet Me Tonight In Dreamland, I Never Knew, I Don't Care and of course the title song. Judy is really in her element doing these numbers. In fact two of the early century's great musical performers, Blanche Ring who introduced In The Good Old Summertime, and Eva Tanguay whose specialty song was I Don't Care, were still alive to see Judy do both of their numbers for the current audience. I've often wondered what they must have thought.

Buster Keaton is strangely subdued in this film. He only gets one real comic moment doing a pratfall on a dance floor and breaking a violin in the process. I'm betting some of his material wound up on the cutting room floor.

At the very end of the film, little Liza Minnelli all of three at the time made her screen debut. If you like period pieces as I do and the music of the era as I do or if you liked The Shop Around The Corner or the most current adaption of the piece, You've Got Mail with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, than you will appreciate and enjoy In The Good Old Summertime...

BRUCE'S RATING: 7 OUT OF 10

MY RATING: 8 OUT OF 10

HISTORY OF A SONG: IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME

This summer has been a particular hot one where I am. The grass is brown, the heat is unbearable, and I am almost looking forward to fall and winter. I remember whenever I would go out with my grandfather in the summer, he would sing an old song that was written before his father was even born called "In The Good Old Summertime".

"In the Good Old Summer Time" is an American Tin Pan Alley song first published in 1902 with music by George Evans and lyrics by Ren Shields.

Shields and Evans were at first unsuccessfully trying to sell the song to one of New York's big sheet music publishers. The publishers thought the topic of the song doomed it to be forgotten at the end of the summer season. Blanche Ring, who had helped Evans arrange the number's piano score, was enthusiastic about it and at her urging it was added to the 1902 musical comedy show "The Defender" she was appearing in. The song was a hit from the opening night, with the audience often joining in singing the chorus.

"In the Good Old Summer Time" was one of the big hits of the era, selling popular sheet music and being recorded by various artists of the day, including John Philip Sousa's band in 1903. It has remained a standard often revived in the decades since.

The song appeared in many films, including the Judy Garland film named after it: In the Good Old Summertime (1949). The book Elmer Gantry opens with the title character drunkenly singing the song in the saloon.

The song appeared in an episode of the hit PBS show Arthur, and featured in the 1930 Laurel and Hardy short Below Zero in ironical terms, sung during a snowstorm.

The chorus is used with a slight twist in Baylor University's song, "That Good Old Baylor Line."

Billy Murray and Blanche Ring had the biggest hit version of the song, but my favorite version was Bing Crosby's version from 1954. Bing must of liked the song because he recorded it again on his last album "Seasons" in 1977. It's amazing that this song about our warmest but most fun season is over 100 years old...