It’s no secret that the Hollywood Comet loves musicals.
In 2010, I revealed I had seen 400 movie musicals over the course of eight years. Now that number is over 600. To celebrate and share this musical love, here is my weekly feature about musicals.

This week’s musical:
Remains to Be Seen (1953) – Musical #754

Studio:
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Director:
Don Weis

Starring:
Van Johnson, June Allyson, Angela Lansbury, Louis Calhern, John Beal, Barry Kelley, Sammy White, Kathryn Card, Paul Harvey, Helene Millard, Charles Lane, Peter Chong, Frank Nelson, Howard Freeman, Dabbs Greer (uncredited), Emmitt Smith (uncredited), Stuart Holmes (uncredited)
Herself: Dorothy Dandridge

Plot:
Waldo Williams (Johnson) is the manager of a luxury apartment complex (who also dabbles in drumming). Williams discovers Travis Revercombe (Holmes) dead in his apartment. While the body was announced as natural causes, a knife is found in his chest by the funeral home. It’s determined that the body was stabbed after he was dead. Revercombe’s lawyer Benjamin Goodman (Calhern) has asked the deceased’s niece, nightclub singer Jody Revere (Allyson), to meet with him. Jody isn’t upset that her uncle is dead, but Waldo Williams is a great fan. Jody is the heir to Revercombe’s fortune, and if she refuses it, it goes to his favorite charity, led by Valeska Chauvel (Lansbury).

Trivia:
• Film adaptation of the 1951 Broadway musical “Remains to Be Seen,” which starred Jackie Cooper and Janis Paige. The play ran from Oct. 3, 1951, to March 22, 1952.
• When the script of the play was submitted Production Code Administration by 20th Century Fox, they rejected the script in Dec. 1951, because it humorously dealt with pornography, according to documents from the Motion Picture Association of America.
• Jackie Cooper and Debbie Reynolds were announced in pre-production announcements as being in the film. Van Johnson and June Allyson played the roles.
• Though they would go on to co-star on an episode of “Murder, She Wrote,” this was the fifth and final feature film that Van Johnson and June Allyson co-starred in.
• Angela Lansbury’s final film under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Highlights:
• Van Johnson
• Dorothy Dandridge’s performance

Notable Songs:
• “Too Marvelous for Words” performed by Van Johnson, later reprised by June Allyson
• “Taking a Chance on Love “performed by Dorothy Dandridge
• “Toot, Toot, Tootsie” performed by Van Johnson and June Allyson

My review:
Sometimes you read consistently bad reviews for a film, and then watch it yourself and enjoy it. It always makes me question my taste—or maybe others need to let go and have fun? Hard to say.

One of those films is this week’s Musical Monday, REMAINS TO BE SEEN (1953). After co-starring consistently together since their star making film in TWO GIRLS AND A SAILOR, this is the last feature film pairing of Van Johnson and June Allyson.

In this fun murder mystery with music, Johnson plays Waldo Williams, a manager of a luxury apartment building where he discovers the dead body of a wealthy tenant. At first officials say that the man died of natural causes, but it becomes obvious that it was murder. The deceased man’s niece, nightclub singer Jody Ravier, arrives at the request of his lawyer, Benjamin Goodman, played by Louis Calhern. Jody (humorously) and mistakenly thinks she is meeting the famed jazz musician, Benny Goodman and is disappointed when she finds she’s meeting a lawyer telling her about her uncle’s fortune that she will inherit. Hating her uncle, Jody wants not part of his fortune, and if she refuses the fortune, it goes to his pet philanthropy, run by Valeska Chauvel, played by Angela Lansbury. As an aside, Waldo saw Jody perform previously and is a big fan and also an avid drummer. While Jody and Waldo unravel the death of her uncle, they are also falling in love.

These days most of MGM’s library is fairly accessible, thanks to film airings on Turner Classic Movies or previous DVD releases from Warner Archive Collection. However, REMAINS TO BE SEEN is a film I have been waiting for years to see. As a big fan of Van Johnson and June Allyson, I looked for it and hoped it would air on television, but alas it never did. (It may have aired on TCM in 2011, and I somehow missed it). After Angela Lansbury’s death, it has been uploaded online in a few places, but I opted to by a bootleg DVD copy of the film to finally watch it. And did I have a great time watching this!

It’s funny, a little creepy, suspenseful, and the ending had me shout “WHAT?!” at the whodunit—I had suspected them initially, but the plot kept pointing to another character as being the murderer. They sure tricked me!

The film starts with a snappy dialogue and it’s almost humorous that neither the police, lawyer, coroner or funeral home really care that a man has died, as they turn on his television to watch a boxing match or ask who can have this apartment once his estate is settled.

While June Allyson is generally known as playing squeaky clean and sugary sweet characters (that I love), she plays against her usual type here, which makes it even more fun. She walks in with snappy dialogue that could have been written for Martha Raye or Ann Sothern, wearing a form fitting halter-top dress. She is a singer with the band who travels with lots of men and is used to changing on the bus with 12 other men – but don’t worry, they put up a sheet so the driver can’t see her change.
Press materials for the film say that June Allyson liked the film, because it allowed her to play a different type of role. Louis Calhern agreed and said that anyone who sang torch songs, wore strapless gowns could no longer be considered the girl next door, unless he was living in the wrong neighborhood, according to Allyson’s biographer.

Van Johnson and Louis Calhern play their usual roles, and both are great at it. If you like them in everything else, you’ll love them here.

Angela Lansbury has a smaller role with little to do, but she is equally stunningly glamorous while also being suspicious.

I also enjoyed seeing Emmitt Smith in a small but standout performance. You may recognize from “Christmas in Connecticut.”

While I enjoyed this film, at the time of its release, it didn’t do well at the box office and was not well received by critics. It also seems to be footnote in the career of the actors, who may not have cared for it either.

Lansbury called the film “dreadful” and doesn’t think she ever saw it, according to Van Johnson’s biographer. Johnson’s biographer dedicates only a brief paragraph on the film, and it doesn’t have much (if any) of a mention in June Allyson’s autobiography.

In an interview with James Bawden, Johnson noted that they were too old for the roles — he was 37, Allyson was 38 and “We’re so very cute, it’s sickening.”

The Hollywood Reporter said that Van Johnson was “actually better than his poorly delinated role”

However, future director François Truffaut reviewed the film and enjoyed it. He called it a “charming film” and had much praise for Allyson’s sex appeal.

I have a theory that this film may not have been well received in 1953, because the lead actors and story type may have felt a bit old fashioned for post-war audiences.

For me, as a current viewer, I didn’t see it that way. It has the original magic of Van Johnson and June Allyson, while also putting them in a slightly different, less sweet film. Plus it has that great mix of mystery, humor and music! What’s not to love?

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