Musical Monday: Merry Andrew (1958)

Posted on by

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:
Merry Andrew (1958) – Musical #241

Studio:
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Director:
Michael Kidd

Starring:
Danny Kaye, Pier Angeli, Salvatore Baccaloni, Noel Purcell, Robert Coote, Patricia Cutts, Rex Evans, Walter Kingsford, Peter Mamakos, Rhys Williams, Tommy Rall, Richard Anderson (uncredited), Frank Jenks (uncredited), John Dodsworth (uncredited)

Plot:
School teacher Andrew Larabee (Kaye) wants to be taken seriously by his father, the headmaster (Purcell) and asks if he can go on an archaeological excursion to find the missing statue of Greek mythology figure, Pan. When Andrew travels to where he believes the statue is located, a circus is performing on the spot where he would like to dig. Andrew friends the circus family, and falls in love with performer, Selena (Angeli). The problem is Andrew is engaged to be married to someone else.

Trivia:
• Directorial debut and only feature film directed by Michael Kidd. Kidd also choreographed the dance numbers in the film.
• Pier Angeli’s final film under contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
• Final film of Walter Kingsford, who passed away in 1958.
• Based on the short story, “The Romance of Henry Menafee” by Paul Gallico.
• The music was written by Saul Chaplin and Johnny Mercer
• Real life circus performers appear in the film including, aerialist Carla Wallenda.
• When this film had it’s world premiere in Singapore, it was the first major Hollywood premiere in Southeast Asia.
• Pier Angeli performed her own singing in the film, but Betty Wand dubbed Angeli for eight bars of the song “Salud.”
• Bill Lee dubbed the singing voice of Robert Coote and Ernest Newton dubbed Rex Evans in the song “Chin Up, Stout Fellow.”
• Saul Chaplin’s final film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Highlights:
• Cinemascope and MetroColor
• The songs are not written by Sylvia Fine

Notable Songs:
• “Everything Is Tickety Boo” performed by Danny Kaye
• “Salud” performed by Danny Kaye, Salvatore Baccaloni and Pier Angeli (partially dubbed by Betty Wand)
• “You Can’t Always Have What You Want” performed by Danny Kaye
• “The Square of the Hypotenuse” performed by Danny Kaye and the student

My review:
Throughout the 1930s to mid-1950s, the studio of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) produced the pinnacle of frothy movie musicals. But despite releasing some of the top musicals of all time, even MGM suffered from the downturn of popularity in musicals.

MERRY ANDREW (1958) is a film that suffered from that change in popular sentiment.

A vibrant and colorful film, Danny Kaye plays school teacher, Andrew Larabee, who teaches in an unconventional manner and also has big dreams of being an archeologist. To complicate things further, his father is the headmaster (Purcell), and doesn’t take his son seriously. Andrew finally is granted permission to go on an archaeological excursion to find the missing statue of Greek mythology figure, Pan. When Andrew travels to where he believes the statue is located, a circus is performing on the spot where he would like to dig. Andrew friends the circus family, and falls in love with performer, Selena (Angeli). The problem is Andrew is engaged to be married to someone else and is set to marry them if he finds the statue.

MERRY ANDREW is delightful and starts off with several songs, but the songs and dancing off taper off mid-way through the film.

“During the shooting, the bottom dropped out of musicals once again,” said producer Saul Chaplin. “Their popularity had always run in cycles, and we were suddenly in the middle of another downturn. Ours was the only musical shooting at the studio (MGM), and the orders were given to finish it as quickly and inexpensively as possible.”

Mercer and Chaplin had to stop work on further songs they were writing, Chaplin said. This was also the directorial debut for choreographer Michael Kidd. Kidd didn’t direct any films after this, and I wonder if he would have had musicals not lost popularity during this time.

This was Danny Kaye’s first film in two years, as he had been spending that time working with UNICEF. In much of Kaye’s early career, he sang tongue twisting songs written by his wife, Sylvia Fine. With music written by Johnny Mercer and Saul Chaplin, it was interesting to see that Kaye could stand on his own without Fine’s music.

Sometimes, Kaye can be a bit much in movies, but I thought he was delightful. There were only a couple of times when Kaye’s irritating antics were in the script, like posing as a zany ringmaster in the circus and hiding from a set of brothers who want to beat him up. There are also some very humorous scenes, like where a knockdown, drag out fight is happening behind Kaye and his school chum as they have a jolly chat.

MERRY ANDREW was Pier Angeli’s last film under contract to MGM, where she had been for eight years. Angeli is stunning in this, but it feels like she has little to do but look beautiful.

If you look hard, you will see dancer, actor Tommy Rall in heavy Italian makeup and wig. He’s totally wasted in this film and we only get to see him dance in one number. I feel we would have seen him dance more had the musical portion of the film not had to be scaled back.

Interestingly, the film was shown in Russia because of Danny Kaye’s United Nations work.

The film is visually stunning with vibrant colors and also fun circus footage.

Overall, MERRY ANDREW (1958) is a great time and thankfully, easy to find and watch. It just leaves me to wonder what more it could have been had it not had to be quickly finished. While musicals dropped from popularity then, and now, they will always be popular here at Comet Over Hollywood.

Other places you can follow Comet Over Hollywood: 

Thank you for reading! What do you think?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.