Lady Be Good
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
Written by Jack McGowan, Kay van Ripper, and John McLain
1941/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Warner Archive DVD
[box] The last time I saw Paris/Her heart was young and gay/No matter how they change her/I’ll remember her that way — lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II [/box]
This is a pleasant enough musical featuring a score full of standards by Gershwin, Kern, and more.
The story uses the framing device of the second divorce trial of songwriters Dixie (Ann Sothern) and Eddie Crane (Robert Young). We move into flashback to see them teaming up when greeting card poet Dixie supplies the words to a song Eddie has been struggling to finish. Dixie’s voice turns Eddie into a hit-maker and they marry. But success goes to Eddie’s head and he starts partying, stops writing, and treats Dixie like a secretary/housekeeper. She reluctantly divorces him.
The couple can’t seem to help inspiring each other though. Awakened from his torpor, Eddie starts working again and Dixie is on hand the words. They re-marry but end up in the divorce court a second time. Dixie’s roommate Marilyn starts scheming to bring them back together yet again. With Lionel Barrymore as the judge, Red Skelton as Eddie’s buddy, and the Berry Brothers doing a tap routine.
Although Sothern and Young are game, the plot kind of drags the movie down and we are left with long interludes between musical numbers. Some of these are just odd – the Berry Brothers, deadpan singer Virginia O’Brien – but others are spellbinding, e.g. the finale with Eleanor Powell tapping to “Fascinating Rhythm”.
Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II won an Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song for “The Last Time I Saw Paris.” I don’t know that it was the best movie song of 1941 — and it was not original to the film — but you can’t fault those who saw the Nazis occupying Paris from thinking so. Kern himself lobbied the Academy to limit the category to songs written for the film in which they appeared. He said he voted for “Blues in the Night” on his Academy Ballot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2c9cVfIov4
Ann Sothern sings “The Last Time I Saw Paris”
