Scenes From the Scrapbook: “That’s Entertainment” (1974)

 highsociety1

      “That’s Entertainment” is a compilation of some of the best (many not) musical numbers extracted from the great musicals (many not) from the studio era known by some (many not) as “the Golden Age of Hollywood”.

     The all-encompassing intention of the film is entirely self-serving as the films shown arethatsentertainmentOS limited to those productions emerging from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which leaves out a great deal of equitable material from companion studios, and also, in several instances, gives attributable mention to performers whose more justly celebrated efforts emanated from artistic rivals, thus the pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers is given brief representation with “The Barkleys of Broadway”, their sole collaboration at MGM and certainly their weakest shared vehicle, while there is not a single acknowledgement of their landmark partnership in the 1930’s as those films were produced by RKO. Similarly, there is no reference to Betty Grable ( at 20th Century Fox) or Rita Hayworth (at Columbia), though the inclusion of Deanna Durbin in a short subject, fails to mention the fact that she quickly left the studio to cement her at stardom Universal. Then there is also the strange case of Bing Crosby, questionably chosen as one of the segment hosts despite the on-screen admission that the appreciably formative and successful portion of his screen stardom was outside the purview of Leo the Lion’s domain, though there is (naturally) no nod to his productive years invested at Paramount Pictures.

To read the complete review, click the following link to:   https://chandlerswainreviews.wordpress.com/nights-at-the-coolidge-corner-theatre/

About chandlerswainreviews

I've been a puppet, a pirate, a pauper, a poet, a pawn and a king, not necessarily in that order. My first major movie memory was being at the drive-in at about 1 1/2 yrs. old seeing "Sayonara" so I suppose an interest in film was inevitable. (For those scoring at home- good for you- I wasn't driving that evening, so no need to alert authorities.)Writer, critic and confessed spoiler of women, as I have a tendency to forget to put them back in the refrigerator. My apologies.
This entry was posted in dance, Film Reviews, Frank Sinatra, movie reviews, Movies, Musicals, Reviews, Romance and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

1 Response to Scenes From the Scrapbook: “That’s Entertainment” (1974)

  1. Rick says:

    I have seen this one. I always thought it was a compilation put together by some television channel to fill time.

Leave a comment

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