Rooney-Garland musicals released as DVD set
Published 4:06 pm Monday, September 24, 2007
HOLLYWOOD — Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland were a couple of swells — energetic, even frenetic, they had marvelous comedy timing and, of course, danced and sang their hearts out.
During the late 1930s and early 1940s, the two made a series of “barnyard musicals” produced by Arthur Freed at MGM. Today, Warner Home Video is releasing on DVD four films in the tune-filled “Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland Collection.” And what captivated audiences 60 years ago is as fresh and endearing today.
Born in 1920, Rooney began his career in vaudeville when he was 17 months old. Garland, born in 1922, also was a vaudeville baby, singing with her sisters when she was just a toddler. By the mid-1930s, both were teenagers being groomed for stardom at MGM. Studio head Louis B. Mayer first cast them together in the forgettable 1937 “Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry” and reunited them the following year for the charming “Love Finds Andy Hardy.”
But the studio hit paydirt with 1939’s “Babes in Arms,” for which Rooney was nominated for a best-actor Oscar. Among his competitors were Laurence Olivier for “Wuthering Heights” and Clark Gable for “Gone With the Wind.”
Rooney was the No. 1 box-office draw of the year, which also was a pivotal one for Garland, who also starred in “The Wizard of Oz.”
Directed and staged by Busby Berkeley, who created those surreal musical numbers for “42nd Street” and “Golddiggers of 1933,” this musical drama stars Rooney and Garland as the offspring of vaudevillians who decide to put on a show featuring all the kids of old vaudevillians living in Seaport, Long Island, New York.
The musical numbers — save for an embarrassing black-faced minstrel number — are high-spirited fun.
The film was such a hit that Mayer got Freed to quickly reunite Mickey and Judy for another “Let’s put on a show!” musical, 1940’s “Strike Up the Band.”
Once again, it’s the chemistry between the stars and the songs that make “Strike” watchable. This time around, Rooney plays a high school band drummer who persuades the school’s principal to let him turn the band into a swing orchestra. Garland plays Mary Holden, the singer in the swing orchestra.
In 1942’s “Babes on Broadway,” Mickey and Judy play struggling New York performers who stage a benefit show to raise funds for children in a settlement house, so the orphans can go to the country.
Their final musical together with Freed was 1943’s “Girl Crazy,” which features a great score by George and Ira Gershwin including “I’ve Got Rhythm,” “Embraceable You” and “But Not for Me.” Rooney plays a rich college playboy who is sent by his father to a small men’s mining college out West. Garland plays the feisty granddaughter of the college’s dean (Guy Kibbee), who delivers the mail to the school and keeps shunning Rooney’s advances until he ultimately wins her over.
A fifth disc in the DVD set includes more than 20 of Garland’s best-loved musical numbers and Rooney’s installment in the Turner Classic Movies series “Private Screenings.”
