Ecstasy

Rating: 10/10 (28 March 2020)

(Best read while listening to Benny Goodman's Carnegie Hall Concert)
When I was a slave in Egypt (as I reminisce yearly at the Seder table), I was driven with whips and scorpions. As a young man in New York City, my father was driven with the drums of Gene Krupa, just like Benny Goodman's band. The whips and scorpions yielded only ten plagues and some pyramids. Listen to the music of Benny Goodman, and hear ecstasy. Listen to it and need to dance. Look at the word, and trace its origins to the Greek. That's what I mean: ecstasy, like a maenad high on wine and ivy and dance.
That's why I love musicals. I don't know who said it, but when mere words fail you, you sing; when song fails you, you dance. Listening to Goodman play "Sing, Sing Sing (with a Swing)" makes me want to dance. So does Singin' in the Rain. Gene Kelly drove Debbie Reynolds, sobbing, to Fred Astaire (another famous taskmaster) for sympathy. Donald O'Connor was sent home for a week's bed rest after performing "Make 'Em Laugh" and after that, had to perform it again. When Arthur Freed asked what Gene Kelly would be doing for the title number, Kelly said "I don't know, Arthur. All I know is it'll be raining, and I'll be singing." Millard Mitchell based his performance on Freed; Jean Hagen was robbed of a best supporting actress Oscar; Comden & Green were still building their reputation and Kelly & Donen were taking it easy after An American in Paris.
As a wiser man than I has noted the best works are often produced when the artists are slumming a bit. All I know is that when they're not making me laugh in this movie (and sometimes when they are), they are dancing joyfully, and making me wish I could dance. There are no sad numbers, and for me the song "Moses Supposes", when Kelly & O'Connor rip the speech expert's office to shreds with a tongue twister and a tap dance, is just as exhilarating as "Good Mornin'" or "Singin' in the Rain". When I'm in the depths of one of my depressive funks (as I am today), and every task seems to be impossible, it's good to look at this movie. It helps me remember that, fantasy though it is, it exists, with its performers' feet bleeding, and rising from their sickbeds to try again to make me smile. And they will succeed.
According to the story my jazz maven from Toronto tells me, they were not even going to record the Carnegie Hall concert. They had more than enough air checks. At the last moment, they put a mike in its wonted spot in the ceiling, ran a wire across the street, recorded in wax and then the masters went into Benny Goodman's hall closet for a decade and a half, until his young daughter said "Daddy, what's this?" We came close to losing that. Singin' in the Rain has remained on view for more than sixty years, a commonplace miracle of survival Let's enjoy it, separately but together, and thank all those people who made it, from Arthur Freed down to runner who fetched coffee on set. They've never done better.