Product: Birth Of The Blues/Blue Skies - Double Feature (1941)
Rating: 3.0
So-So Pair of Bing Crosby Musicals
These two Bing Crosby musicals are enjoyable, but none of them is particularly memorable or stand multiple viewings. The most amusing aspect of "Birth of the Blues" is its distortion of musical history and the Hollywood studio lot version of New Orleans. Mary Martin and Bing Crosby are in good voice and Brian Donlevy is serviceable as Crosby's friend and rival, but there's an annoying little girl rounding up the cast of leads and the stereotypes of the black community can make you cringe.As for "Blue Skies", I think this is one of the (if not the) worst films showcasing Irving Berlin songs. It is also far inferior to "Holiday Inn" (the previous teaming of Astaire and Crosby). Watching this movie makes you really appreciative of the far superior "Alexander's Ragtime Band" and especially "Easter Parade" (both available on excellent DVD editions, and much better options to purchase). Despite the big budget, the staging of the numbers is generally uninspired. The main highlight is Fred Astaire's "Puttin' on the Ritz", but even that number pales in comparison to his numbers on RKO and MGM films. His duet with Bing Crosby is a huge disappointment. Oddly, even though plot-wise Joan Caulfield is the leading lady, musically the real leading lady is Olga San Juan (however, she really doesn't have anything to do in the plot). She actually gets to duet with both Crosby and Astaire (in my estimation, the film's two best numbers after "Puttin' on the Ritz"). The film also has a dreadful comedy skit performed in drag by Billy DeWolfe. Its quite painful to watch nowadays, but I guess that was considered funny back in the 1940s.The best thing about this DVD is the low price and that the two films are included on a single-sided DVD. They're not painfully bad films, but they're just average musicals, and Astaire, Berlin and Crosby have been much better served in other films.