BFI Recommends: I Love Melvin
Begin the week with some buried treasure from the golden age of Hollywood: MGM’s cheering Technicolor follow-up to Singin’ in the Rain, chosen by Patrick Fahy.
With the success of Singin’ in the Rain (1952), MGM lost no time in reuniting that film’s talented co-stars, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor, in this chirpy, cheering Technicolor musical with songs by lyricist Mack Gordon (‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’) and composer Josef Myrow (‘You Make Me Feel So Young’).
Chorus girl Judy (Reynolds), reduced to playing a football in the doomed show Quarterback Kelly, says yes when smitten magazine photographer Melvin (O’Connor) offers to take some snaps of her to help make her a star. When his editor dismisses the project, Melvin unwisely gets a magazine printed for Judy anyway, hoping she’ll never know it’s the only copy…
In a zestful flow of delightfully inventive dance numbers, we find the gymnastically bouncy O’Connor roller-skating round a bandstand, or crazily flinging on a slew of costumes from a photography studio’s wardrobe rails, while Reynolds gamely gets tossed about by singing football players, dances with men in (decidedly creepy) masks of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, and performs ‘A Lady Loves’ months before the world saw Marilyn Monroe’s strikingly similar ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’. As a colorful dash of lively whimsy, this genial winner is hard to beat.
Patrick Fahy
Documentation Team Leader