Movies I've Missed Until Now: Easter Parade (1948)

Considering that I’m not a big fan of musicals, Fred Astaire, or Judy Garland, it’s not surprising that I never saw EASTER PARADE, a 1948 movie starring those two. But hey, it’s almost Easter, so why not?

You need at least a little plot to hang the songs and production numbers on in a musical, and that’s what you get in EASTER PARADE, a little plot. It’s 1912, and song-and-dance man Don Hewes (Astaire) has his partner in the act (the gorgeous Ann Miller) abruptly desert him to sign with the Ziegfield Follies instead. Angered by this, Hewes tells her he could pick any girl out of a chorus line and make a bigger star out of her. That turns out to be Hannah Brown (Garland), and sure enough, she does become a bigger star and she and Hewes fall in love, although their romance is a rocky one. There’s also a bit of a romantic rectangle with Hewes’ buddy Johnny (played by Peter Lawford, another non-favorite of mine) getting involved with both Garland and Miller.

There’s nothing wrong with that plot. It’s very similar in some respects to the plot of the much better SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN. The script was written by Sidney Sheldon, Frances Goodrich, and Albert Hackett. Goodrich and Hackett contributed to the scripts of some great movies, THE THIN MAN and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE among them, and Sheldon won an Academy Award for his screenwriting long before he created the TV show I DREAM OF JEANNIE and became a bestselling novelist. I’ve enjoyed every one of Sheldon’s novels I’ve read, and I was a regular viewer of I DREAM OF JEANNIE when it was new (admittedly, that was mostly because of Barbara Eden and the great character actor Bill Daily). But I’ve been less impressed by the movies he wrote. The script for EASTER PARADE is thin and predictable and only mildly amusing.

The real stars, of course, are the songs by Irving Berlin. The movie wouldn’t exist without them. They’re okay, but after watching the movie, I don’t remember a single one of them except the title song and “Steppin’ Out With My Baby”, the subject of a long, elaborate production number that’s the highlight of the film. Astaire is at his best in that scene, and it’s the only one in the movie that put a grin on my face.

So EASTER PARADE is okay, one of many movie musicals I’ve seen once and enjoyed, and I’m glad we watched it. There are only three musicals I regard as great films, though: WHITE CHRISTMAS, SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN, and BIKINI BEACH. The first two are classics, and before you look too askance at me for that last one, consider: BIKINI BEACH has Frankie Avalon playing both Frankie and British rocker The Potato Bug, Don Rickles as Big Drag, Harvey Lembeck as Eric Von Zipper, a cameo by Boris Karloff, a song by Little Stevie Wonder, and the absolute best closing credits sequence in the history of cinema, Candy Johnson and Renie Riano dancing to “I’ve Gotcha Where I Want You,” by Candy’s band The Exciters. Now that, my friends, is classic filmmaking, and I grinned all the way through it every time I’ve watched it.