Fans of classic musicals know the impact that George Feltenstein has made on home video and film history — he’s been pushing for the restoration of Technicolor musicals ever since the Laserdisc ‘Ultimate Edition’ of The Wizard of Oz. Six or seven years ago, the digital remastering of 3-strip Technicolor movies finally became economical. Every couple of months we get a new restored gem, looking better than ever.
MGM made several musical bios organized around composer-songwriters. The standard pattern for was to invent dramatic highlights, adding romance elements and mawkish sentiments about genius overcoming tragedy. Three Little Words sticks with the basic framework yet is a mildly winning confection that makes the faults of the subgenre seem like sterling qualities. This time out the subject is the songwriting team of Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. The story is highly fictionalized, but Three Little Words’ winning cast charms us completely.
The Kalmar-Ruby songbook is a solid group of standards, even if only a few are well known today.
Dancer Bert Kalmar (Fred Astaire) fumbles his duo act with Jessie Brown (Vera-Ellen) because he wants to ‘do it all.’ He expends his effort on stage magic and play writing, areas where he lacks talent. Jessie turns down his proposal and they go back to dancing together until Bert hurts his knee. This time he turns down her proposal and instead teams up as a lyricist for Tin Pan Alley ‘song plugger’ Harry Ruby. When the two men hit it off and their songs and shows sell, Bert and Jessie reunite and marry, and try to guide Harry away from the flighty singer Terry Lordel (Gale Robbins). Agent Charlie Cope (Keenan Wynn) helps with this deception, and helps Harry steer Bert away from a bad play he’s written. Harry eventually weds movie star Eileen Percy (Arlene Dahl) but an argument results in a 5 year split between the partners. Can Jessie and Eileen get the boys back together?
Three Little Words plays better than it reads on paper — the script and the actors take the story of the off-again on-again partners seriously, and although the differences that divide them are mostly made-up, we get a good sense of the nature of work in Tin Pan Alley…. songwriting means a lot of crumpled, discarded note paper ends up on the floor.
Writer George Wells specialized in wafer-thin musical stories for talent like Esther Williams, He eventually moved on to write popular romantic comedies for 60s stars like Shirley MacLaine (Ask Any Girl) and the last crop of MGM star hopefuls (Where the Boys Are). Wells’ screenplay uses two facts from the partners’ bios to expand the story: Kalmar had a love of magic and Ruby was a baseball fan. Astaire’s Kalmar can’t decide whether he wants to dance, write plays or perform magic tricks. Skelton’s distinctly non-comedic performance goes for laughs only when Ruby indulges in some spring training sequences that include slapstick baseball gags. The weak jokes could have used some genius Buster Keaton input. The comedian had contributed comedy ideas to several other Skelton movies.
Some musical bios are little more than a string of musical numbers, but Three Little Words concentrates on story. Astaire’s Bert Kalmar can’t focus on one thing long enough to decently propose to Jessie; later on he sends her away out of selfish pride. Romantic bliss needs show-biz success in musical bios, and the pair only get together when they’ve decided on the proper course — he writes, she stops dancing to become a housewife. The ‘incompatibility’ of marriage and careers is demonstrated in a ‘dancers at home’ number. Hubby and wife toss their baby around like a football and destroy their house by dancing through a wall. Astaire pulls off a dancing trick that proves he’s better than any magician — he lifts a telephone from the floor by flinging its cord about to the beat of the music. It’s a typical bit of throwaway magic.
Star dancer Vera-Ellen isn’t highly praised as an actress yet shines here — in an early scene her Jessie regards the immature Bert with an affectionate intelligence. We expect bald sentiment in musical bios, not emotional depth. There’s nothing special about Richard Thorpe’s direction, but the dialogue is good and the personalities sincere.
It’s interesting to see Red Skelton attempt a light dramatic role. Always a good clown, Skelton’s song plugger Harry Ruby is a slightly goofy Randy Quaid type. Harry is a romantic sitting duck for a couple of users, notably Gale Robbins’ unfaithful redhead. Although Harry’s interference in Bert’s business plans (the bad play Bert has written) causes one of their break-ups, Bert and Jessie never fess up to manipulating Harry’s love life, which they do in a much more offhand manner. What if the snobby woman on the boat (Beverly Michaels) is really Harry’s correct soul mate? Harry ends up with another redhead more compatible with the Kalmars’ taste. We don’t mind because she’s the undeniably classy Arlene Dahl (Slightly Scarlet, Journey to the Center of the Earth).
We feel immediate concern when Bert Kalmar injures his knee and can no longer dance. We feel diminished to see Fred Astaire recovering on a chaise instead of bouncing around the room as was his norm. The world isn’t going to be right again until he dances. But Bert’s dancing is soon limited to offstage expressions of affection for Vera-Ellen’s Jessie. Come to think of it, they rarely kiss. Instead of proclaiming his love, Kalmar writes her a love song. Because this is the fantasy world of musicals, it naturally becomes one of the team’s biggest hits.
Three Little Words has pleasing musical numbers that don’t strain themselves trying to top earlier films. Vera-Ellen’s singing is dubbed by Anita Ellis, while Arlene Dahl sings for herself, quite nicely. There are no showstopper tunes, only melodic standards from a century ago, and the expected fine dance numbers. Fred Astaire always makes his dance partners seem lighter than air. Vera-Ellen’s showcase dances with Gene Kelly (On the Town or Words and Music) have an entirely different quality. Astaire masks the physical effort, while Kelly’s vigorous numbers are more like an athletic workout.
The movie takes the liberty of pretending that its title song Three Little Words lay incomplete for ten years. The corny storyline shows its debut bringing the estranged Kalmar / Ruby team back together — in public, during an emotional performance. That’s total hooey, but Astaire and Skelton make it look smooth and unforced. But the storyline doesn’t pull its themes out of the air. Kalmar did dabble in magic before settling on song writing, and his stage dancing was halted by a knee injury.
Two numbers feature notable guest players. The novelty song I Wanna Be Loved By You got major attention for the teenaged Debbie Reynolds, playing a young Helen Kane and doing a spot-on vocal imitation. The real Helen Kane’s voice provides the Boop-Boop-a-Doop vocals. Ms. Kane’s story is a lesson in copyrights: She lost a lawsuit against Max Fleischer studios for their appropriation of her flapper persona and voice for their Betty Boop cartoons. A big part of Kane’s career was usurped by a cartoon character.
It’s interesting that Debbie Reynolds lip-synchs to a Helen Kane recording. In the classic Singin’ in the Rain Reynolds’ Kathy Selden provides the voice for silent actress ‘Lina Lamont’ — but is dubbed by the uncredited Betty Noyes.
Carleton Carpenter is a major talent who got into the movies just as studios were winding down the kinds of pictures that might favor him. He’s good in everything. He was discovered by Louis de Rochemont for the dramatic social issue picture Lost Boundaries, and his only MGM picture before this includes a classic comic bit with Spencer Tracy in Father of the Bride, involving some fizzy coke bottles. Debbie Reynolds does well singing and vamping around the gangly Carpenter. They were obviously paired because they were cute and asexual — even though she twists his shirt front into a knot and tugs at it in a way that now seems highly suggestive.
The other (very brief) guest star is Gloria DeHaven, who plays her own mother (billed as Mrs. Carter DeHaven) singing Who’s Sorry Now? Of all the MGM juvenile stars DeHaven always seemed the most expendable … either that or she just didn’t get the right breaks. In an earlier musical she’s outshined by June Allyson and Nancy Walker, although she’s much prettier than either of them.
Keenan Wynn does well as an agent with a knack for saying the wrong thing. We’re told that if we look closely we can see young Billy Gray ( The Day the Earth Stood Still) in a street scene. MGM’s ‘musical glamour’ costumes and sets are unconcerned with period detail. The songwriting collaboration began in 1919, but dresses and hairstyles feel more like 1950, and the writers’ luxurious residences have a postwar look. On board an ocean liner, Harry Ruby enjoys a stateroom the size of a tennis court.
Three Little Words is a pleasing musical despite its battery of genre clichés. New song lyrics fall out of the sky for these creative partners. The women behind the scenes defer to the mens’ immature emotional moods. The team splits, and their reconciliation happens during a public performance. Bert Kalmar is at times not all that likable, allowing Astaire to play outside his standard charming character. The dancing is excellent, even if the movie has no ‘classic’ dance numbers. But seeing the injured Bert in pain is very affecting — we really love Astaire, and don’t want him to be touched by anything mortal.
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