Babes in Arms (1939)

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Good movie but grossly overrated

A Masterpiece!

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

My real-time thoughts while watching the movie:Garland and Rooney were so talented even at a young age - Music performances are great, both the vaudeville and Busby Berkley numbers. - Its philosophy is childish (telling Native Americans to dance away their sadness), but it's kinda fitting for its juvenile subjects. - What kid wouldn't like this, young people rebelling against ignoring & discouraging parents? - …AAAAANNNNNNDDD, a parade of blackface. So offensive and insensitive it's almost laughable…almost.

Let's put on a show. Did that phrase originate with this movie? At any rate, I watched it and am reviewing it.I loved it. I have some peeves, but they will arise later. Right now, I am missing dear Mickey because he passed away last year, 2014. In his interviews, he used to literally cry about missing the dear departed Judy and about the way she was mistreated by the studio system. Judy's career would go on hot and heavy for about another ten years after this movie, before her star began to fade off. Her adult movie career was rather short, if you measure the years of her successes, but power packed with all of her cinematic productions and private life stories in between.Re Mickey: Night in/at the Museum, eat your heart out. Older actors have to eat, and earn money to afford that SAG card membership.You look at this film, Babes in Arms, and you see young, energetic Mr. Mickey Rooney, slim, quick-footed and fast with impersonations of Clark Gable, Lionel Barrymore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was trying to direct and teach the other teenagers his way of acting properly on stage. Mickey was first-listed as star of this movie; he was all domineering and screechy but probably deserved all of the hype.Judy was excellent, and her Eleanor Roosevelt My Day number was superb and nostalgic. Yes, Judy's swing vs. opera number reminded me very much of her 1936 Sunday in the Park (was that the name?) with Deanna Durbin. In real life, IMO Deanna was siphoned off in favor of Judy as a future star.Another actress IMO who was shoved under the bus in favor of Judy was (hold your breath) Shirley Temple. Shirley didn't get Wizard of Oz, but Judy did. Temple's career was about over soon after The Little Princess, I feel, 1938. In this movie, Babes in Arms, the June Preisser character is a has-been child actress who has starred in such previous filmers in particular as "The Baby Colonel"/Baby General or something like that, that reminded me of Shirley's "The Little Colonel"/Littlest General (?). Was this a satirical innuendo?Some bad as follows, I feel, but I am still giving this movie a 10 for sentimental reasons and still loving Mickey and Judy in all that they did: a pox on the bonfire and related singing, ala Nazis and possibly even Hitler Youth: similar bonfire done in a later Judy movie Meet Me in St. Louis which is a creepy/pun intended Halloween scene, which I also despised along with the homemade stupid Halloween costumes in the St. Louis movie -- and also throwing the wooden furniture into the bonfire. Ugh.African American character in this movie: June Preisser's maid. Other than herself, here were white actors who "blacked up" in the supposed spirit of vaudevillian minstrelsy tradition -- could this type of blackface dance scene even be done today, 2015? Back to the good: Douglas McPhail I felt was one powerful singer, who outsang everybody else. He was maybe the only white performer in the blackface minstrelsy scene, but I feel he helped carry it off.IT WAS THE GREAT DEPRESSION. No wonder the older actors were broke. Moviegoers who had the ten cents or whatever it cost, could see talking films way cheaper than to see live vaudevillians of the old days. How could the former performers afford all the houses in that community, and pay for all the churches, etc.? Hardly any could have been real headliners, and most statistically could barely afford to even stay in rooming houses much less pay for permanent real estate.FINALLY, POST-WAR BABY BOOM. You have to realize that most of these actors were born, say, around 1920 (like Mickey) or 1922 (like Judy), and that they were teenagers when making this movie. This means that they were born right after World War One ended. The irony is that in real life some of these teen actors would go into World War Two and have post-war baby boom babies themselves.Mickey Rooney went on to serve in World War Two, he of the seven wives (I think) and maybe even countless babies? Yes, it was child real-life Mickey in the tap dancing film clip interspersed into the life of the movie's child Mickey Moran. This was no imposter playing Mickey Rooney/Mickey Moran.I am a theatrical historian and movie reviewer. I have a Bachelor of Arts Degree in American History, which includes close to a minor in performing arts studies in theatre, dance and voice, plus fine arts. I took the American History major in order to study more the decades surrounding much of our theatrical/stage and movie/cinematic history and actors and actresses thereof. I also studied cinematic techniques and theatrical censorship and critiquing.In my historian and theatrical coursework, I wrote scripts and portrayed actresses such as Sophia Loren (speaking Italian), Mae West (in a boa), and Lucille Ball (screaming at Ricky Ricardo that he's a fancy bandleader while she's a homebound wifey).At any rate, you know from my other reviews that song and dance movies are my absolute favorites. Some people say that some of these movies are plot-less or slim of plot, but so what? Who cares? This movie is a classic. Yes, it talks about Der Fuhrer and Il Duce, and Douglas McPhail does a cool goose-step. God's Country reminds one of the huge patriotic dance scene in the later 1942 Yankee Doodle Dandy.Critiquing this movie through today's lenses (2015), RIP Mickey Rooney, and even with the aforementioned sadder parts, I still give this movie:10/10

Former child-stars Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland both star in this movie about two young talented artist who try to make it in the world of show-business. It wasn't the first movie they appeared in together and it also wouldn't be the last. They appeared in several Andy Hardy movies together for instance, in which Mickey Rooney played the title role.Judy Garland was actually still only 17 when she appeared in the movie, the same year she did "The Wizard of Oz" and also Mickey Rooney looked like he was 15, while he was actually around 19 years old at the time. Both also play young teenagers in this movie and it earned Mickey Rooney actually an Oscar nomination. There of course weren't a lot of musicals around at the time which purely had teenagers in it. In that regard this movie is a refreshing little entry in the musical genre.It's an enjoyable and obviously light movie. But this of course also has as a result that the movie doesn't really ever reaches the a level of true greatness. The movie is enjoyable but just nothing more than that. It's obviously rather formulaic and predictable but this doesn't take away the entertainment value of it all. The movie is dragging in some parts but then again which '30's movie doesn't do so in parts? The movie perhaps also doesn't end in the way as it should have had, when some more sentimental themes start to kick in.In all fairness, the movie features some good songs. I'm normally not particularly too fond of songs featured in most musical movies but this movie does form an exception. Nothing I would be singing along with but it's nice sounding and of course gets performed by some capable artist.I enjoyed watching this movie simply for what it was.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

For Mickey and Judy fans, Babes in Arms is an absolute must. It's the only one of their films in which one of the two got an Oscar nomination. Mickey Rooney was nominated for Best Actor, personally I think as an afterthought because his competition was Clark Gable for Gone With the Wind, Laurence Olivier for Wuthering Heights, James Stewart for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and the winner Robert Donat for Goodbue Mr. Chips. Not that Mickey's bad, but he really didn't belong with this field.What he and Judy do, they do better than anyone else, put on a show. In fact in this case the 'put on a show' gambit did originate in the original Broadway Musical. Babes in Arms was one of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's best shows it ran for 289 performances in the 1937 season and boasted such Rodgers&Hart classics as Johnny One Note, Way Out West, My Funny Valentine, I Wish I Were in Love Again all of which were discarded for the film. The Lady is a Tramp is only heard instrumentally, my guess is the Code frowned on that lyric. The title song and Where or When are retained. In fact when you come right down to it, only the basic idea the songs mentioned and a couple characters names came over from Broadway.Still Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed wrote Good Morning which is better known from Singin' in the Rain, but it was Judy and Mickey who introduced it here. And a whole lot of other Brown&Freed songs from MGM musicals got interpolated into the score.Douglas MacPhail and Betty Jaynes who were introduced in Sweethearts also are here and sing beautifully. They married, but the marriage and MacPhail's career fell apart and he committed suicide a few years later. He had a great baritone voice, what a shame. The following year he introduced my favorite Cole Porter song, I Concentrate On You in The Broadway Melody of 1940. This was the film Judy Garland did right after The Wizard of Oz and coming along right with her is Margaret Hamilton playing another Miss Gulch like character. One of those spinster ladies who forever pry into other people's business.Believe it or not there was still a lot of prejudice against theatrical people even in 1937. A lot of old vaudeville types like Charles Winninger, Rooney's father in the film, settle in the town of Seaport on Long Island and their presence apparently upsets the ruling families like Hamilton's. When times go bad and vaudeville goes to seed, things get kind of rough for them. The old timers try to take a last tour to raise some money, but instead it's the kids who are up to the latest trends in pop music who save the day.Guy Kibbee is in this also, playing against type as a wise and sympathetic judge, usually the parts MGM reserved for Lewis Stone or Lionel Barrymore. A more typical Kibbee type would be the oafish tycoon in 42nd Street, but he's fine here.Possibly director Busby Berkeley wanted Kibbee, maybe as a good luck charm from that other breakthrough musical of his from his days at Warner Brothers. Of course the musical numbers in the show are set with the usual Berkeley surrealism, a little tempered though from his high flying days at Warner Brothers. That same year Berkeley had done a surreal type number in the Jeanette MacDonald-Lew Ayres film Broadway Serenade and it laid an egg. Someone at MGM must have reined him in.Babes In Arms retains all its charms from 1939 mainly because Mickey Rooney is infectious and Judy Garland's singing is eternal.