Babes on Broadway **** (1941, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Fay Bainter, Alexander Woolcott, Margaret O’Brien, Virginia Weidler, Ray Macdonald, Richard Quine, Donna Reed, Donald Meek) – Classic Movie Review 3609

Director Busby Berkeley’s infectiously exuberant 1942 follow-up to his 1939 Babes in Arms again teams Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney as hopeful talented young performers battling on Broadway, while putting on a show to send poor kids to the countryside. The stars, songs and are production are the main the virtues.

Rooney plays Tommy Williams who wants to get to Broadway, but he is singing in a spaghetti house for tips till he meets singer Penny Morris (Garland). In Fred Finklehoffe and Elaine Ryan’s screenplay, it is a fairly feeble story, though serviceable enough.

But instead the movie can boast a huge cornucopia of energy from the stupendous young stars, extremely jolly numbers (especially the Burton Lane-Ralph Freed hit ‘How About You?’ which was Oscar-nominated, Lane-Yip Harburg’s ‘Chin Up, Cheerio, Carry On’ and Freed-Roger Edens’s ‘Hoe Down’) and a lavish MGM production.

The best sequences are Garland singing ‘Franklin D Roosevelt Jones’ and ‘Waiting for the Robert E Lee’ and Rooney impersonating Carmen Miranda (‘Bombshell from Brazil’)!

Alexander Woolcott appears as himself. It is the four-year-old Margaret O’Brien’s first picture. Also in the cast are welcome Virginia Weidler, Ray Macdonald, Richard Quine, Fay Bainter, Donna Reed, Donald Meek, Luis Alberni, James Gleason, Emma Dunn and Cliff Clark.

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© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3609
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Mickey Rooney died on April 6 2014, aged 93.