Easy to Love *** (1953, Esther Williams, Van Johnson, Tony Martin) – Classic Movie Review 9,896

MGM’s spectacular 1953 Technicolor musical film Easy to Love stars Esther Williams, who bathes balletically in Florida’s Cypress Gardens amidst choreographer Busby Berkeley’s finest swimmers and water-skiers.

‘MGM’s spectacular Technicolor musical excitingly filmed in Florida’s beautiful Cypress Gardens!’

Director Charles Walters’s 1953 Technicolor musical comedy romance film Easy to Love stars Esther Williams, who bathes balletically in Florida’s Cypress Gardens amidst choreographer Busby Berkeley’s finest swimmers and water-skiers. The title borrows its name from the 1936 Cole Porter classic song ‘Easy to Love’ and has the good grace to honour it by using it several times throughout the picture.

In this kitsch, colourful and richly enjoyable MGM show, Tony Martin trills for her hand, Van Johnson wants it too, lovely Cyd Charisse appears and Carroll Baker makes her début.

But it is Esther Williams’s show – and wet she’s a superstar alright – especially when Busby choreographs her aquabatics.

Also in the cast are John Bromfield, Carroll Baker, Edna Skinner, King Donovan, Paul Bryar, Cyd Charisse, Edward Clark, Lillian Culver, Ed Oliver, Emory Parnell, Dorothy Vernon, Sandra Gould, and Byron Kane.

Easy to Love is supposedly Esther Williams’s favourite of her own movies, featured in That’s Entertainment, Part II (1976).

‘You’d Be So Easy to Love’ is written by Cole Porter and sung by Tony Martin and played often throughout the picture. Porter wrote for Hollywood in the mid-1930s, including for MGM’s Born to Dance (1936), with James Stewart, featuring ”You’d Be So Easy to Love’.

The title also borrows its name from the 1934 pre-Code movie Easy to Love. Esther Williams and Van Johnson had previously appeared together in the similarly titled 1946 film Easy to Wed.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9,896

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