The Best Things in Life Are Free *** (1956, Gordon MacRae, Dan Dailey, Ernest Borgnine, Sheree North) – Classic Movie Review 9913

Director Michael Curtiz’s 1956 film The Best Things in Life Are Free is a genial, vivacious, entertaining 20th Century Fox CinemaScope and Color by Deluxe musical tribute to 1920s jazz age Broadway and Hollywood songsmiths Buddy De Sylva, Ray Henderson and Lew Brown, composers of ‘Sonny Boy’ for Al Jolson (played here by Norman Brooks).

Gordon MacRae, Dan Dailey and Ernest Borgnine are supposed to be De Sylva, Henderson and Brown but they have a great time just playing in their own screen personas. Sheree North as Kitty Kane, the girl De Sylva falls for, outstrips them, and gives the movie its two most cherishable sequences in ‘The Black Bottom’ and ‘Birth of the Blues’ (both danced by Sheree North and Jacques d’Amboise).

Sheree North also performs ‘The Best Things in Life Are Free’ (music by Ray Henderson, lyrics by Lew Brown and Buddy G De Sylva), though she doesn’t sing it – it is dubbed by Eileen Wilson.

The Best Things in Life Are Free is a well crafted, nostalgic movie that delivers the old-time entertainment and old-time attitudes exactly as it intended.

The screenplay by William Bowers and Phoebe Ephron is based on a simple story by John O’Hara, in which, after scoring hits on Broadway, the trio face friction through De Sylva’s ambition. Lionel Newman was Oscar nominated for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture.

Also in the cast are Jacques d’Amboise (Specialty Dancer), Norman Brooks), Tommy Noonan (as Carl Frisbee, Murvyn Vye, Phyllis Avery, Larry Keating, Tony Galento, Roxanne Arlen, Byron Palmer, Linda Brace, Patty Lou Hudson, Julie Van Zandt, Eugene Borden, Harold Miller, Emily Belser, Paul Glass and Bill Foster.

The Best Things in Life Are Free is directed by Michael Curtiz, runs 104 minutes, is made by 20th Century Fox, is written by William Bowers and Phoebe Ephron, based on a story by John O’Hara, is shot in CinemaScope and Color by Deluxe by Leon Shamroy, is produced by Henry Ephron, and is scored by Lionel Newman, with music by Ray Henderson and lyrics by Buddy De Sylva and Lew Brown, and choreography by Rod Alexander.

It was shot on Stage 4, 20th Century Fox Studios, 10201 Pico Blvd, Century City, Los Angeles.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9913

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