Chic, light as air confection is a pleasant diversion and a wonderful showcase for its three leading ladies.
This was a career high for Taina Elg, a charming elfin actress who worked steadily but never broke through to the majors. She's pixish and very appealing.
As the most pragmatic of the trio Mitzi Gaynor is slyly comic, wonderfully relaxed and of course dances beautifully, this is one of her best performances.
But the real standout and the person who walks away with the picture is the magical Kay Kendall. A performer with an enormous comic gift and a vibrant screen persona she was already suffering symptoms of the leukemia that would take her life within two years. You would never know it from watching her on screen she is so full of life and radiates energy and vitality, a bewitching creature.
Gene Kelly is good but his is really a sidelined role.
The full MGM treatment was brought to bear on this, one of the last of the big successful musicals before the studios somehow lost their way and gave in to gargantuan overproduction. There were still a few good musicals that came after, Gypsy, West Side Story, My Fair Lady, Funny Girl and a few others but before too long overblown dinosaurs like Hello, Dolly, Finian's Rainbow and Dr. Doolittle killed off the genre.
Not quite in the same league as Singin' in the Rain, On the Town, Meet Me in St. Louis or other MGM musical classics this is still a solid show from the time when MGM reigned supreme and was able to manufacture this sort of quality entertainment effortlessly.
This was a career high for Taina Elg, a charming elfin actress who worked steadily but never broke through to the majors. She's pixish and very appealing.
As the most pragmatic of the trio Mitzi Gaynor is slyly comic, wonderfully relaxed and of course dances beautifully, this is one of her best performances.
But the real standout and the person who walks away with the picture is the magical Kay Kendall. A performer with an enormous comic gift and a vibrant screen persona she was already suffering symptoms of the leukemia that would take her life within two years. You would never know it from watching her on screen she is so full of life and radiates energy and vitality, a bewitching creature.
Gene Kelly is good but his is really a sidelined role.
The full MGM treatment was brought to bear on this, one of the last of the big successful musicals before the studios somehow lost their way and gave in to gargantuan overproduction. There were still a few good musicals that came after, Gypsy, West Side Story, My Fair Lady, Funny Girl and a few others but before too long overblown dinosaurs like Hello, Dolly, Finian's Rainbow and Dr. Doolittle killed off the genre.
Not quite in the same league as Singin' in the Rain, On the Town, Meet Me in St. Louis or other MGM musical classics this is still a solid show from the time when MGM reigned supreme and was able to manufacture this sort of quality entertainment effortlessly.