The Gang's All Here (1943) Reviews

• You've Never Seen Anything Like It

  sandy-321998-07-30

  Something between a fever-dream and a screwball comedy, THE GANG'S ALL HERE is the Fox Musical at its most extravagant. With everthing from Charlotte Greenwood doing her trademarked high-kick routine to Carmen Miranda in a ten-story banana headdress, there's never a dull moment (that might let you concentrate too closely on the plot, which can most charitably be described as serviceable). The picture is a carnival of character bits, ridiculous shtick, and mind-boggling transitions. Edward Everett Horton gets covered with Carmen's lipstick and claims it's ketchup -- "Yes, and from a Brazilian tomato!" ripostes his wife (Greenwood, who really is terrific here). Eugene Pallette growls "Don't be a square from Delaware!" when he wants his pal Horton to get hep and join in the latest dance sensation. A New York nightclub has a stage large enough for what looks like all of a tropical island (for Carmen's immortal "Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat" number, truly a Freudian nightmare), and a number set in a Westchester backyard features more trick fountains than two Esther Williams epics. In the end, it all just stops, with a 30-second plot resolution ("oh, yes, didn't I tell you? He's loved you all along!" or some such) in order to make room for the finale, the most dizzying number yet: a paean to the polka-dot (featuring Alice Faye's most effortful emoting ever on the line "...But the Polka Dot...Lives...On!") that segues into a ballet featuring neon hoops, vast rolling dots, kaleidoscopic trick photography, and, finally, an endearingly primitive blue-curtain effect that shows the heads of all the principals (and hundreds of chorus girls) bouncing along to a reprise of the hit ballad "A Journey to a Star." Well, THE GANG'S ALL HERE may not be quite that, but it's certainly a journey into a different era in filmmaking.

• Pure '40s - Benny and Carmen

  gbheron2001-04-02

  "The Gang's All Here" is just pure entertainment in the old-school musical style (before Oklahoma!). There's essentially no plot, and what story there is, is full of plot-holes. It's propaganda dressed up in a musical. Don't get negative about this; music and dancing predominate and, of course, the cause is good. Made during WWII it almost subliminally reinforces home front practices during wartime, such as buying war bonds, and staying true to your man in uniform. A lot of this is probably lost to most viewers fifty years later. But think about it, and remember that when this movie was made, the Allied victory was not a sure thing. And what about the music and dancing? Carmen Miranda in her tutti-frutti hat. Benny Goodman's swing band. Alice Faye. Busby Berkeley. If these people mean any thing to you, they are here in fine form.

• Great Movie Musicals are made of this

  david-19762006-10-22

  Wow! I have never seen so many interesting trivia points, nor so many errors of fact, reported about any film on IMDb. This film is what could happen when Busby Berkeley was given full rein and a lot of money to spend, and the results are incredible. Like the "Big Broadcast" musicals, this one is for the most part a series of vaudeville acts, but this time it's in Technicolor and Busby has a really big crane!! The plot is silly, negligible, and a reductio ad absurdum of the "gee kids, let's put on a show" genre, except this time Eugene Palette's kid, James Ellison, is coming back a decorated hero from the South Pacific, and Palette talks his neighbor, Edward Everett Horton, into putting on a benefit in his rose garden to sell war bonds. Both Palette and Horton are rich. their neighbors are rich, and they intend to make a pile of money. They convince comedian Phil Baker (a radio phenomenon also featured in the incredibly underrated "Goldwyn Follies" where he does a great number with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy) to participate, along with Carmen Miranda, Alice Faye, Ted DeMarco, Benny Goodman (playing incredible knockoffs of some of his best numbers, as well as original ones for the show), Charlotte Greenwood (doing her vaudeville shtick: this is her most characteristic film appearance, "Oklahoma" notwithstanding) to participate. This in spite of the fact that the Horton character ("Peyton Potter") is trying to hide the fact that he married a showgirl, Greenwood, and trying to keep his daughter stuck on James Ellison (Pallette's decorated son, "Andy Mason") in spite of the fact that she really has a yen to follow Mama's steps in show biz, and in spite of the fact that "Andy" is really stuck on Alice Faye, who has been called "the blondest of all baritones," and a sexy baritone she is. People are running in all directions in this movie, and they all play themselves, regardless of their characters' names. The plot is as complicated and as silly as a Feydeau farce--and just as inconsequential. The opening of the film is as striking a use of Technicolor as you will ever find. It's a lead-in to that great tune, "Brasil," and features Aloysio DeOliviera (who? don't ask me!) dressed in an exquisite black gown and wearing chartreuse above-the-elbow gloves that create a breathtaking effect--which leads into a silly number starring Camen and Phil and commenting on the 1943 scarcity of coffee. Later in the show you also get Carmen doing one of the greatest of Busby Berkeley numbers, "The Lady in the Tutti-Fruitti Hat," featuring hundreds of cute toes digging into studio beach sand, an incredibly suggestive bit with girls dancing with giant phallic bananas--a play, I'm sure, on the horniness of long-distance wartime love--and culminating in the bananas growing out of Carmen's hat. You also get Benny Goodman and "Paducah," a song so inane that when I am in a really bad mood my wife will start singing it, and I will burst into giggles: "Paducah, Paducah, if ya wanna you can rhyme it with bazooka/But you can't pooh-pooh Paducah: it's a little bit of paradise--/Paducah, Paducah, just a little bitty city in Kentucky/ But to me the word means lucky, when I'm lookin' into two blue eyes..." believe me, the lyrics get worse from here. Alice Faye gets to sing her hymn to wartime celibacy, "No Love," and everybody gets to take a whack at what they do best. Some of the film's moments may be lost upon those who fail to see it not only as film but in its historical context. Unlike filmmakers today, nobody in 1943 made movies that approached the war from a pro-Axis point-of view. (John Wayne discovered that, by the 1970's, few were making films that weren't, when he tried to celebrate the Green Berets in Vietnam!) Alice also gets to sing "The Polka Dot Polka," which leads into Busby's most incredible number, featuring hundreds--or at least tens--of gorgeous girls dancing with day-glo (and it hadn't even been invented yet!) discs or better yet, circles made of neon tubes. My first wife and I saw this film, aided by cigarettes filled with a controlled substance, on the campus of the University of Minnesota in the early 'seventies. The controlled substance was superfluous, but the movie's images were burned into my brain. There is no route this film takes that doesn't call for a willing suspension of disbelief, and yet its total is one that makes a person feeling better walking out of the movie theatre than he did when he walked in. This is a movie conceived as a movie, using the right people playing themselves, and without pretense. Like much of Paramount's output in the musical department, it's underrated--just as are the terrific "Road" pictures of Hope and Crosby, which never fail to tickle me. I have a copy I taped off of Turner Classic Movies. If Fox doesn't bring this out as a DVD, I guess I'll have to buy a DVD recorder so I can get a copy that doesn't degrade with each viewing the next time TCM shows it. I have a feeling that this great movie is just what Joel McCrea was talking about at the end of "Sullivan's Travels."

• enjoyable, vintage 20th Century Fox musical

  blanche-22006-01-07

  20th Century Fox pulled out all the stops for this Technicolor musical, "The Gang's All Here," directed by Busby Berkeley. There is a song at least every few minutes, wonderful singing, dancing, and comedy galore, and an absolutely threadbare plot. The story is of no consequence - the music is the thing, along with Carmen Miranda's gaudily-costumed numbers and delightful butchering of the English language. This film was made to bolster spirits during the war and to sell war bonds, which is dealt with in part of the plot. I can't imagine anyone walking out of the theater with anything but a smile on their face. Alice Faye is lovely and sings beautifully in her contralto, her main number being "A Journey to a Star." Miranda's big number, of course, is the classic "The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat" with the fabulous illusion at the end. Charlotte Greenwood gets to dance in "The Jitters" and she, Edward Everett Horton, and Eugene Palette provide excellent support. Benny Goodman's band is a standout, and I've always been a sucker for Benny's smooth, relaxed singing voice. Busby Berkeley's numbers are spectacular, particularly the finale - but somehow, I can't see it being done on someone's lawn! I agree with one of the posters, these Fox musicals need to be packaged into a collection and put out on DVD. They're too much fun to miss.

• Yes, they have some bananas

  skad132003-07-09

  I'll get to the plot of "The Gang's All Here" in a minute, because the plot isn't the most memorable part of this movie. The most memorable part is the bananas. About 20 minutes into the movie, a towering hat of Technicolor fruit appears on the screen, followed by its owner--'40s "Brazilian bombshell" Carmen Miranda. She proceeds to do a number called "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat," accompanied by chorus girls who bear bananas. Six-foot-tall bananas that continuously droop and sprout until number's end, when the chorus girls, worn out by the burden of this mutated fruit, lay down for a long siesta on a stage dressed up like an island. There's a reason this number occurs so early on: It takes you the rest of the movie to convince yourself you actually saw this in a 1943 movie. But then, this is Busby Berkeley, a director who staged his musical numbers as though he was declaring war. And next to kitsch, war is pretty much the motivator here. The wafer-thin story involves Andy (James Ellison), a soldier who woos and wins Edie (Alice Faye), a canteen dancer, the night before Andy goes off to World War Two. In what seems an instant, Andy gets decorated and returned home to a victory party thrown by the family of Andy's childhood sweetheart and fiancee--who, unfortunately for Edie, is not Edie. Will the heartbreak be resolved? Do you really care? The plot is mostly an excuse for some snappy repartee between major '40s stars (in particular, Eugene Pallette and Edward Everett Horton are hilarious), and the kind of musical numbers that seem to drop out of thin air. (In a couple of scenes, Benny Goodman and his orchestra stroll by and do some songs just for the heck of it.) "The Gang's All Here" is really a 1943 time capsule, but an eye-popping rouser of one. They don't make 'em like this anymore. They didn't make 'em much like this back then, either. It's not out on video or DVD, so look for its sporadic broadcasts on cable TV.