Three Little Words (1950)

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Director: Richard Thorpe
Starring: Fred Astaire, Red Skelton, Vera-Ellen, Arlene Dahl

Honors:
Golden Globe for Best Actor

MGM dips back into its formula of a biographical picture featuring iconic song writers in in this musical starring Fred Astaire and Red Skelton. A very loose and lighthearted tale depicting the early 20th century songwriting duo of Kalmar and Rudy this picture once again feeds on the nostalgia of musical yesteryear while providing some of that top MGM talent in glorious Technicolor, resulting in a well-received feature for 1950 despite having its creative leeway with facts.

Three Little Words is a musical biopic about famed songwriters Kalmar and Rudy. Successful vaudeville dancer Bert Kalmar (Fred Astaire) is sidelined by a knee injury and discovers a new calling when he teams up with a Tin Pan Alley composer Harry Ruby (Red Skelton). Despite their relationship beginning with a bit of friction, the two form a team that produces a string of effective popular tunes that span sheet music, popular acts, and Broadway shows. Through the success career Kalmar is able to settle down and finally marry his former dance partner Jessie (Vera-Ellen), and in time after a number of false relationships Ruby is finally able to find himself love in actress Eileen Percy (Arlene Dahl). However, a professional rift forms between the songwriting team, splitting the duo. It is their wives that help find a way to reunite Kalmar and Rudy, ending the feud, and in the process, help finish a song Rudy had been working on for a decade to get right entitled “Three Little Words,” continuing the line of success for the team.

With this lighthearted motion picture one can quickly get the feeling that the biopic is not all in sharing genuine facts with its simple story as a vehicle to showcase a series of popular songs from the duo’s history. That in mind it is clear this film is about nostalgia anchored by the popular tunes of the past, and that is very much acceptable for an enjoyable musical feature of the late 40s/ early 50s. Anchored by stars Astaire and Skelton the picture is a mix of melody, skilled dancing, and light comedy in a brightly produced period piece depicting a period of the recent past during its release. Vera-Ellen provides a more than suitable dancing partner to Astaire that can almost make you forget about Ginger Rogers in this beautifully produced picture filled with refrain that makes most viewing it romantic for yesteryear.

MGM studio director Richard Thorpe brings his experience of filming in Technicolor to vividly give life to this so-called biopic. His recent work in a number of cheerful color features along with his own history in vaudeville provides a solid base from which the story’s eyes can be shared.

Fred Astaire shared a personal relationship with both Kalmar and Rudy in real life, giving him a person admiration for the picture. Throughout the process Astaire was very fond of the production, which he would look back on as being one of very favorite films to have worked on. In the film he portrays Kalmar as an injured dancer with a fondness for sleight of hand magic that he fails to turn into a career before discovering his skill in songwriting. Having recently returned from a very brief retirement Astaire appears back at his peak in box office appeal, providing skilled dancing and genuinely good acting for a fluff biopic. Paired with dancing talents of Vera-Ellen his dancing is precise and graceful as ever, meanwhile his passion for the film and playing the straight man of the picture’s duo creates a performance that earned him a Golden Globe.

To portray the other half of the Tin Pan Alley duo, Harry Rudy, casting appealed to a performer that shared a similar appearance to Rudy, comedic performer Red Skelton. Despite the role lacking the more frantic comic stylings Skelton was better known for, the role does provide most of the light humor in the picture. Skelton’s portrayal of Rudy provides a more childlike touch to the man as he pines for two things that give him happiness, love and his favorite pastime, baseball. It does little to showcase the true skill of Skelton as a funnyman, but does manifest his ability to be more subtle as an actor.

Despite the two actresses portraying the wives, Vera-Ellen and Arlene Dahl, sharing starring credits in the feature, the two are not featured near as much as their male counterparts. Once again, Ellen is both grace and agile, keeping up mightily with Astaire’s athleticism while dancing with the famed performer. Her role as Jessie however fades in importance as the plot moves into the second half of the picture with Bert’s success and the two wed. Dahl’s performance as Eileen Percy is quite good, yet even more brief. Her greatest contribution may even go least praised, as unlike most other actresses singing in the picture Ellen Dahl’s voice was not dubbed by another voice artist.

All acting aside and truth be told, most of what we see in the picture is pure fabrication of the sake of simple Hollywood filmmaking. Kalmar and Rudy’s songwriting history was nothing dramatic of note, they were simply a good songwriting team. So, what does a studio do when it wants to produce a film featuring their library of tunes? You make up a conflict, of course. The film actually has very drama at that, but in reality professionally Kalmar and Rudy got along well enough that it lacks any interest. Neither did the songwriting team never experienced a period where they split up, not did Rudy struggle to complete a song taking several years to finish. Simply the source that the pair were not known to get along particularly well was the base to create the fictional story that turned into the film we see. So, with all the uninteresting facts thrown aside what we are delivered is a pure fabrication devised to purely entertain in a Hollywood fashion.

This type of musical biopic was nothing new for MGM. In fact, this was the third such feature for the studio depicting catalogs of successfully songwriters with a fictionalized biography as a backbone. Three Little Words perhaps best captured this structure with the lighthearted nature MGM loved to produce in nostalgic tours of music past. It paid off the studio with generous profits and good critical reviews for a fluff movie to enjoy. Aside from Astaire’s Golden Globe, the film was praised for its music direction which was aided by the still living Harry Rudy as consultant, who even making a quick cameo. The lasting impact may not be there for the feature, but it would mark an early appearance of future star actress Debbie Reynolds, who in her own right became a figurehead of movie musicals. She makes a brief appearance as singer Helen Kane with Reynolds providing the bright eyes and light performance, while Kane dubbing in her own distinct singing voice, punctuating her signature “boop-a-doop.”

Three Little Words comes off as more of a classic MGM musical than it does as a biographical picture, but for this studio that is exactly what you should expect. If that is your flavor, you will in enjoy, but if you wanted serious drama, you will need to look elsewhere. Astaire and Ellen are the highlights while Skelton plays a fine second fiddle even if it is not in his style. In any case it is a fine picture for its day, but does not stand out at all for its genre.