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In the Good Old Summertime

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For the song, see In the Good Old Summer Time.
In the Good Old Summertime
File:Inthegoodoldsummertimevhscover.jpg
Directed byRobert Z. Leonard
Buster Keaton (uncredited)
Screenplay bySamson Raphaelson
Albert Hackett
Frances Goodrich
Ivan Tors
Buster Keaton (uncredited)
Based onParfumerie
1937 play
by Miklós László
Produced byJoe Pasternak
StarringJudy Garland
Van Johnson
S. Z. "Cuddles" Sakall
Spring Byington
CinematographyHarry Stradling
Edited byAdrienne Fazan
Music byFred Spielman
George Evans
Betti O'Dell
George E. Stoll
Jimmy Wakely
Robert Van Eps
Production
company
Distributed byLoew's, Inc.
Release date
  • July 29, 1949 (1949-07-29)
Running time
102 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1,577,000[1]
Box office$3,534,000[1]

In the Good Old Summertime is a 1949 American Technicolor musical film directed by Robert Z. Leonard. It stars Judy Garland, Van Johnson, S.Z. Sakall, Spring Byington, Clinton Sundberg, and Buster Keaton in his first featured film role at MGM since 1933.

The film is a musical adaptation of the 1940 film, The Shop Around the Corner, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, starring James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, and Frank Morgan, and written by Miklós László, based on his 1937 play Parfumerie. For In the Good Old Summertime, the locale has been changed from 1930s Budapest to turn-of-the-century Chicago, but the plot remains the same. The plot was also revived in the 1998 film You've Got Mail, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

Plot

In turn-of-the century America, Andrew and Veronica are co-workers in a music shop who dislike one another during business hours but unwittingly carry on an anonymous romance through the mail.

Songs

Production

Garland introduced the Christmas song "Merry Christmas" in this film; it was later covered by Johnny Mathis, Bette Midler, and cabaret artist Connie Champagne.

Director Robert Leonard originally hired Buster Keaton as a gag-writer to help him devise a way for a violin to get broken that would be both comic and plausible. Keaton came up with an elaborate stunt that would achieve the desired result; however, Leonard realized Keaton was the only one who could execute it properly, so he cast him in the film. Keaton also devised the sequence in which Johnson inadvertently wrecks Garland's hat and coached Johnson intensively in how to perform the scene. This was the first MGM film that Keaton appeared in after having been fired from the studio in 1933.[2]

The picture was filmed between November 1948 and January 1949.

Garland's three-year-old daughter, Liza Minnelli, makes her film debut, walking with her mother and Van Johnson in the film's closing shot.

The song "Last Night When We Were Young" was written in the 1930s by Harold Arlen and E. Y. "Yip" Harburg for the Metropolitan Opera star Lawrence Tibbett. Garland loved it and wanted to include it in the film. It was recorded and filmed but when the picture was released, it was cut from the final print. The audio recording of "Last Night When We Were Young" was featured on several of Garland's MGM record albums and she also later recorded it for Capitol Records in the 1950s. The entire footage of the number was found in the MGM vaults and included in the PBS documentary American Masters: Judy Garland: By Myself in 2004.

Reception

The film was made during the height of the strained relationship between Garland and MGM. As a testament to Garland's strong popularity, it was a huge critical and commercial success. According to MGM records, it earned $2,892,000 in the US and Canada and $642,000 overseas, resulting in a profit of $601,000.[1] According to Variety it earned $3.4 million in the US.[3]

The film was the second to last one that Garland made at MGM (with the final being Summer Stock). MGM terminated her contract – by mutual agreement – in September 1950.

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

References

  1. ^ a b c The Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles: Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study.
  2. ^ Kline, Jim (1993). The complete films of Buster Keaton. New York, NY: Citadel Press. pp. 192–193. ISBN 0806513039.
  3. ^ "Top Grossers of 1949". Variety. 4 January 1950. p. 59.
  4. ^ "AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals Nominees" (PDF). Retrieved 2016-08-13.
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