Andy Rooney

(On Cable TV, June 2022) I’m down to my last three films in the filmography of celebrated MGM producer Arthur Freed, and aside from meaningless bragging rights, my big motivation at this stage is understanding why those last three films are indeed the last three films. Why aren’t they broadcast more often on TCM? What explains their obscurity? In the case of Brigadoon, it’s easy – the film somehow isn’t licensed for broadcast in Canada by TCM. In the case of Babes in Arms and Babes on Broadway, the answer can be found in the films themselves. Babes in Arms has the distinction of being the first film to put perennial screen couple Judy Garland and Andy Rooney in lead roles outside the Andy Hardy films. Both of them were established leads in MGM’s stable, but this was the first time they were featured in starring roles that didn’t depend on an existing franchise. This being said, the film would not strike out all that far from comfort: the template reused here was familiar to the studio – “backyard musicals” with boy-and-girl-next-door, often putting on a show in order to save a local orphanage or some such: Rooney can emcee, Garland can sing and that’s the crux of what brought audiences in theatres. “Good Morning” was written for this film (and reused a few years later to iconic effect in Singin’ in the Rain), while Busby Berkeley’s direction hits a predictable climax right for the finale. Alas, that climax is the problem with the picture, and the reason why it’s not broadcast very frequently on TCM – and when it is, it’s accompanied by a verbal warning and a special documentary as epilogue. Yes, you guessed it: Blackface. A lot of blackface. Unrepentant, joyously lavish, and completely un-self-aware blackface. There’s a now stomach-churning contrast between the boyish-and-girlish glee of the film, the big smile of Rooney’s acting and the sweetness of Garland’s singing (not yet beaten down by Hollywood) and the baffling racism of blackface. It’s enough to explain why Babes in Arms finds itself way, way, way down the twenty-first century list of favourite Freed Unit films. It probably doesn’t help that the film has an absence of extraordinary qualities to make up for this significant problem – even if you can get over the blackface as a historical artefact, Babes in Arms doesn’t offer anything that hasn’t been done better elsewhere – in the Andy Hardy movies, in other Busby Berkeley films or in Singin’ in the Rain. I’m glad I’ve seen it – but I can’t imagine willingly revisiting this one in its entirety.