Weekend Movie Review: Words and Music (1948)
July 26, 2012 9 Comments
I went to see Words and Music at the Stanford Theatre knowing that it is a post-World War II MGM all-star musical, so I figured that this highly fictionalized account of the career of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart would provide a series of pretty darn good musical numbers, perhaps tied together by a clumsy narrative. Unfortunately, the songs were fewer in number than I’d hoped, even after accounting for the fact that Rodgers & Hammerstein was much more prolific than Rodgers & Hart. A bland narrative hung over the film like Perry Como (who was actually pretty likable in the film), spiced up by the frequently fascinating presence of Mickey Rooney, who played Hart.
RODGERS: A tune without a lyric is a mighty lonesome thing.
