MovieChat Forums > Summer Stock (1951) Discussion > My only quirk with this movie...

My only quirk with this movie...


...is that none of the things they practiced throughout the film showed up in the final production. What happened to the love story and all the lines they were memorizing and that song that Abgail and Keith were doing? The final production consisted of a bunch of different songs that didn't even go together! Don't get me wrong, I really like this movie. But that aspect of it just doesn't make any sense.

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I noticed that about the songs, too. But, it's a movie, and we have to suspend disbelief and go with the flow. It's not rocket science, just a bit of light entertainment.

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That's the same sort of quirk that ends up in a lot of movies referred to as "backstage musicals." The main goal is to get a song in the movie, more so than getting a song in the show in the movie. And the movie audience is left to pull for the performers and hope that the audience in the movie likes them. This was a psychological ploy that the film industry seemed to understand quite well especially during the 1930s and 1940s.


"... in Alabama, the tusks are looser [Tuscaloosa]." -- Groucho Marx in Animal Crackers (1930)

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I don't understand what all the fuss is about. We only see portions
of what they're rehearsing and then portions of the actual show itself.
Just because we saw "Memory Island" in rehearsal, doesn't mean it wasn't
in the show later. And just because Jane sings "Get Happy", doesn't
mean Abigail wasn't rehearsing this as a solo. I don't understand people
who think that if a scene/song wasn't shown, it wasn't there. We didn't
see Joe Ross visit the bathroom, but we assume he did. Give me a break.

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I think it's pretty obvious that what is shown in the film is only excerpts from the show. Did you genuinely walk away thinking their entire production consisted of like, four numbers, or however many it was? It's patently clear that to show the entire production would be an entire film by itself.

Don't crap on the movie because your expectations are out whack.

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I agree with gbennet5, those types of movies don't have to show the rehearsals to be the same as the final productions to be good, plus just because we don't see everything doesn't mean it doesn't happen. They were escapism films, the backyard musicals, Broadway musicals, etc. A lot of the 1930s Busby Berkeley films were that way too. Like for example, "Footlight parade", the "By a waterfall" number at the end with the pools, fountains, and waterslides. We didn't see any of that during the rest of the film while they were rehearsing, just the directors, a piano player, and the girls dancing on the stage. All the Busby Berkeley films in the early-mid 1930s (Dames, 42nd street, Gold diggers 33 and 35), the Judy/Mickey films in the late 1930s/early 1940s (Strike up the band, Babes in arms, Babes on Broadway, Girl crazy), The Broadway Melody films (29,36,38, and 40), The great Ziegfeld, Ziegfeld girl, and more. I loved every one of them, and so did most 1930s and 1940s audiences because almost all of them grossed very high.

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