Early in "That's Entertainment", Frank Sinatra introduces the incredible production number from "The Great Ziegfeld" - the wedding cake number - and says that Dennis Morgan sings the song, "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody".
That's certainly Morgan on the wedding cake, pretending to sing. But as far as I know, Morgan was no singer. Did someone dub him?
I believe it was Allan Jones.
shareDennis Morgan was definitely a singer, and a good one. He made a series of musicals co-starring Jack Carson for Warner Brothers in the 1940s.
shareAllan Jones had pre-recorded the musical track for this grandiose number but by the time they finally came to shoot the sequence, Jones had been loaned to Universal for SHOW BOAT (1936, directed by James Whale) and was unavailable for the filming. That is why Dennis Morgan (then the unknown Stanley Morner)appears on screen, lip synching to the playback of Jones singing the song. He was probably chosen because, being a good singer and a musician himself, he would have been more convincing on screen and more able to lip synch the words without error, that would have required costly retakes. This number was so complicated that it was shot in just two very long takes, stitched together at the half way point to allow for a shift of camera position on the massive revolving set.
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