Parky at the Pictures (DVD 29/3/2018)

According to the cynics, Easter Parade's pre-production was more interesting than the picture itself. Set in 1912 and following the fortunes of a vaudevillian who vows to turn a bar-room chorine into a star after he's dumped by his Broadway-bound partner, it may not have been the Freed Unit's most sophisticated offering. But it's certainly its most polished piece of escapist entertainment and it's doubtful whether Vincente Minnelli could have done a better job than Charles Walters had he not been forced to quit after five days, on the advice of his troubled wife Judy Garland's psychiatrist.

When MGM first announced the project in 1947, its stars were to be Gene Kelly, Kathryn Grayson, Frank Sinatra and Red Skelton. But Garland, Peter Lawford and Jules Munshin were soon drafted in alongside Ann Miller, who replaced Cyd Charisse after she broke her leg. However, Kelly then fractured his ankle playing touch football (although he told the studio that the accident happened during rehearsals) and producer Arthur Freed briefly considered casting Gene Nelson before persuading the 48 year-old Fred Astaire to come out of retirement.

Having been reassured that filming couldn't be delayed and that Kelly would be incapacitated for several months, Astaire signed up for his fifth collaboration with Irving Berlin - the last being Paramount's Blue Skies (1946), the success of which had persuaded Freed to offer the composer an unprecedented $500,000 fee and a percentage of the profits in return for access to the 800+ tunes in his songbook. While associate producer Roger Edens selected the standards, Berlin produced a raft of new tunes, including `It Only Happens When I Dance With You', `A Fella With an Umbrella' and `Steppin' Out With My Baby'. However, `I Love You - You Love Him' and `Mister Monotony' were cut from the final print, while Freed took exception to the proposed speciality number `Let's Take an Old-Fashioned Walk' and Berlin replaced it within the hour with `A Couple of Swells'.

Berlin was also invited to share his memories of 1910s showbiz with screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. But Walters (who was directing only his second feature after 1947's Good News) disliked the script's over-reliance on the Pygmalion myth and persuaded Freed to hire Sidney Sheldon to tone down its misanthropy. Ultimately, the storyline bore echoes of For Me and My Gal (1942), but it admirably captured the backstage mood and accommodated the Berlin numbers with seamless ease.

Despite the fact that she had to rejoin Minnelli 17 times for retakes on The Pirate, Garland revelled in the project and made a delightful job of such solos as `Better Luck Next Time' and oldies like `I Love a Piano', `Snooky Ookums' and `When That Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam' in the marvellous montage sequence with Astaire.

He also excelled in his duets with Garland (`A Couple of Swells' and `Easter Parade') and Miller (`It Only Happens When I Dance With You'), while his spotlights on `Drum Crazy' and `Steppin' Out With My Baby' showed no signs of his 13-month absence from the screen. Indeed, in the latter routine (which referenced Top Hat, 1935 and Carefree, 1938) he danced a pseudo-ballet, a sultry blues and a zesty jitterbug with three different female partners before launching into tap solo that culminated in a slo-mo sequence that took four weeks to edit. Yet, for once, Astaire was upstaged by Miller's explosive rendition of `Shaking the Blues Away', which demonstrated why MGM had recruited her as a replacement for Eleanor Powell.

Easter Parade cost $2,503,654 and grossed $6,803,000. It earned Edens and conductor Johnny Green Academy Awards for the Best Scoring of a Musical Picture. But, most significantly, it relaunced Fred Astaire's career and established the character of the teacher-initiator who falls for his protégé that he would also play in The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), Daddy Long Legs (1955), Funny Face and Silk Stockings (both 1957).

Garland would struggle to recapture this form in her subsequent pictures, however, and it's sad to compare the little girl lost in Robert Z. Leonard's In the Good Old Summertime (1949) and Walters's Summer Stock (1950) with the vivacious starlet who graced The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Few films have attracted as many rumours, anecdotes and statistics as this lavish adaptation of the stories of L. Frank Baum. Prime among them is the contention that MGM chief Louis B. Mayer was so keen to secure Shirley Temple for the role of Dorothy Gale that he was prepared to lend Clark Gable and Jean Harlow to 20th Century-Fox in return. Yet, this is pure Hollywood myth, as associate producer Arthur Freed always viewed the project as a star-making vehicle for the 17 year-old Garland and even over-ruled senior producer Mervyn LeRoy's preference for Universal's singing sensation, Deanna Durbin.

More accurate are assertions that Buddy Ebsen swapped roles with Ray Bolger, only to prove allergic to his Tin Man make-up, and that numerous writers and directors made uncredited contributions to the finished film. But Victor Fleming still merits his sole directorial credit, if only for spending countless nights shuttling back from the Gone With the Wind (1939) set for nocturnal editing sessions with Blanche Sewell. Yet, despite all these changes of personnel, the film exhibits a remarkable creative unity, which owes much to MGM's trademark perfectionism and the consistent excellence of Ray Bolger (The Scarecrow), Jack Haley (The Tin Man) and Bert Lahr (The Cowardly Lion), whose deft professionalism made it seem as though Garland was carrying the entire picture.

Another unifying factor was Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg's pioneering soundtrack. This not only proved a summation of the 1930s musical genre, but it also anticipated the integrated musicals of the postwar era, in which songs played a pivotal part in telling the story rather than merely providing entertaining digressions from it. However, Freed had to fight to keep the film's best-known tune, as executives wanted to cut `Over the Rainbow', as it delayed the entry into the dazzling multi-coloured Neverland on which they had lavished so much expense.

Despite consigning a budget of $2,777,000, MGM always considered the film to be a commercial risk, which could only be justified by allowing Technicolor to conduct some vital camera experiments before shooting began on Gone With the Wind. However, the success of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) had alerted the studio to the potential of the juvenile market and Baum's 1900 novel seemed an obvious choice, especially as it had frequently been mentioned by fans suggesting potential projects. Several screen adaptations had already been made, with Oliver Hardy playing the Tin Woodsman in Larry Semon's 1925 silent version. But this remains far and away the best.

Like Snow White, The Wizard of Oz has its genuinely scary moments, with the attack on Munchkinland, the talking trees and the flying monkeys resulting in it being restricted to `adults only' by the British censor. Crucial to these sequences and those involving the tornado, the skywriting broomstick and the Wicked Witch's melting flesh was the technical ingenuity of Buddy Gillespie's SFX unit. But equally exemplary were Jack Dawn's make-up and Adrian's costumes, which made the characters seem both pantomimic and credible. Yet the key to the film's enduring visual appeal is the colour that transforms the sepia Kansas countryside into a land over the rainbow, complete with its Yellow Brick Road, Ruby Slippers, Emerald City and Horse of Another Colour.

Its themes have also contributed to its longevity. The cosy notion that `there's no place like home' consoled contemporary viewers still nostalgic for the places they had been forced to leave behind in order to look for work during the Depression and it would take on renewed significance during the Second World War. But such timeless sentiments have since been reinforced by the feature's  aspirational elements and its espousal of acceptance (which has made it a particular favourite of gay audiences). Yet, despite its propitious ideas and the care lavished upon it, The Wizard of Oz drew a mixed critical response and grossed only $3,017,000 on its first release. Indeed, it took reissues in 1948 and 1954 and its sale to television in 1956 for it to turn a worthwhile profit and become a firm family favourite. Nowadays, however, it stands as a celebration of the magic of childhood and the vitality of the imagination - treasures that the makers of contemporary kidpix seem to have forgotten.

Frustrated at missing out on the stage hit Life With Father, MGM producer Arthur Freed found a ready-made replacement in the `Kensington' stories that Sally Benson had published in the New Yorker. Charmed by the sweetness of autobiographical vignettes that were `like a Valentine in the palm of your hand', Freed originally conceived Meet Me in St Louis (1944) as a musical with period songs for director George Cukor. However, the MGM board had doubts about a film with a non-linear structure, despite Freed's assurance, `I'll make a plot with song and dance and music. That's the way my characters will come to life - that'll be my plot.'

But Louis B. Mayer saw the venture as a costume equivalent to his long-running Andy Hardy series and backed the screenplay that Fred Finklehoffe and Irving Brecher had written for Vincente Minnelli. He also sanctioned Freed's recruitment of Broadway art director Lemuel Ayers (who had designed Oklahoma!) and the construction of a 1903 St Louis street at a cost of $208,275. Mayer also helped coax Garland into accepting the part of Esther Smith - even though she was increasingly anxious to escape from juvenilia - and surrounded her with such dependable character players as Mary Astor (mother, Anne), Leon Ames (father, Lon), Harry Davenport (Grandpa Prophater) and Marjorie Main (Katie the maid), as well as newcomers like Lucille Bremer, Joan Carroll and Margaret O'Brien, as her sisters, Ruth, Agnes and Tootie.

Freed and Mayer were so committed to this project as it reaffirmed the key message of The Wizard of Oz: `There's no place like home'. This was more relevant than ever with so many military personnel overseas and Minnelli's `sentimental mood piece' revisited Oz's contrasting concepts of youth/adulthood, fantasy/reality and faraway/home, while also placing patriotic faith in the rituals, inventions and values that America was fighting to uphold.

Yet for all its seemingly simple positivity, this is also a film of contradiction and complexity. The spirited Smith women are determined to seize life. But they are also cheerfully subservient and domesticated. Conversely, the chauvinistic Lon despises the telephone, yet so aspires to the social mobility it symbolises that he accepts a promotion that will uproot his entrenched family to New York. Even more ironic is the fact that this nostalgic saga is so firmly rooted in modernity. Great store is set by technological advance and the comforts and conveniences of consumerism, while the World Fair finale celebrates the future with an optimism that would have cheered contemporary audiences, who were already beginning to anticipate the peace. The score even blends 1900s standards like Bob Cole's `Under the Bamboo Tree' and Kerry Mills's title ditty with such Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane pop tunes as `The Trolley Song', `The Boy Next Door' and `Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas'.

Shot in lustrous Technicolor, the décor similarly combines authentic period details gleaned from Benson's stories and the paintings of Thomas Eakins with the inspired use of light, colour and composition that Minnelli had learned as a window dresser. This conscious theatricality also applies to choreographer Charles Walters's staging of the musical numbers, which, despite Minnelli's agile camera, largely remain within confined spaces - although `The Trolley Song' has more of a traditional production feel. Yet it wasn't all cosy artifice, as Tootie imparts a sense of mischief and melancholy that turns disconcertingly dark during the Halloween and Christmas sequences. The latter even sees her launch a furious assault (on learning of her father's decision to quit St Louis) on the snow people that she had built so lovingly in the garden and such self-possessed shifts between innocence and experience earned O'Brien a special Oscar.

Meet Me in St Louis grossed $7,566,000 on its $1,707,561 budget. But, more significantly, by integrating the songtrack to emphasise the emotional aspect of the everyday, it had an even greater impact on the Hollywood musical than the landmark Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! had exerted on Broadway. Furthermore, Garland had found in Minnelli a director (and husband) who she hoped would protect her from a growing  predilection for insecurity and caprice.

They would reunite on The Pirate (1947), which ranks among the musical's most maligned masterpieces. It was based on Ludwig Fulda's 1911 play, Der Seerauber, which had been adapted by S.N. Behrman as a comedy for Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in 1942. MGM had acquired the rights for screenwriter Joseph L. Mankiewicz to concoct an 1830s romance for Judy Garland, in which an entertainer poses as a pirate to steal a Caribbean beauty from a duplicitous mayor. But, Lemuel Ayers, who had designed the Broadway original, suggested that it would work better as a Cole Porter musical and Arthur Freed concurred.

He was so dismayed by the first four songs that Porter submitted, however, that he rejected them, along with a script by Anita Loos and Joseph Than. Subsequently, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett were drafted in to collaborate with Porter and Minnelli to integrate the score into the scenario, in order to lampoon the conventions of operetta while also celebrating their theatricality. Refusing to shoot on location, Minnelli had art director Jack Martin Smith blend Latin American and West Indian styles to achieve the conscious artificiality that was to be the film's leitmotif, as this was a study in illusion.

Manuela (Garland) thinks she's in love with the infamous Macoco, but she's really only enamoured of his dashing image in a book. Unsurprisingly, therefore, she falls for Serafin (Gene Kelly as a ham actor masquerading as her hero) rather than the buccaneer himself, who is actually the corpulent Don Pedro Vargas (Walter Slezak), whom her Aunt Inez (Gladys Cooper) wishes her to marry. However, it takes Manuela's entry (under Serafin's hypnosis) into another dream world to reveal these suppressed desires and belt out `Mack the Black' with a passion that thrills both the diegetic onlookers and the film audience, who not only share her willingness to be transported to a place of escape and romance, but who are similarly ready to be mesmerised by the action on the screen.

This is, therefore, a classic Hollywood paean to showbusiness. It's also a fine example of the fairytale musical (albeit with a little backstager morality thrown in), as Manuela chooses the itinerant troubadour over the seeming respectability of wealth, while Serafin appears content to abandon his philandering ways to settle down with his true love. The production itself ended less happily, however, owing to the demands placed on Garland, as she not only had to combine dramatic intensity with comic finesse, but she also had to sing Porter with passion and keep step with Kelly - and all at a  time when she was struggling to cope with the birth of her daughter Liza, the terminal decline of her marriage to Minnelli and the onset of a breakdown that she kept at bay with pills. Consequently, she succumbed to the strain and missed 99 of the 135 shooting days before checking into a sanatorium.

Yet, she somehow managed to produce a fine performance, excelling particularly on `Love of My Life', `You Can Do No Wrong' and `Mack the Black'. She even held her own with Kelly on the reprise of `Be a Clown', which he had earlier insisted on performing with the African-American Nicholas Brothers, despite the sure knowledge that the number would be cut in the Deep South. However, Garland's luminous display owed much to Harry Stradling's chivalrously sensitive cinematography, which managed to make her look as glamorous as the sumptuous sets, which were seen at their Technicolor best in `Nina' and `The Pirate Ballet', which were impeccably edited by Blanche Sewell to capture the full exuberance of Kelly's mischievous impersonations of Douglas Fairbanks and John Barrymore.

Yet, neither this glorious artistry nor the gleeful fantasy found public favour and The Pirate earned only $2,956,000 on its $3,766,396 budget, making it Garland's only MGM movie to lose money. Freed suggested that it was 20 years ahead of its time. But Louis B. Mayer shared Time magazine's verdict that this was `entertainment troubled by delusions of art' and he rushed Kelly and Garland into Easter Parade in a bid to restore their wholesome reputations.

As we have seen, fate decreed that Garland would team with Fred Astaire and she found herself alongside another distinctive talent in George Cukor's A Star Is Born , which is widely considered to be the finest MGM musical the studio never made. Produced by Warners, it's a veritable film à clef, as Frances Gumm had become Judy Garland in much the same manner that Esther Blodgett becomes Vicki Lester. Moreover, Garland would have found its depiction of addiction, unprofessionalism and the stresses placed upon showbiz marriages all-too-familiar.

But while this was a courageous and deeply personal study of stellar burnout, it was also a sour riposte to the celebratory nostalgia of Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen's Singin' in the Rain (1952). Garland may well have stomped through puddles to `Lose That Long Face', but Kelly's Golden Age optimism had begun to evaporate and Norman Maine's decline and fall evoked melancholic end-of-era aura of the underrated Minnelli-Astaire vehicle. The Band Wagon (1953). Indeed, Maine's death dissipated the spirit of Lloyd Bacon's Depression-era masterpiece, 42nd Street (1933), and shattered the backstager truism that the romantic union of the stars guarantees the success of the show. Consequently, Hollywood's vision of itself would never be the same again, with cynical exposès like George Sidney's Pal Joey and Charles Vidor's The Joker Is Wild (both 1957) becoming the norm.

No wonder Louis B. Mayer had refused Garland's request to reprise the role that she had played for Cecil B. De Mille in a Lux Radio Theatre broadcast in 1942. However, after MGM had discarded her, third husband Sid Luft thought that a remake of William Wellman's 1937 drama would be the ideal follow-up to her comeback triumphs at the Palace Theatre in New York and the Palladium in London. But while the part of Esther/Vicki almost wrote itself, scenarist Moss Hart had to borrow from Cukor's 1932 saga, What Price Hollywood? for Norman Maine, who bears traces of everyone from John Bowers, John McCormick and Marshall Neilan to John Barrymore and Al Jolson. Consequently, despite Garland's entreaties, Cary Grant rejected the role of the monstrous, drunken has-been, which was also linked with Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Frank Sinatra, Ray Milland and Laurence Olivier before James Mason finally accepted it.

However, Grant may also have been reluctant to play second-string to Garland, who was given the confidence to dominate proceedings by the ever-empathetic Cukor and summoned up a performance that would have been unthinkable during her later years at Metro. She delivered the anthemic `The Man That Got Away' in a single take and demonstrated her gift for mimicry and genius for feel-good in `Somewhere There's a Someone', in which she created an entire production number simply with the props to hand in her sitting-room.

But while songwriters Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin played to her strengths with the likes of `Gotta Have Me Go With You', `It's a New World' and `Here's What I'm Here For', it was Leonard Gershe and Roger Edens's arrangement of the 18-minute `Born in a Trunk' that stopped the show, as Garland rattled through a medley of standards that gave a foretaste of the camper, more theatrical style that she would adopt for her legendary cabaret performances. Yet the role gave also Garland the chance to prove she was a dramatic actress, as well as an all-round entertainer, and plenty of raw emotional power went into the tour de force performance that Time correctly identified as `the greatest one-woman show in modern movie history'.

Aware of Garland's off-screen problems, contemporary audiences must have known that they were witnessing the passing of the old Judy. But Cukor also used the state-of-the-art CinemaScope frame to suggest that the movies themselves were at the crossroads. The opening shots present Hollywood as a glamorous distant dream that becomes a pressurised nightmare when viewed in close-up and Cukor utilised similar matches and contrasts to show Norman and Esther working towards a common goal. But once Vicki becomes famous, this duality hives off into parallel sequences designed to reveal that stars are ordinary people whose heightened sense of ego makes their highs higher and their lows unendurable.

Cukor further demythologised Tinseltown by including shots of television sets in the pivotal scenes in which Norman is fired and then humiliates himself at the Oscarcast, in order to imply that cinema had not only lost its battle with the small screen, but was now increasingly dependent upon it for publicity. This despondent message may well have counted against the picture at the Academy Awards. But Garland's loss to Grace Kelly in George Seaton's The Country Girl - which Groucho Marx dubbed `the biggest robbery since Brinks' - probably owed more to Jack Warner's philistinic decision to cut 27 minutes of her performance, in spite of a successful round of previews and premieres.

Ronald Haver completed a miraculous restoration in 1983 and the film was reclaimed as a masterpiece. But, back in the mid-50s, its meagre $1 million profit after an expensive 10-month shoot and exaggerated rumours of Garland's unreliability ensured that she didn't make another film for six years. Her performances in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), John Cassavetes's A Child Is Waiting and Ronald Neame's I Could Go on Singing (both 1963) have much to commend them and have been unfairly overlooked. But nothing could ever match the sight and sound of Judy Garland at the height of her powers.