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Words And Music

WORDS AND MUSIC

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CREDITS

1948, 118 minutes, Technicolor.
Producer, Arthur Freed; Director, Norman Taurog; Screenplay, Fred Finklehoffe; Cinematography, Charles Rosher and Harry Stradling; Music Direction, Lennie Hayton; Choreography, Robert Alton and Gene Kelly.

CAST

Lorenz Hart, Mickey Rooney; Richard Rodgers, Tom Drake; Herbert Field, Marshall Thompson; Dorothy, Janet Leigh; Peggy McNeil, Betty Garrett; Joyce Harmon, Ann Sothern; Eddie Anders, Perry Como; Mrs. Hart, Jeanette Nolan.
As Themselves:
June Allyson, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, Vera-Ellen, Cyd Charisse, Mel Torme, The Blackburn Twins, Dee Turnell, Allyn Ann McLerie.

SONGS

Lover; The Lady Is A Tramp; Where or When; Thou Swell; I Wish I Were In Love Again; Johnny One Note; Slaughter on Tenth Avenue; On Your Toes; The Girl Friend; This Can't Be Love; Blue Room; There's a Small Hotel; Where's That Rainbow?; Way Out West; Blue Moon; Mountain Greenery; Spring Is Here by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.

PLOT SYNOPSIS

"After Hollywood's biographical treatments of Broadway composers Gershwin, Porter and Kern, it was time to distort the lives of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. . .Words and Music takes the songwriters from their first meeting, covers some of their Broadway and London successes, and ends with Hart's tragic death at the age of 48. . ."
Stanley Green, Hollywood Musicals Year By Year

NOTES

". . .it would surely have been kinder to let their words and music speak for themselves, rather than to allow the pack of half-truths and downright lies perpetrated by Fred Finklehoffe's anachronistic screenplay. . .to be passed off as fact."
- Clive Hirschhorn, The Hollywood Musical

"Words and Music has just the right proportions of garlicky bad taste and more than Oriental splendor which (plus Technicolor) add up to a Hollywood dream of heaven - an MGM supermusical."
- Time Magazine

"The story part is painfully embarrassing to watch, but some of the musical numbers are just fine."
- Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights At The Movies


Words and Music was the 9th highest-grossing film of the year. See Box Office Hits

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