Books about canonized movie musicals like Singin' in the Rain are easy to justify. But why Summer Stock, an MGM confection from 1950 that doesn't tend to make anyone's short list of favorites? David Fantle and Tom Johnson (Hollywood Heyday) have the answer. In the high-stepping C'mon, Get Happy: The Making of Summer Stock, they reveal that the movie's backstory "contains enough drama, heartache, and genuine selflessness to fuel the plots of a score of MGM melodramas."
When Judy Garland reported for duty as Summer Stock's female lead, she was fresh from rehab and apparently feeling it. Chronically tardy and frequently absent, she was threatened with suspension. In one of many archival interviews conducted by the authors, director Charles Walters suggests that making the film gave him an ulcer. But the show went on, and the resulting product, which featured leading man Gene Kelly's favorite solo dance routine and Garland's now iconic song "Get Happy," did well with critics and audiences alike. Even so, MGM didn't renew Garland's contract after she completed the film.
C'mon, Get Happy has a catchall quality: a single on-the-set chapter is flanked by individual chapters devoted to cast biographies, musical numbers, and so on. It all adds up to a marvelous grab bag of facts, tidbits, and insights, including from some modern-day showbiz folk. What Fantle and Johnson say about Kelly's films can be said about golden age musicals in general: their "sunny, can-do optimism... helped define the American century." C'mon, Get Happy enhances that definition. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer