Three Little Words (1950)

The lives of songwriting team Bert Kalmar (Fred Astaire) and Harry Ruby (Red Skelton) and their rise to fame from Tin Pan Alley to Broadway to Hollywood. Directed by Richard Thorpe (IVANHOE), this is yet another glossy highly fictionalized biography of popular composers courtesy of MGM, who had recently done Jerome Kern (TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY) and Rodgers and Hart (WORDS AND MUSIC). The narrative is a tub of cliches but one doesn't watch movies like this for their plot (and certainly not their accuracy) but the songs and dances. In this case, that might be enough because we have Astaire partnered with Vera Ellen and Hermes Pan doing the choreography. There's also Debbie Reynolds as Helen Kane singing (dubbed by the real Kane) I Wanna Be Loved By You and Gloria DeHaven playing her real life mother singing Who's Sorry Now? There's also Arlene Dahl displaying a lovely singing voice leading one to wonder why MGM didn't put her in more musicals. With Keenan Wynn, Gale Robbins and Carleton Carpenter.