Word: merman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Shower of Stars (Thurs. 8:30 p.m., CBS). Revue, starring Ethel Merman, Red Skelton, Peter Lind Hayes, Mary Healy, Harold Lang...
There's No Business Like Show Business (20th Century-Fox) is another picture that does a lot of big-name-dropping -Ethel Merman, Dan Dailey, Donald O'Connor, Mitzi Gaynor, Marilyn Monroe and Johnnie Ray-and some of the names drop with a big thud. The show is an Irving Berlin potpourri, containing some good old sweetmeats along with a few fresh-picked sour apples. The mixture will probably simmer steadily at the box office, even though fussy moviegoers feel they have reached the Berlin point. Singer-Dancer Mitzi Gaynor has a figure that suggests a finely machined...
...movie itself is a jumble of all the old show business plots, but then this is a huge gathering of all musicals. Glue for the mixture is a pleasing serum of Irving Berlin's tunes and a splashing does of technicolor. Ethel Merman is the film's biggest asset, launching into her songs with a driving enthusiasm that shames Dan Dailey, who is busy worrying about his errant showtime son, Donald. O'Connor hoofs and melodizes in his usual manner, but looks like the Soap-Box Derby Winner with a Cadillac when he romances with a healthier and heftier Marilyn...
...contrast to Miss Monroe, Mitzi Gaynor adds a bright and pert performance. A few pounds lighter and no longer sassy, she is pleasing for the first time. Another member of the Dailey-Merman family is Johnnic "Cry" Ray, surprisingly cast as a religiously serious showman who becomes a priest. Although his chin wags abnormally when he sings, Ray's style is unique and entertaining...
...series of vignettes (a determined tennis player, a fumbling fisherman, a cowardly boxer, a prancing circus horse and rider) that showed off a remarkably agile and expressive 6-ft. 4-in. body. The week's second big color feature, Cole Porter's Panama Hattie (CBS), boasted Ethel Merman, but even Trouper Merman could not keep the show from becoming a busy, shapeless, cluttered mass of sight and sound...