Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM - 1948: SUMMER HOLIDAY and EASTER PARADE

Our MGM 1948 Studios Year by Year episode is a Freed Unit double feature: the great Irving Berlin musical Easter Parade, starring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire, and Summer Holiday, a Mickey Rooney coming-of-age story based on a play by Eugene O'Neill, directed by studio-era "art director" Rouben Mamoulian. We discuss Easter Parade as a vehicle for presenting Judy Garland's "problematic" anti-star star persona and Summer Holiday's envelope-pushing leftist politics and middle-class sexual repression plot, wrapped up in cozy turn-of-the-century nostalgia.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:      SUMMER HOLIDAY [dir. Rouben Mamoulian] 0h 36m 24s:      EASTER PARADE [dir. Charles Walters] Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler                                 +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at [email protected]   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!