One of those movies that shows up often enough on TCM but that I'd never really gotten around to watching is the 1947 version of Good News, which I think I'd generally avoided because it's a musical and because the male lead is played by Peter Lawford, who is not one of my favorite actors. But in any case, the last time it showed up on TCM I finally recorded it so that I could watch it before the next showing. That next showing will be tomorrow, June 1, at 9:30 AM.
The movie is based on a 1927 Broadway musical that had already been filmed once before, in 1930, and unsurprisingly set in 1927. As the opening informs us, it's the time of flappers and the Charleston, with college football being a much bigger sport than professional football in those days. Tait College, clearly on the MGM backlot, is one of those movie colleges that look like the smaller schools that dotted the midwest and where football was in fact a big deal. Tommy Marlowe (Peter Lawford) is the quarterback and captain of the football team, and as such all of the girls are interested in him.
One girl, however, who does not show interest in Tommy at first is transfer student Pat McClellan (Patricia Marshall). That's because she's come from the sort of boarding school where one learns French and where one learns to look for a man who's got a lot of money to marry. Tommy isn't loaded, while non-football player Peter Van Dyne III (Robert Strickland) is. You can tell just by the name. Worse, Pat insults Tommy in French, so that he can't understand just how she's insulting him.
Connie (June Allyson), meanwhile, is a more bookish student, working her way through Tati with a job in the school library, but also the sort of student who's just right to tutor the jocks if you're OK with having the jocks tutored by women and aren't worried about the risk that tutor and tutee might become romantically involved. Peter falls for Connie, and in many ways the feeling is mutual.
There's a problem, however, in that everybody cares about the big game, which means one, that Tommy has to be in the right frame of mind and not worried about romantic complications; and, two, that he be in good academic standing. Both of these get complicated. One is by Connie's roommate Babe thinking she's doing a good thing for Tommy by telling Pat that Tommy comes from money so that she'll be interested in him again, never mind what this does to poor Connie. Second is that Tommy fails one of his exams so that there's the question of academic eligibility. The big game comes, and it looks like Tait may lose to their rival, so everybody has to re-arrange things so that the right people can wind up together.
Along the way, there are any number of subplots about various teammates of Tommy's and their romantic issues, as well as the romantic isues of Connie's sorority sisters. Notably among the supporting cast is a young Mel Tormé. Also, this having been based on a musical, there's also a lot of musical numbers in the MGM style, with vibrant Technicolor and energetic dancing.
Having said all that, whether or not you like Good News is going to be dependent upon whether you like Peter Lawford and June Allyson on the one hand, and on the other whether the MGM musical style is your thing. I'm not the biggest fan of a lot of the MGM musicals, and Good News hasn't changed my opinion on Peter Lawford either. It's not that Good News is a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination; it's just that I'm not the sort of person MGM was trying to appeal to. If you like musicals you'll probably enjoy Good News.
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