I mentioned back in the run-up to St. Patrick's Day that in the decade or so after World War II, Hollywood put out a bunch of biopics about various figures in the world of music. Somehow, I wound up with a glut of them on my DVR, so now it's time for another of those musicals, Look for the Silver Lining.
This time, the subject of the movie is Marilyn Miller, a Broadway star who died tragically young, although that early death isn't mentioned in the movie, at least not explicitly. Miller is played by June Haver, and as the movie opens rehearsals are starting for a revival of Sally, one of Miller's biggest hits. But she has a headache of some sort (in real life, Miller's alcoholism led to a sinus condition that was, as far as I can understand, a contributing factor in her death in 1936), so she goes back to her dressing room. There, a man knocks on her door. He claims to be from Findlay, OH, where Marilyn got her start, and has a poster of her family's vaudeville act, the Five Columbians. As you can imagine, the film then goes into flashback.
Charlie Ruggles plays Pop Miller, who is traveling around the vaudeville circuit with his wife (Rosemary DeCamp) and two elder daughters, while younger daughter Marilyn, too young to work legally except as part of a family act, has been staying with grandma in Philadelphia. The family, currently the Four Columbians, does typical vaudeville numbers and is currently in Findlay, which is where Marilyn shows up to meet them at Christmastime because Grandma says she can dance and should be part of the act.
Marilyn shows up backstage while her family is performing, and there she sees another dancer. She doesn't realize this is Jack Donahue (Ray Bolger), an apparently very talented dancer whom Marilyn claims is her influence. They trade dance moves in his dressing room until her parents show up; after the show there's an opportunity for a Christmas performance by all the cast.
In this telling of the story, Donahue gives the juvenile Marilyn her first break. She's about to go on with the rest of the family, until Pop gets the mumps, forcing the rest of the family to quarantine. So Jack sets up a number in which Marilyn is a sort of shill, sitting out front and being "invited" on stage to dance with Jack. This gets Marilyn her start, and eventually the family makes its way to London. In London, an American producer shows up looking for talent, and loves Marilyn's talent, not realizing she's actually American. But given the chance to appear on Broadway in one of the revues of the day, she takes it.
However, she's still a juvenile, which means she's technically not able to work legally. She's paired in a musical number with Frank Carter (Gordon MacRae), who defends her when the authorities come looking for proof of age. The two fall in love and Marilyn's career starts taking off, but World War I comes, and Frank for some reason wants to serve. He also wants to marry her before he leaves, although she only wants to do it after he returns.
Marilyn's career takes off during World War I; Frank eventually returns, leading to an elopement, and a happy marriage, except for the fact that Marilyn is on Broadway while Frank's career has him traveling around. Marilyn eventually gets the lead in Sally, which is a big hit, except that Frank gets in a fatal car crash while traveling to New York for opening night. (In real life, Frank died some months before the opening of Sally.) Somewhat humorously, one of the characters in the play-within-the-movie version Sally is played by S.Z. Sakall, in lederhosen:
Reading up on Marilyn Miller, there's a lot that Look for the Silver Lining doesn't cover, especially her alcoholism and early death. But she also went to Hollywood and made a few not terribly successful films, notably a film version of Sally that I blogged about back in 2016. Look for the Silver Lining sanitizes Miller's life, and includes a lot of dancing. Having said that, it's Ray Bolger's big number that's really more worth watching than June Haver's songs and dances.
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