 The Gang's All Here. Alice Faye, Carmen Miranda, Phil Baker, Benny Goodman.
Published: One of Hollywood's great excursions into surrealism: The Gang's All Here, the legendarily wartime musical, with director Busby Berkeley going way over the top. The plot is the nonsensical stuff of home front musicals, with chorus girl Alice Faye waiting for soldier boy James Ellison to return from the war, little knowing he is engaged to another woman. But the real point here is the crazy production design and the flabbergasting numbers, most famously, Carmen Miranda's 'The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat,' which includes a chorus line of women dancing while holding giant bananas over their heads. Alice gets her due with the equally crazy 'Polka-Dot Polka,' and Benny Goodman and his orchestra are also around, as are such reliable supporting acts as Edward Everett Horton and high-kicking Charlotte Greenwood. [Coded for PAL compatible players for region 2 only: the UK and Europe, Japan, the Middle East, Egypt, Greenland, Africa and South Africa.] |
