• Source: In the Good Old Summertime

In the Good Old Summertime is a 1949 American Technicolor musical romantic comedy film directed by Robert Z. Leonard. It stars Judy Garland, Van Johnson, S. Z. Sakall, Spring Byington, Clinton Sundberg, and Buster Keaton in his first featured film role at MGM since 1933.
The film is a musical adaptation of the 1940 film The Shop Around the Corner, which was directed by Ernst Lubitsch, starring James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, and Frank Morgan, and written by Miklós László, based on his 1937 play Parfumerie. For In the Good Old Summertime, the locale has been changed from 1930s Budapest to turn-of-the-century Chicago, but the plot remains the same. The plot was also revived in the 1998 film You've Got Mail, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.




Plot


On a spring day in Chicago, in the early 1900s, Andrew Larkin is the top salesman at Otto Oberkugen's music store. On his way to work, he runs into Veronica Fisher. When Andrew arrives, he rushes to the post office and reads a letter from his secret pen pal, known as "Box Number 237." That same day, Veronica arrives at the store requesting a job there. Mr. Oberkugen initially refuses to hire Veronica, but he hires her after she persuades a customer to buy a harp. Several months pass and the store's sales dwindle, in which Veronica and Andrew's professional relationship turns contentious. Regardless, their pen pal relationship turns romantic.
During the wintertime, Andrew and Veronica, unbeknownst to each other, arrange to have dinner together. However, Oberkugen has the staff to stay overtime to take a store inventory, upsetting both Andrew and Veronica. Their coworker Nellie Burke manages to have Oberkurgen change his mind after she confesses her love towards him. Outside the restaurant, Andrew learns Veronica is his secret pen pal. Disappointed at first, he returns to the restaurant, but does not reveal to Veronica that he is her pen pal. Instead, he attempts to flirt with Veronica, but they fall into a heated argument. Andrew leaves, and Veronica returns home thinking her date failed to show. The next day, Veronica calls in sick. Andrew comes to visit Veronica and invites her to Otto and Nellie's engagement party.
Back at work, Oberkugen hands Andrew his prized Stradivarius violin to safeguard for the party. Instead, Andrew loans the violin to his friend Louise to perform at a recital. At the engagement party, Veronica performs two musical numbers, one with a barbershop quartet and a solo number. For the next number, Oberkugen asks for his violin, to which his nephew Hickey clumsily breaks. Oberkugen is distraught at first, but Andrew tells him that his real violin is with Louise. Andrew and Oberkugen arrive at Louise's recital, and Oberkugen fires him for loaning Louise his violin.
On Christmas Eve, when Andrew returns to collect his belongings, his coworkers tell him their goodbyes. Nellie arranges Oberkugen to write a letter of recommendation for Andrew. However, Oberkugen changes his mind, and promotes Andrew as the new store manager giving him a raise. He also allows for Louise to keep his violin. During the store hours, Oberkugen gives Veronica her bonus, although she intends to quit in protest to Andrew's promotion. When the store closes, Andrew reveals to Veronica that he is her secret pen pal. They kiss, and she consents to marry him.




Cast


Judy Garland as Veronica Fisher
Van Johnson as Andrew Delby Larkin
S. Z. "Cuddles" Sakall as Otto Oberkugen
Spring Byington as Nellie Burke
Clinton Sundberg as Rudy Hansen
Buster Keaton as Hickey
Lillian Bronson as Addie
Marcia Van Dyke as Louise




Songs


"In the Good Old Summertime" (George Evans, Ren Shields)
"Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland" (Leo Friedman, Beth Slater Whitson)
"Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey" (Albert Von Tilzer, Junie McCree)
"Play That Barbershop Chord" (Lewis Muir, Willam Tracey)
"I Don't Care" (Harry Sutton, Jean Lenox)
"Merry Christmas" (Fred Spielman, Janice Torre)




Production


Garland introduced the Christmas song "Merry Christmas" in this film; it was later covered by Johnny Mathis, Bette Midler, and cabaret artist Connie Champagne.
Director Robert Leonard originally hired Buster Keaton as a gag-writer to help him devise a way for a violin to get broken that would be both comic and plausible. Keaton came up with an elaborate stunt that would achieve the desired result; however, Leonard realized Keaton was the only one who could execute it properly, so he cast him in the film. Keaton also devised the sequence in which Johnson inadvertently wrecks Garland's hat and coached Johnson intensively in how to perform the scene. This was the first MGM film that Keaton appeared in after having been fired from the studio in 1933.
The picture was filmed between November 1948 and January 1949.
Garland's three-year-old daughter, Liza Minnelli, makes her film debut, walking with her mother and Van Johnson in the film's closing shot.
The song "Last Night When We Were Young" was written in the 1930s by Harold Arlen and E. Y. "Yip" Harburg for the Metropolitan Opera star Lawrence Tibbett. Garland loved it and wanted to include it in the film. It was recorded and filmed but when the picture was released, it was cut from the final print. The audio recording of "Last Night When We Were Young" was featured on several of Garland's MGM record albums and she also later recorded it for Capitol Records in the 1950s. The entire footage of the number was found in the MGM vaults and included in the PBS documentary American Masters: Judy Garland: By Myself in 2004.




Reception


The film was made during the height of the strained relationship between Garland and MGM. As a testament to Garland's strong popularity, it was a huge critical and commercial success. According to MGM records, it earned $2,892,000 in the US and Canada and $642,000 overseas, resulting in a profit of $601,000.
It was the second-to-last film that Garland made at MGM (with the final being Summer Stock). MGM terminated her contract – by mutual agreement – in September 1950.
The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

2006: AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals – Nominated




See also


List of Christmas films




References






External links



In the Good Old Summertime at IMDb
In the Good Old Summertime at AllMovie
In the Good Old Summertime at the TCM Movie Database
In the Good Old Summertime at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
The New York Times overview
The Judy Garland Online Discography In the Good Old Summertime pages
The Judy Room In the Good Old Summertime filmography entry
• Source: In the Good Old Summer Time

"In the Good Old Summer Time" is an American Tin Pan Alley song first published in 1902 with music by George Evans and lyrics by Ren Shields. The song is in the public domain.




Background


Shields and Evans were at first unsuccessful in trying to sell the song to one of New York's big sheet music publishers. The publishers thought the topic of the song doomed it to be forgotten at the end of the summer season. Blanche Ring, who had helped Evans arrange the number's piano score, was enthusiastic about it and at her urging it was added to the 1902 musical comedy show The Defender she was appearing in. The song was a hit from the opening night, with the audience often joining in singing the chorus.
"In the Good Old Summer Time" was one of the big hits of the era, selling popular sheet music and being recorded by various artists of the day, including John Philip Sousa's band in 1903. It has remained a standard often revived in the decades since.
The song appeared in many films, including the 1949 Judy Garland film named after it, In the Good Old Summertime. The book Elmer Gantry opens with the title character drunkenly singing the song in the saloon. It is also prominently featured in "The Picnic", an early Mickey Mouse cartoon from 1930.
The chorus is used with a slight twist in the "baby mine" lyric before resuming to the "tootsie-wootsie" lyric in a commercial for Off! bug spray that aired during the summer of 1975.
The song appeared in the episode titled Tipping the Scales of the hit PBS show Arthur, and featured in the 1930 Laurel and Hardy short Below Zero in ironical terms, sung during a snowstorm.
The song was sung during a wedding in the opening chapter of Upton Sinclair's novel "The Jungle".
The chorus is used with a slight twist in Baylor University's Alma Mater, "That Good Old Baylor Line."
The song appears in the 1978 episode of The Muppet Show performed by Pearl Bailey and Floyd Pepper, a member of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.




Lyrics



The original publication includes extensive additional lyrics by Ren Shields that are seldom performed.




Notable recordings


J. W. Myers (1902)
William Redmond (1902)
Haydn Quartet (1903)
Sousa's Band (1903)
The Andrews Sisters & Dan Dailey (1949)
Bing Crosby (1954) and for his album Seasons (1977)
Connie Francis for the album Sing Along with Connie Francis (1961)
Les Paul and Mary Ford (1952) – this reached No 15 in the Billboard charts
Michael Holliday (1959)
Nat King Cole for the album Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer (1963)
Larry Groce (1979)
Kidsongs Kids (1997)
Daniel Brummel (1999)
Chuck E. Cheese cast (2000)
The cast of Arthur (2004)




Footnotes






External links



Billy Murray's recording

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• Film dalam tahun 1949
• Robert Z. Leonard
• Albert Hackett
• Liza Minnelli
• Tin Pan Alley
• Les Paul
• Lana Del Rey
• The Clown (film 1953)
• Buster Keaton
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs
• In the Good Old Summertime
• In the Good Old Summer Time
• You've Got Mail
• Liza Minnelli
• The Shop Around the Corner
• Spring Byington
• Van Johnson
• S. Z. Sakall
• Charles Smith (actor)
• She Loves Me