EVERYTHING I HAVE IS YOURS (1952)

After specialty turns for top producer Arthur Freed in SHOW BOAT/’51 and LOVELY TO LOOK AT/’52, M-G-M advanced peppy dance partners Marge & Gower Champion as leads on two forgettable chamber musicals definitely not from the Freed Unit. This one, first of the pair*, wastes a good idea with disposable songs & a drab production as Opening Night ends with Marge in a faint; pregnant, and advised to take it easy. Gower continues the run with understudy Monica Lewis while Marge becomes reluctant/resentful stay-at-home mom. Four years on she returns with a show of her own, playing right across the street from Gower & Lewis. Neither Champion has ever had eyes for anyone else, yet they seem stuck with a divorce till his show goes flat and hers needs a lift only Gower can provide. Happy Ending! With pinch-penny look and weirdly unattractive color schemes, this needn’t have proved fatal given more memorable numbers. But the only real spark comes in a little solo for Gower, danced with stuffed animals to amuse his newborn girl. Vet helmer Robert Z. Leonard brings little to the party (dance numbers were probably handled by choreographers Nick Castle & Gower), and the film ends with a waltzing reconciliation that must have been designed to segue into a stage show finale no one had the budget or inclination to film.

DOUBLE-BILL: *The second film, GIVE A GIRL A BREAK/’53, is another backstager involving recasting the girl in a show. Livelier, what with Stanley Donen directing & a youthful turn from a sunny Bob Fosse against glowing Gower, it’s ultimately not much more memorable.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Keep an eye out for the storefront windows seen the same year in SINGING IN THE RAIN and for the train platform used the following year for THE BAND WAGON.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Marge & Gower seem less compatible on screen then they must have been in their stage act. She’s the quiet mouse type (one of the models used by Disney for SNOW WHITE) while Gower’s the complete dazzler. And with musicals quickly going out of fashion, their last shot came quickly with THREE FOR THE SHOW/’55 at Columbia. Yet another variation on ENOCH ARDEN. Pretty good, too, with Betty Grable & Jack Lemmon.