The tagline I quote above was prominently featured on the posters outside the Bay Theater in Pacific Palisades, California, where I saw this film in mid-summer of the year of its release. I hadn't yet entered my teens and, up to that point, had only seen "Singin' in the Rain" from among the treasure trove of M-G-M's greatest musicals. So with my admittedly undeveloped critical tastes, this amiable pastiche seemed pretty good. And Busby Berkeley's showstopping inventions - Ann Miller's tap dance among all those disembodied instrumentalists and Bobby Van's seemingly endless pogo dance through the small town of M-G-M's backlot (One can only imagine Berkeley slave-driving Mr. Van to achieve that amazing feat of energy and agility!) - are still moments I can distinctly remember from that first viewing.
Even when M-G-M wasn't adding a Midas touch to one of their musicals, the studio assembled some talented professionals both before and behind the cameras, and this one has its share. And for fans of Nat King Cole, one of the all-time greats, there's even a brief song in a nightclub (the sort of thing that M-G-M could easily excise to spare the sensitivities of white Southerners, as they did with Lena Horne's solos in previous Technicolor memories, although by the mid-Fifties, Mr. Cole's appearance was probably not removed for bookings below the Mason-Dixon line.)
Even when M-G-M wasn't adding a Midas touch to one of their musicals, the studio assembled some talented professionals both before and behind the cameras, and this one has its share. And for fans of Nat King Cole, one of the all-time greats, there's even a brief song in a nightclub (the sort of thing that M-G-M could easily excise to spare the sensitivities of white Southerners, as they did with Lena Horne's solos in previous Technicolor memories, although by the mid-Fifties, Mr. Cole's appearance was probably not removed for bookings below the Mason-Dixon line.)