NR | 1 hr 42 min | Musical, Comedy | 1950
Composer biopics were very popular in the 1940s and ‘50s. It all started with “Yankee Doodle Dandy” in 1942, an Academy Award-winning Warner Bros. film about George M. Cohan’s life and career. After that, the other studios clamored to match that movie’s success with their own interpretations of famous songwriters. Hollywood’s best talent appeared in this list of movies, including “Rhapsody in Blue,” “Words and Music,” “Till the Clouds Roll By,” “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” “Night and Day,” “Deep in My Heart,” and “Three Little Words.”
“Three Little Words” is the story of the popular songwriting duo Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. Although their names aren’t as recognizable as teams like Rodgers and Hammerstein, they wrote many Tin Pan Alley hits. Their story was brought to life with two very famous actors, Fred Astaire and Red Skelton. As usual, many of the facts about their lives were changed, removed, or just plain fabricated, but the result is a very charming movie.
Show Biz
Bert Kalmar (Astaire) is one of show business’s best dancers. However, he'd rather perform as a mediocre magician, Kendall the Great, at rinky-dink theaters. He’s very eager to marry his dance partner, Jessie Brown (Vera-Ellen), but she won’t accept his proposal until he slows down a little. Unfortunately, a collision with a set piece backstage during a show makes him do that in a bigger way than she thought. He discovers that he has a broken kneecap, which may keep him from dancing again. However, Bert doesn’t want to take Jessie up on her offer to marry him until he’s on his feet again.
In the meantime, he focuses on his songwriting, but he needs good tunes to go along with his successful lyrics. At his music publisher’s office, he becomes interested in a tune a young song plugger, Harry Ruby (Skelton), is plunking. They spend all day working on it together before Bert recognizes Harry as the clumsy, baseball-loving assistant who ruined his magic act in one show. Although Bert storms out, the song becomes a hit, and the two men end up working together as a very successful songwriting team.
Musical History
All composer biopics feature a lot of music, since the purpose of the film is to showcase the writers’ songs as well as their lives. As a result, they often included a parade of top musical performers playing themselves or musical stars of earlier generations. However, this isn’t the case with “Three Little Words” because Bert Kalmar himself was a talented vaudeville performer. In fact, young Fred Astaire and his sister and dancing partner, Adele, were inspired by watching Kalmar and Brown’s vaudeville routines. Vera-Ellen is the other main musical star in this film. Playing Astaire’s dance partner and later wife, she gets to show off her great technique in solo dancing as well as in a couple.
Like in the movie, Harry Ruby’s wife really was movie-star Eileen Percy (Dahl). However, she was not a musical star, as in the film. She was a silent film star, and each of them had been married before their union of many years. The two guest performers who stand out are Gloria DeHaven and Debbie Reynolds. DeHaven sings one of the duo’s songs as Mrs. Carter DeHaven, the actress’s real-life mother, who was a popular stage singer. In one of her first movie roles, 18-year-old Reynolds sings “I Wanna be Loved by You” as Helen Kane, the original “boop-boop-a-doop” girl. Kalmar and Ruby’s chance discovery of Kane in the movie is fictitious, but the singing voice actually is Kane’s in her last film performance.
Fred Astaire and Red Skelton were very different performers. However, they complement each other’s talent perfectly in this movie as a pair of friends with different backgrounds, interests, and personality traits who just work well together. The movie itself is crafted beautifully, giving all its stars a chance to show their unique talents while paying tribute to this fascinating songwriting duo.
