Search - Various Artists :: Summer Holiday

Soundtrack from a movie musical that never really was

Mark Andrew Lawrence | Toronto | 09/16/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Director Reuben Mamoulian who had revolutionized Broadway with PORGY AND BESS, OKLAHOMA! and CAROUSEL tried to bring that same integration to screen musicals with SUMMER HOLIDAY. Listen to the opening number how he has the cast weave back and forth between spoken word and dialogue. Unfortunately, the rest of the picture never quite lives up to this level. Still it is an enjoyable score with numbers like "Stanley Steamer" and "Afraid to Fall in Love." Sadly two of the best sequences, Omar and the Princess and Spring Isn't Everything were dropped from the picture before it was released and the footage lost in a vault fire, so we will never know for sure how much better SUMMER HOLIDAY could have been before M-g-M butchered it.



At the time M-g-M Records had started making soundtrack albums, but SUMMER HOLIDAY didn't get one. It wasn't until the 1970s when Harry Warren issued an LP dubbed form a spliced film print and scratchy 78's.



The sound on Rhino Handmade's CD is much better but one curiosity: The Bar room scene is constructed of underscored dialogue and sung passages. On the LP the entire scene was heard but here we only hear the sung portions with long stretches of underscore. Some of the sung sections do not make sense without the dialogue lead-ins.



Overall a fascinating package that will leave you wishing to see the complete film.

"