OVP: Babes in Arms (1939)

Film: Babes in Arms (1939)
Stars: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Charles Winninger, Guy Kibbee, June Preisser
Director: Busby Berkeley
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actor-Mickey Rooney, Scoring)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Young Best Actor nominees is not going to be the theme of this week (tomorrow our nominee is in his mid-fifties), but with yesterday's Saturday Night Fever won John Travolta a nomination at the age of only 23, it feels fitting that today we talk about a nominee that was even younger at the Oscars: Mickey Rooney.  Rooney is one of the most famous figures in classic American movies, and lived longer than almost any of his contemporaries, dying at the age of 93.  He is famous both for his stature, and because of his longevity, occasionally for his age, but at one point Rooney was a teen idol, and was the second-youngest Best Actor nominee ever at the age of 19 for today's movie Babes in Arms.  The film teams Rooney with his frequent costar Judy Garland, and like Saturday Night Fever, is another musical.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Joe Moran (Winninger) and his family, including his son Mickey (Rooney).  Moran is a longtime vaudeville hoofer who was once super successful on the stage, but has fallen on hard times as people have moved past vaudeville to movies.  All of the former vaudeville performers live in a neighborhood in the same town, and their children are somewhat ostracized, and considered poorly-taken-care-of by other local parents.  When the kids worry that the parents aren't willing to modernize their show, Mickey and his best girl Patsy (Garland) team up all of their friends to put on a show that might be able to raise the money their parents need to keep their homes/children, and of course while the parents are unsuccessful on the road, the kids put on a bravura performance and win over the town/parents, proving that they have what it takes to be a second generation of stars.

The movie at once is impossible to hate but way too slight to love.  Considering the score and the stars, you'd assume that Babes in Arms would be a timeless seasonal classic, rather than one that is only a classic when it's brought up (rather than instantly name-checked).  The plot is inconsequential to the movie, and the kids always being right (while the parents are always wrong) feels a bit hackneyed even for 1939.  Rooney's performance, in particular, feels too earnest for me.  There's little difference between this and his schtick as Andy Hardy, and it plays like the Oscar nomination (his first of four) was more because MGM wanted to get some sort of adult recognition for one of its most bankable leading men than because he'd earned it with serious talent.  One fun fact-in the film Rooney does (solid) impressions of both Lionel Barrymore and Clark Gable, the latter of whom was favored to beat Rooney at the Oscars that year but didn't when they both lost in a shocker to Robert Donat in Goodbye Mr. Chips.

The film's other nomination is much more earned.  Watching Babes in Arms now, it's really shocking how many of the musical numbers are also songs you hear in Singin in the Rain.  I didn't know this was coming, and was floored when four songs ("Good Morning," "You are My Lucky Star," "Broadway Melody," and "Singin in the Rain") showed up in the film.  I'd fault them for copying the great American musical, but this film came out 13 years before it so it's just ingenuity (and Stanley Donen owes Busby Berkeley a check).  Honestly, while the big ending number is problematic (Rooney & Garland appear in blackface), and a bit hammy, the rest of the musical numbers are a delight, and thus the Scoring nomination feels like an easy pill to swallow, even if Rooney's nomination in 1939 of all years feels wasteful.