'HALF A SIXPENCE'..........AND THE TWILIGHT OF 60'S MUSICALS......

Half A Sixpence (1968)     Successful as it was, "The Sound Of Music" cast a powerful curse on Old Hollywood.....leading studios into oceans of red ink and ultimately, destruction as self-sufficient business enterprises.......

          Chasing after the worldwide profits that "Sound Of Music" racked up, studios emptied their bank accounts to produce bloated, atrocious 3 and 1/2 hour musicals. complete with intermissions and reserved seat ticket policies.

           Frequently populated with movie stars who couldn't sing or dance to save their lives, these misbegotten behemoths lumbered into theaters like shuffling Brontosauruses on their way to sink into the nearest tar pit........studios, unable to function under the crushing financial losses of these movies, sooner or later ended up as subsidiaries to giant corporations.........

             The British-produced "Half A Sixpence" appeared at the tail end of this apocalyptic cycle of megaton bomb musicals....... by the time it made its way across the Pond to the U.S., it was already heavily edited from its original 2 hour, 23 minute running time........(studios were only just beginning to realize these films were decades out of date and doomed to dead-on-arrival box office receipts...)

             But here's the funny thing.....we like "Half A Sixpence"......it's only sin was that it showed up about 20 years too late......it's basically a 1940's MGM musical in desperate search of a 1940's audience.......(and since the BQ spent years writing musical comedies for Children's Theater companies, we wouldn't help gravitating toward the movie and giving it a big hug....)

             Directed by MGM musical veteran George Sidney and fronted by pop star Tommy Steele, the film brims with catchy songs, exuberant dances, gorgeous Geoffrey Unsworth photography and a richly imagined production design that recreates a fanciful dreamscape of  turn-of-the-century England....

              Taken from an H.G.Wells novel, the film has orphaned, indentured Arthur Kipps (Steele) inheriting a fortune......flush with nou
veau riche cash, .he falls for a snobby aristocratic girl, breaking the heart of his faithful, working class childhood sweetheart (Julia Foster).  It takes about five or six extended song-and-dance numbers for Kipps to renounce the Snob Life and return to his true love.....but you know that's inevitable.......and besides, everyone gets to practically sing and dance their way into a coma.......

              You can tell that George Sidney poured all of his MGM musical experience into "Half A Sixpence"......and in the irrepressible Steele, he's got a tireless star who moves through the film like the Energizer Bunny. Nothing slows him down and he obviously enjoys hoofing it with the platoons of dancers who join him in the showstopping numbers.

               Amid all the crash-and-burn movie musical wreckage of the 1960's ("Doctor Dolittle", "Paint Your Wagon", "Goodbye Mr. Chips", "Hello Dolly", etc, etc).....we still love to return to this movie......it's cheerful, briskly paced despite its length and most of all, the most aggressively musical of all those 60's tuners. (And we still hum "If The Rain's Gotta Fall" in the shower...) So we'll sing out 4 stars....(****)........as least this much maligned genre of 60's musicals died out with one movie where everybody knew how to put on a damn good show......