Keeping the movie star image going after "Best Foot Forward", Lucille Ball plays a stage star doing her part for the war effort by agreeing to star in a musical revue commenting on the conditions of the factory worker. Unfortunately, author Dick Powell has a one sighted view of what wartime entertainment should be. Hoping to get him to change his mind about how the show should be done, Lucy goes to work in the same factory he works in, one ironically that puts on shows the way she believes that his show should be like. Of course, she falls for him, and hopes that his feelings for her will also open his eyes about the type of entertainment that will keep the audiences uplifted in addition to being enlightened. I find that unless you are familiar with the styles of entertainment done during this era, you might be aggravated, bored or even angry of what was considered funny in the 1940's. Even I, having studied the war years through movies, theater and music, can be annoyed by some styles of comedy. Bert Lahr, beloved for "The Wizard of Oz", is definitely a comic of his time, and his styles are best in small doses. I cringe at parts of "King of the Forest" and here, he gets only a few moderately guffaws from me. Virginia O'Brien comes off a lot better, but her comic solo about being a physical abuse victim may not be amusing to some. I admit that I found it hysterical the first time I heard her sing it 20 years ago, but perhaps it's her deadpan style that is funny.Specialties by Spike Jones and Vaughan Monroe's orchestras and a bit of rising star June Allyson offer some swinging moments, featuring a chimpanzee as Hitler and a bumbling actor as Mussolini. Lucy, of course, is glamorous, but the lack of color (which was used to great advantage in four big MGM musicals) is a missed opportunity. Powell, desperately trying to get away from musicals, only briefly sings. This is the type of film that represents an era, more MGM's viewpoint than the real worlds, and not at the top of the line for MGM musicals or the many Hollywood musicals that were rushed into release to keep the public uplifted. It has curiosity value, though, and a few moments shine while others dim the lights of what they had intended on producing.

It's curious that the two stars of Meet The People were a pair of movie stars who went into the new medium of television and became even bigger successes and who both went into the production end of things and enjoyed tycoon status on the small screen. Lucille Ball however was not a major star, that would come with television. As for Dick Powell he desperately wanted to get out of doing films like Meet The People and his career salvation would be coming in his next film.I think the only reason that Dick Powell did the film was because a young player from MGM was cast in a specialty number and he was seeing her at the time. His private time with June Allyson was far better than what we see on the screen. Powell looks crashingly bored and can't summon up any kind of emotion at all.He was probably tired of doing these musicals with silly plots, the kind he ran from Warner Brothers from. The original show Meet The People was not a book show, it was a revue and it ran in the 1940-41 season on Broadway for 160 performances. When MGM bought it, they scrapped everything but the title and the title song. The rest of the score was patched together from various and sundry songwriters, none of the songs is memorable. Odd when you consider some of the source material is from Burton Lane, E.Y. Harburg, Harold Arlen, and Rodgers&Hart. These guys just must have emptied the trunk for material.The plot is sillier than even most of the musical propaganda pieces of the time. Powell is the writer of a revue called Meet The People and he's a shipyard worker who wins a lottery date with movie star Lucille Ball. She's interested, he's interested, they're both interested in the revue, but creative differences keep them apart of course until the finale. That's the film in a nutshell.MGM did give Powell and Ball some good musical acts which are the main reason for watching Meet The People. The big bands of Vaughn Monroe and Spike Jones are here and the highlight of the film for me is Bert Lahr dressed in a commodore's suit like Lou Costello had in the dream sequence in In The Navy. The song Heave Ho is written by Arlen and Harburg who wrote for Lahr, the Courage number from The Wizard Of Oz. And as just about everyone in the world has seen that film, you have an idea of Heave Ho is like.Dick Powell's next film was Murder My Sweet in which he finally bid a not so fond adieu to musicals. And Lucy would have to wait for television before the world got to see what she really could do.

For having been made at MGM, "Meet the People", didn't get the usual treatment by the studio. The film was shot in black and white and there are no lavish production numbers. The movie was based on a musical revue that played in Los Angeles during WWII. It has its share of propaganda, since most of the action takes place around a navy yard where war ships were constructed.The best thing in the film are some of the songs that were composed for it. The best song heard on the film is "I Like to Recognize the Tune", composed by Richard Rogers and Laurenz Hart. The other great number is one in which Spike Jones and his City Slickers appear dressed as Mussolini, Hitler, and figures on the wrong side of the war, as they sing a parody of a sextet of "Lucia di Lamermoor".Lucille Ball plays Julie Hampton. She was at the height of her good looks and cut a lovely figure. Her love interest is played by Dick Powell, an actor with a lovely manly voice who was also at a good point of his career. Bert Lahr, Virginia O'Brien and a young June Allyson, soon to be Mrs. Dick Powell, appear in supporting roles.The film was directed by Charles Reisner and the black and white cinematography was by Robert Surtees that has kept its crispness in spite of having been shot more than sixty years ago. The film would be a curiosity piece by fans of Lucille Ball.

The movies I choose to watch are sometimes suggested by events. Recently. I encountered yet another incomprehensible act by the American War Department and took refuge in this.It is from an era of justified involvement in a war. Death camps, master race.It is rank propaganda, subsidized by political leaders. It has other offenses. Blacks are shown twice: a man as a yassa porter and women happily picking cotton.And yet its charm is in the thing it celebrates. You likely will never see this. It is dated and not very good as a film. The strings it pulls... well, they're broken. So let me describe it.It features Lucille Ball before she made herself a joke. In this era, she was a desirable pinup, even at 33. She parades her legs and glamor as a famous stage actress. She meets and falls in love with a wartime shipworker who aspires to be a playwright. He, it turns out, has written a play featuring the good souls of the shipyard representing all the "ordinary people" of America who labored for the war effort, which at root was a competition of manufacturing infrastructures.That play is the device around which all sorts of narrative effects are folded. There's the bit which forms the plot: she likes the play and attempts to put it on. But it gets too glamorized for the author. It isn't "real" enough and rather than demean the subject, he forgoes wealth and fame and closes it down. She follows him back to work in the shipyard to charm him into letting the show go on. As scripted, she discovers and comes to appreciate the goodness of the honestly laboring people.At the end, she puts on the play as he intended it to be, at the shipyard. Inside the play's performance, he literally enters the play and reconciles with our girl. End of story.Along the way, there are an amazing number of other excuses pulled to have song and dance numbers. Its purpose, after all was to mix entertainment and "the message."So you have:—lunchtime shows at the shipyard (with Spike Jones and Hitler played by a chimp). Also, an evening show with several elaborate numbers.—a love song when the two go on their first date, the song half him demonstrating the song to her and half wooing her in the story by song.—a bit as if the movie were a musical comedy. In this case, the story itself bends into comic song as Burt Lahr's character christens his boat.—imitations of famous war leaders, performed randomly whenever a certain character appears. Some of these are unrecognizable today.And that's in addition to seeing bits of the title show in New York and the shipyard.A lot of entertainment. All the shows, every one, are miniature versions of the larger movie: celebrations of ordinary folk and then American values.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.