YOU'RE MY EVERYTHING (1949)

Another Fox showbiz musical, a little better than most of the era. The MGM showbiz musicals were generally glossy and fizzy; the Fox movies couldn't resist the temptation to take the plots a little too seriously, and the movies aren't as much fun to watch--and it doesn't feel like they were as much fun to make. This one follows the career of dancer Tim O'Connor (Dan Dailey) who meets the very proper Hannah Adams (Anne Baxter) while touring New England; they fall in love, marry, and wind up sharing a showbiz career, first on the vaudeville stage and later in silent movies. She becomes a major star and he is happy to "retire" as a gentleman farmer. The middle sequence shows the coming of sound, in a similar fashion as SINGIN' IN THE RAIN would do a few years later, though this movie is nowhere near as funny or perceptive as the Gene Kelly film would be. To Baxter's initial dismay, their daughter (Shari Robinson) gets into the biz, becoming a Shirley Temple-type star, even singing "On the Good Ship Lollipop" and doing a dance with a black dancer, though here instead of the great Bill Robinson, it's (bizarrely) Dan Dailey in blackface. Despite some mild career angst, all ends with everyone relatively happy. Baxter's silent movie scenes are well done recreations, with Buster Keaton in a blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameo. Dailey has a couple of nice numbers: "The Varsity Drag" and "Chattanooga Choo Choo." The supporting cast is mostly undistinguished except for the wonderful and woefully underused Anne Revere as a maiden aunt. It's in color and doesn't outstay its welcome (it's about 90 minutes), and Dailey and Baxter are fine together, but it begins to vanish from memory as soon as it's over. [FMC]