1950: Summer Stock

Summer Stock (1950, Walters) 6/10


Each year in the late 1950’s when the Scandinavian winter ended and Sweden’s brief summer appeared, Swedish theatre director Ingmar Bergman would gather his stock collection of actors, close the doors to his Malmö city theatre for a few weeks and make a film in the countryside. During the same period in the United States, theatre troupes tended to not engage in such prolific and ambitious endeavours as Bergman. Instead they participated in what became to be known as summer stock: an informal brand of entertainment where New York theatre groups would take their act on the road to middle-class vacation spots in New England and the Mid-West to perform outdoor shows for the local population.This theatrical roadshow’s popularity reached its peak in the period from the Forties to the Sixties and although mostly forgotten today many well-known actors such as Harrison Ford got their break in this medium.

It is this type of theatre which illuminates Charles Walters 1950 classic musical Summer Stock: the tale of Jane Falbury (Judy Garland) a farmer from a traditional rural community, whose life is altered by the arrival of her sister’s summer stock group on her bankrupt farm. Stylistically a throwback to the Garland-Rooney cycle of a decade earlier, Summer Stock was released in August, 1950 in an attempt to revive the career fortunes of Judy Garland. Crippled by marital problems, weight fluctuation, drug addiction and a lack of self-confidence, the film’s profitable financial returns seemed likely to pave the way for future Garland-MGM projects. Yet a month later, her MGM contract was terminated and the troubled singer-actress would not return to the screen for another four years.

Despite attempts by producer Joe Pasternak and director Charles Walters to cater to Garland’s every whim (including altering the film’s shooting hours to suit her peak hours), the picture was beset with problems connected to her increasingly erratic behaviour: costing the studio thousands of dollars and almost resulting in Pasternak terminating the project before completion. However, at the insistence of Louis B. Mayer the production team gave Garland one last chance as the studio felt they owed her something for her past box-office successes. But even after the arduous initial six-month shoot was completed, the studio insisted on a final number- the film’s iconic “Get Happy” sequence- by which time Garland had drastically lost almost twenty pounds.

In reality, Garland was probably at her healthiest weight at the beginning of Summer Stock, but her physical appearance only intensified her insecurities regarding her performance and the possibility of letting down her colleagues such as director Charles Walters and Gene Kelly: the latter specifically appearing in the picture as a favour to Pasternak and Garland for their support early in his transistion from stage to screen. With its archaic sets and a plot akin to those of the Garland-Rooney films, Summer Stock was even by 1950’s standards old hat: a relic from a bygone era in which a group of kids would get together and put on a show a la the Garland-Rooney films. Recent research highlighting that Rooney and not Kelly was initially Pasternak’s first choice to co-star alongside Garland heightens the producers recycled intentions.

Gene Kelly stars as Joe Ross: the leader of an aspiring New York theatre troupe, whose girlfriend Abigail (Gloria De Haven) happens to have a sister (Garland) who despite setbacks, still operates the family’s spacious farm in the traditional farming community of Wingait. Jane is not like other women, particularly in comparison to the female protagonists in musicals produced by MGM’s Freed Unit. Other than the support of a few elderly farm hands, Jane has ran the family’s Connecticut farm for years by herself. When the two remaining men opt to leave, she decides to purchase a tractor from her bumbling fiance Orville (Eddie Bracken) and his domineering father Jasper (Ray Collins): an idea which appalls both men. Due to the farm’s financial instability, Jasper initially only offers her the tractor if he she first agrees to finalize her and Orville’s four-year engagement by accepting his forced hand in marriage.

But Jane balks at the idea and successfully convinces Jasper that she must first be financially independent before marrying Orville: as to not conjure up ideas in the town that she has only married Orville to clear the family debts. Jane is responsible, hard-working and diligent. Her sister Abigail on the hand is caricatured as being immature, obstinate and reckless: preferring to perform as few tasks as possible, while reaping the greatest reward. Early in the film we learn that Abigail on a whim has dropped out of art school and that despite her sister’s financial backing for her education, she holds little respect for Jane’s salt of the earth approach to life and work. Furthermore, she had invited her boyfriend and the twenty-two other members of their theatrical troupe to the Falbury farm under the auspices that they can freely use the barn and stay rent-free without previously informing her sister: who only learns of their arrival after returning home atop her prize new tractor. Thus, Summer Stock’s female characters embody the MGM tradition of the protagonists’ struggle and strife being rewarded through a triumphant reaping of his or her modest ambitions. While for the lazy knaves who try to exploit others and life's shortcuts to get rich quick: only heartache and failure ensues.

While Jane is similar to Garland’s Jo Hayden in For Me and My Gal in that she financially supports her sibling’s education, her ethos to life is radically different. In For Me and My Gal, Jo Hayden needs the emotional support and arrogant self-belief of Gene Kelly’s Harry Palmer to develop her career; despite the fact it is Hayden who is the greater talent and who holds more marquee appeal. In Summer Stock, Jane is unwilling to ruin her career by becoming domesticated by the ambitions of Orville’s controlling father. She offers to self-correct her finances, drives her tractor, dresses in denim clothes, assigns work to her guests, makes her own choices and toils in her family fields. She even offers to return the tractor if Jasper continually bullies her into marrying Orville.

But that is not to say that Jane is masculinized, but rather the filmmakers perversely allude to the community’s closeted isolation from “normal" gender roles. She is the embodiment of the rare type of independent woman celebrated in Forties and Fifties culture: the farmworker. Her most outwardly feminine characteristic is to be found in her sense of maternalistic duty: nurturing her guests and catering to their basic needs. Given her sense of loyalty and duty to the failing family farm, these feminine qualities of nurturing and compassion can be seen in her tendering of crops and raising of farm animals: thus her feminity has been re-shaped to compliment her alternative strand of maternalism and womanhood. But as the film progresses, there is a subtle shift in Jane’s character. As she is further introduced to the outside world, she slowly abandons slacks and denim for dresses and racier costumes. Her shapely feminine physical qualities are revealed from under her previous layers of unisex clothing and a reliance in necessitating the applause and feedback of men (Gene Kelly in particular) accompanies her new attire.

Surprisingly, this understated transistion from tomboy to tomcat is not as well noted by the rural citizens of Wingait. For community leader Jasper Wingait, the change in her clothing is not as alarming as her earlier feistiness, which threatens the patriarchical nature of the community. Jasper’s central concern however is with her fratenization with outsiders: in this case her sister’s theatre group. While the group bring mayhem and destruction to the farm, they bring sexual danger, alternative values and a sense of irresponsbility to the community. For the townspeople, the actors symbolize promiscuity and the opposite of honest work. Their arrival into town worries local residents such as Orville who are agape at her support for this group of miscreants. As well as using the tractor as a symbol of his father’s power, Orville continually reminds her of the symbolic damage incurred on her and their relationship in town through her affiliation with actors. He is even aghast at the prospect of having actors as in-laws.

With the film’s production commencement in early 1949, it is likely that the recent HUAC trials of Hollywood actors may have spilled into the sub-conscious of George Wells and Sy Gomberg’s script. Given the Wingait’s reminders of the community’s long-standing conservative traditions and ancestral origins to the colonial era, the influx of actors into the community could be viewed as a subtle allusion to The Red Scare: a threat to the Wingait’s traditional hold on power in a quasi-feudalistic community in which families remain politically and financially indebted to the head clan for generations. When coupled with Jane’s initial attempts to overstep her socio-political position, one can see how Summer Stock plays upon fears of Communism in a rural, East Coast society.

Unfortunately, as the film and Garland’s relationship with Kelly evolves from mistrust to romance, so the film accelerates in the opposite direction: dithering into a stagnant world of fixed roles and ideals. Yet, this does not mean that Summer Stock is not enjoyable, likeable or even anti-progressive. On the contrary the film does include several memorable song and dance sequences, as well as an interesting contextual sub-narrative involving Garland’s Jane attempting to become an independent businesswoman. Where Summer Stock fails is mostly in its cliched storyline and stock characters: not in its passable lead performances. The film loses much of its rustic charm and appeal as it changes its focus from Garland’s agricultural plight to the mechanical amateurishness of Kelly’s barnyard production. As the narrative develops, characters such as Jane’s incompetent fiance Orville overstep the boundaries of their personality: becoming pseudo-villains in order to expand the possibilities of a forthcoming Garland-Kelly courtship.

The result is a film designed as a vehicle for Judy Garland that plays it safe by culling storylines and characterizations from her earlier popular films alongside Mickey Rooney. This produces a watery narrative that could very easily have had children or college students play roles, which are allotted to adults. And although this film was constructed for the specific reason of reviving Garland’s fortunes, it may have aided the development of Kelly’s career, rather than its intended target. In the seven years between From Me and My Gal and Summer Stock, the evolution of Gene Kelly as an actor is noticeable in his ability to illuminate a scene with simple gestures and restrained body language. “Get Happy” aside his showpieces are far more memorable than Garland’s in their innovative structure and naturalistic impromptu style. This methodology is seen in his ability to use simple props (newspapers, bleachers and squeaky floorboards) and maximize their limited potential.

Combined with Robert Planck’s blooded cinematography, these sequences seem more attuned to deleted scenes from the backlots of Singin in the Rain than the barnyards of Summer Stock. Correspondingly “Get Happy” in its brash colourful Hollywood-style seems out of step with the film's earlier primitive mis-en-scene and the unlikelihood for glitzy seduction transpiring from Kelly's mawkish show. Somehow Charles Walters uneven direction allows these artistic segments to flourish beyond the film’s sub-par material. But his inability to lift the forced moments of comedy or eliminate the artificial glamour attached to Kelly’s barnyard review leaves this picture stilted somewhere between likeable mediocrity and backdated hokum.

* Summer Stock is released by Warner Home Video and is available in their collection of MGM musicals entitled Classic Musicals From The Dream Factory

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque