There's No Business Like Show Business

The film was, perhaps, the splashiest of the year's musicals… It dealt with the joys, loves and heartaches experienced by a vaudeville family called the Donahues (spending their lives singing and dancing and touring) with Merman and Dailey as mother and father, and Ray, Gaynor and O'Connor as their talented offspring…

All of them get to perform a large catalog of new and old songs by Irving Berlin in sumptuous arrangements, beautiful settings and on a big Hippodrome extravaganza…

Daily and Merman hit the top; O'Connor—who had liked to build a barbed-wire fence around Marilyn—did it Scottish and came with some fine dances; Gaynor's love was dancing… and she was really cute; and while Ray got some thinking to do, he sells a very beautiful song ("If You Believe").

Marilyn (appearing after 29 minutes screening) was deliciously charming, seducing and very appealing… She sang "After You Get What You Want" and "Lazy," and did that tropical version of 'Heat Wave.'