There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)

Review by All Movie Guide
Big, colorful, and splashy, There's No Business Like Show Business might have been a classic movie musical if anyone had bothered to create a script for it. Oh, there's technically a script, but it clearly was just cobbled together from hither and yon -- and mostly yon -- so that the camera would have something to focus on between musical numbers. As a result, Business meanders around quite a bit, dropping in on one thread of a story just long enough for the audience to hear a few lines of clichéd dialogue before the orchestra starts vamping the intro to the next song. Fortunately, the songs are by the inimitable Irving Berlin, and they're handled by a cast that ranges from the technically qualified to the magical. The former includes a very wooden Johnnie Ray and a perky but dispensable Mitzi Gaynor, but the latter includes a clarion-voiced Ethel Merman, an impishly appealing Donald O'Connor, and the incredibly seductive Marilyn Monroe. (Dan Dailey falls in the middle, a good song-and-dance man and decent actor who nevertheless doesn't quite catch fire in this film.) Merman sounds terrific, sailing through "Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee" and "A Sailor's Not a Sailor" with glee, and O'Connor makes "A Man Chases a Girl" into something pretty special. But it's Monroe that provides the single most memorable number, a "Heat Wave" that sizzles, pops, burns and scorches like few other filmed songs. Add in some yummy costumes and nifty Leon Shamroy camerawork, and there's more than enough here to make up for the flimsy story. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide