32 Replies to “Donald O’Connor Anything Goes (1956)”

  1. People may enjoy this very much but they do not know that this story is based on a bit of truth in the life of PG Wodehouse who was written a part of this scenario.
    PG Wodehouse was a gentleman who unfortunately fell into the clutches of a husband hunting greedy social climbing female a widowed American with a nine year old daughter. Both of these greedy females out for what they could get decided to make sure that they did the spending of everything he earned.
    He trusted his wife to pay 25000 pounds in income tax to the income tax department and the female bought a fur coat with that money because according to her in America nobody paid income tax so why should she . . The dialogue said by the father in in this movie . when she was told that her husband would go to prison she said well let him go to prison I need the coat.
    The higher class British to whom PG Wodehouse belonged socially were horrified when they saw such behaviour on the part of a commoner . But the income tax officer was very clever. Confiscated jewellery and fur coat and said that is has been bought with government money and we are taking it back and she was left weeping and complaining and saying you cannot do this to me. This was after they were married for around 15 years.

    This gentle quiet man got so disillusioned with the greedy females who had taken over his life that one day when his stepdaughter was trying to do some social climbing by introducing herself as P G Wodehouse daughter to a very rich British Aristocrat he said you are not my daughter … you are your father's daughter if you still remember who he is … you and your mother seem to have forgotten about your real father and seem to be very ashamed of him.
    This was what these two people had managed to reduce him to.

    Nevertheless the daughter managed to make a really good marriage but she died very young at the age of 26. PG Wodehouse was given this news. His first reaction was how can she have died I thought creatures like her live on forever and ever and ever. The Americans, very sentimental thought that he was so sweet missing his daughter so much but the Britishers understood that he was talking about an evil spirit which Never Dies and latches onto good people and suck their blood like vampires forever.

  2. Can anything be more ironic than singing a censored version of Anything Goes? Good times. Or something. There was more freedom to tell the truth in 1934 when Porter put the song on Broadway. Indeed, the writers DID use four letter words writing prose! Anything Goes makes no sense if you are just saying the writers are such simpletons they only use three letter words. It only hangs together if you are saying everyone does what they like these days. (It's fun to look up the topical references and see, yes, anything really did go.) In the version made in 1936, the Production Code had already made that freedom impossible.

  3. Mitzi Gaynor's laugh as she's saying the word "glad" at 46:23 reminded me of Natalie Wood. I didn't buy for a minute that she was into Donald O'Connor's character. This whole movie is based on people not being able to be up front with each other. It gets pretty old pretty quickly.

  4. Incomparable and extremely UNDERRATED!! As much as I love Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, Donald O’Conner could dance rings around both of them!! Thanks for this little treat!!

  5. I think Bing Crosby is GREAT. And Donald O'Connor was always superb. Unfortunately they didn't give him opportunities to be the great star he always was. I have loved them all my life. God bless them for giving us so much fun.

  6. Does anyone agree that Mitzi Gaynor in love with Donald O'Connor is not entirely believable! She absolutely 'fills the screen's, almost as well as Marilyn Monroe did.

  7. That Jeanmarie has to be one of the most unattractive leading ladies ever filmed. Unless that was the style in the mid 50s for females to be manlike and gnomish to boot. I wonder if she would have been more at home in Lord of the Rings. No wonder her American career was short. VistaVision did her no favors. Paramount should have kept her behind shrubs and big potted plants wearing thick veils.

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