It is a performances centric movie

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

"Babes in Arms" is the first of four musicals MGM made for its two young musical talents, Mickey Rooney (as Mickey Moran) and Judy Garland (as Patsy Barton). And this one is very entertaining. The story is OK – the kids are protégés of parents who had been successes in vaudeville. They now live in a community on Long Island where many performers also have settled down. The rest of the story plot will be familiar to movie buffs. The story was developed so that we could see Rooney, Garland and several other good performers display their talents. The movie is adapted from a play by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart. The "kids" shine in two Rogers- Hart numbers – "Babes in Arms" and "Where or When." Several other numbers are interspersed in the movie. The last two numbers are lengthy staged routines with singing, dancing, and dialog. Nacio Herb Brown & Arthur Freed wrote "Good Morning," and Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg wrote "God's Country." In the latter two, Rooney shows some excellent footwork and does a couple of nice imitations. Garland also does a nice imitation of Eleanor Roosevelt.One strange thing in this move was the bus that Patsy takes to visit her mother in Schenectady, NY. I've ridden Greyhound and Trailways buses many years ago, but I've never seen a bus with sleeping berths. This is the first and only one I've ever seen in a movie or anywhere. And this berth doesn't even look cramped, like those in trains. I suspect this was just a concoction of MGM to give Garland a more comfy setting in which to film her song, "I've Cried for You."This early film of the series isn't up to the caliber of the later ones; but it's enjoyable just the same. Most have more comedy dialog. One cute and funny scene here is in the opening. Mickey asks Patsy, "Would you like my pin?" Patsy replies, "It's your music class pin." Mickey: "Well, what do you want me to say?" Patsy: "You know what I want you to say." Mickey: "Well, I won't." Patsy: "All right then, don't." Mickey: "Oh, Pat …. I do." Patsy: "You do what?" Mickey: "I do, what you want me to say and I won't. Very much."And, remembering that this was 1939, the last song in the tune, "God's Country," has some clever lines. "We've got no Duce, we've got no Führer; but we've got Garbo and Norma Shearer. Got no goose steps, but we got a Suzie Q step .. Here in God's country."

Wow, I just finished watching "Babes in Arms", and my head is spinning. We old movie fans are used to seeing ethnic humor and even the occasional bit of blackface in early Hollywood films; but what "Babes in Arms" gives us is outrageous by any definition: an entire cast of a "show within a show", numbering at least 50 to 75 people, including Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, every one in blackface, performing not just a minstrel skit, nor a single musical number, but an entire 20 minute full-blown minstrel show in spectacular MGM full-production mode. It goes on and on and on. Dialect jokes. Banjoes and songs about Alabammy. And finally, Judy Garland, having removed her blackface, comes out and performs an additional number ("I'm Just Wild About Harry") as an only slightly darkened black woman. Wow.On the other hand, is it really possible that the manic Mickey Rooney was only 19 when he made this? He really shows why he may be the single most talented American performer of the last century. He dances, he sings, he does drama, he does comedy, and he has incredible control over his every move and muscle. And he does unbelievable and hilarious impressions of Clark Gable and Lionel Barrymore. And Franklin Roosevelt.A few quick notes: June Priesser, who plays "Baby" Rosalie, was a terrible actress. But watch out for her stomach-churning contortionist back-rolls when she first comes out on a stage.The child actor who plays Mickey Rooney at age 5 dancing on a Vaudeville stage for a few moments early on really does look like Mickey Rooney! I think Judy Garland actually has some of the same lines in this movie as she does in "Wizard of Oz", done in this same year. Watch out for when Mickey Rooney feints early in the film; Garland reacts to this exactly, and I mean exactly, as she does in Oz when the Lion feints. Eerie! When Judy Garland, as Eleanor Roosevelt, sings "My day, my day", she is referring to an actual long-running newspaper column written by E.R. from 1936 to 1962.Finally, the final song and dance number is the most mind-numbing, over-the-top tribute to America, dancing, how we are not Nazis, American Indians, Asian Indians, dancing, the Roosevelts, and dancing, that I have ever seen. Yes, it was early WWII, but still, you wonder if anyone even in 1939 thought this was a little too much? Recommended for its high energy, its Rooney and Garland, its more Rooney, its offensiveness, and its too much of everything. It is history, and should be watched by all.

Mickey Moran (Mickey Rooney) and Patsy Barton (Judy Garland) are teenage sweethearts and children of longtime vaudeville families. But vaudeville has suffered since the introduction of talking pictures, and their parents are out of work. When Judge John Black (Guy Kibbee) threatens to send the children of the actors off to a work farm, Mickey and Patsy lead the vaudeville kids in a rebellion. Using that old reliable stand-by -- "Hey, let's put on a show!" -- the vaudeville kids decide to prove that they are capable of supporting themselves. They develop a show that they hope to take to Broadway.As usual for screen musicals of this time, the Broadway-to-Hollywood transition does not go well. The Broadway version of "Babes In Arms" was a fairly-successful and watchable musical. But when MGM bought the rights to it, they threw out the script and most of the songs and started all over again. They tossed out classic songs like "My Funny Valentine," "The Lady is a Tramp," and "Johnny One-Note," in favor of mediocre songs like "Good Morning" and "God's Country." Rooney gives a decent performance, and Garland is well on her way to becoming America's Sweetheart. But this movie has NOT held up well over time. There is a nerve-grating "Minstrel Show" number at the end, with Rooney and Garland in blackface. Also, there is a disturbing scene where the vaudeville kids light a bonfire in the middle of town and use it to burn books of authority. (Didn't anybody in Hollywood watch the newsreels at this time, and see what was going on in Berlin?) But even more so than that, the plot is just a clothesline to string together musical numbers. Compared to today's musicals, where you have interesting things going on in between the musical numbers, the Rooney-Garland romance story in "Babes in Arms" is just marking time between songs.The movie is worth watching to see Garland in the prime of her teen sweetheart years, and possibly to check out the dance numbers. But overall, this musical is best forgotten.

For Mickey and Judy fans, Babes in Arms is an absolute must. It's the only one of their films in which one of the two got an Oscar nomination. Mickey Rooney was nominated for Best Actor, personally I think as an afterthought because his competition was Clark Gable for Gone With the Wind, Laurence Olivier for Wuthering Heights, James Stewart for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and the winner Robert Donat for Goodbue Mr. Chips. Not that Mickey's bad, but he really didn't belong with this field.What he and Judy do, they do better than anyone else, put on a show. In fact in this case the 'put on a show' gambit did originate in the original Broadway Musical. Babes in Arms was one of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's best shows it ran for 289 performances in the 1937 season and boasted such Rodgers&Hart classics as Johnny One Note, Way Out West, My Funny Valentine, I Wish I Were in Love Again all of which were discarded for the film. The Lady is a Tramp is only heard instrumentally, my guess is the Code frowned on that lyric. The title song and Where or When are retained. In fact when you come right down to it, only the basic idea the songs mentioned and a couple characters names came over from Broadway.Still Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed wrote Good Morning which is better known from Singin' in the Rain, but it was Judy and Mickey who introduced it here. And a whole lot of other Brown&Freed songs from MGM musicals got interpolated into the score.Douglas MacPhail and Betty Jaynes who were introduced in Sweethearts also are here and sing beautifully. They married, but the marriage and MacPhail's career fell apart and he committed suicide a few years later. He had a great baritone voice, what a shame. The following year he introduced my favorite Cole Porter song, I Concentrate On You in The Broadway Melody of 1940. This was the film Judy Garland did right after The Wizard of Oz and coming along right with her is Margaret Hamilton playing another Miss Gulch like character. One of those spinster ladies who forever pry into other people's business.Believe it or not there was still a lot of prejudice against theatrical people even in 1937. A lot of old vaudeville types like Charles Winninger, Rooney's father in the film, settle in the town of Seaport on Long Island and their presence apparently upsets the ruling families like Hamilton's. When times go bad and vaudeville goes to seed, things get kind of rough for them. The old timers try to take a last tour to raise some money, but instead it's the kids who are up to the latest trends in pop music who save the day.Guy Kibbee is in this also, playing against type as a wise and sympathetic judge, usually the parts MGM reserved for Lewis Stone or Lionel Barrymore. A more typical Kibbee type would be the oafish tycoon in 42nd Street, but he's fine here.Possibly director Busby Berkeley wanted Kibbee, maybe as a good luck charm from that other breakthrough musical of his from his days at Warner Brothers. Of course the musical numbers in the show are set with the usual Berkeley surrealism, a little tempered though from his high flying days at Warner Brothers. That same year Berkeley had done a surreal type number in the Jeanette MacDonald-Lew Ayres film Broadway Serenade and it laid an egg. Someone at MGM must have reined him in.Babes In Arms retains all its charms from 1939 mainly because Mickey Rooney is infectious and Judy Garland's singing is eternal.