Kathryn Grayson Movies
Ever on the lookout for the "new Deanna Durbin", MGM talent scouts discovered coloratura soprano Kathryn Grayson while she was the teenaged vocalist on Eddie Cantor's radio program. Grayson's first film was the 1940 MGM programmer Andy Hardy's Private Secretary, in which she was given the opportunity to sing "Lucia" and "Voices of Spring." Her first leading role was as the title character in... (read more) MGM's 1942 remake of Rio Rita; years after the fact, Grayson would remember the kindnesses and helpfulness of her co-stars, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Grayson herself leaned towards "diva" behavior the more popular she became, but audiences were less interested in backstage intrigues and more interested in the end result of such films as Anchors Aweigh (1943), The Kissing Bandit (1948), and The Toast of New Orleans (1950). In many of her best films, notably Showboat (1951) and Kiss Me Kate (1953, in which her curvaceous figure was delightfully emphasized in form-fitting Elizabethan garb), Grayson was teamed with baritone Howard Keel, with whom she would later appear in nightclubs and tour in summer stock. Kathryn Grayson made her last film in 1956; she returned before the cameras in the 1980s on (where else?) Murder She Wrote, and died in February 2010, around a week after her 88th birthday. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Murder, She Wrote: Town Father
1989
Up for re-election as mayor of Cabot Cove, Sam Booth (Richard Paul) figures that his staunch anti-development platform will enable him to easily defeat his pro-development...
Murder, She Wrote: The Sins of Castle Cove
1989
In an episode clearly inspired by Peyton Place, a former student of Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) scandalizes the town of Cabot Cove when she publishes a...
Murder, She Wrote: If It's Thursday, It Must be Beverly
1987
Sheriff Amos Tupper (Tom Bosley) is understandably distressed when Audrey Martin (Antoinette Bower), the wife of Amos' bucolic deputy Jonathan Martin (Rick Lenz),...
That's Entertainment Part II
G 1976
This represents MGM's 1976 sequel to its enormously successful compilation film That's Entertainment (1974). In lieu of the multi-narrator device of the first film, director...
The Vagabond King
1956
The Rudolf Friml operetta The Vagabond King was first filmed in 1930, with Dennis King in the lead. On both sides of this adaptation, audiences were treated to...
Kiss Me Kate
1953
Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate is a musical within a musical -- altogether appropriate, since its source material, Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, was a play...
The Desert Song
1953
The Desert Song is the third film version of the famous Sigmund Romberg/Oscar Hammerstein Jr. stage operetta. Gordon MacRae plays the wimpish American tutor of lovely...
So This Is Love
1953
This tuneful biography of operatic soprano Grace Moore begins as she prepares to perform on opening night. While awaiting her entrance cue, she reflects upon her life and the...
Lovely to Look At
1952
The reason the 1935 Astaire/Rogers film version of Roberta was unavailable for years was that, in 1952, MGM bought the property and refilmed it under the title Lovely...
Show Boat
1951
The third and (to date) last film version of the Edna Ferber/Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II musical Show Boat falls just short of greatness but is still a whale of a...
Grounds for Marriage
1950
Grounds for Marriage is another attractively packaged sausage from the MGM assembly line. Van Johnson is a doctor, while Kathryn Grayson is an opera singer. They marry,...
The Toast of New Orleans
1950
So far as their fans were concerned, Mario Lanza and Kathryn Grayson could have stood up against a blank wall and sung uninterruptedly for 96 minutes in Toast of New...
That Midnight Kiss
1949
That Midnight Kiss served to introduce the film-going public to MGM's newest singing sensation, Mario Lanza. Just as he did with Deanna Durbin at Universal, producer...
The Kissing Bandit
1948
In this period musical, Ricardo (Frank Sinatra) is the son of a Mexican innkeeper who has come to California to take over a hotel owned by his family after the death of...
It Happened in Brooklyn
1947
It Happened in Brooklyn was released at a time when the mere mention of the eponymous New York borough elicited loud laughter and extended applause. Frank Sinatra stars as...
Two Sisters from Boston
1946
By 1946, MGM's musical output was in the hands of two men: the incisive, progressive Arthur Freed, and the sentimental, old-fashioned Joe Pasternak. It was Pasternak who...
Ziegfeld Follies
1946
The presence of William Powell as legendary showman Flo Ziegfeld at the beginning of Ziegfeld Follies might lead an impressionable viewer from thinking that this 1946...
Till the Clouds Roll By
1946
MGM's Till the Clouds Roll By is the musicalized, and highly fictionalized, life story of beloved composer Jerome Kern, who gave his blessing to the production shortly...
Anchors Aweigh
1945
This mammoth musical is at base the story of two sailors on leave in Hollywood. Brash Joseph Brady (Gene Kelly) has promised his shy pal Clarence Doolittle (Frank...
Thousands Cheer
1943
Storywise, Thousands Cheer is thin stuff indeed. Insouciant PFC Eddy Marsh (Gene Kelly) wants to put on a Big Show for his fellow serviceman. Along the way, Eddy falls in love...