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| The Gang's All Here | 
| Director: Busby Berkeley
Actors: Alice Faye, Carmen Miranda, Phil Baker, Benny Goodman, Benny Goodman Orchestra
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
Buy New: $7.62
You Save: $7.36 (49%)
Buy New/Used from $7.62
Avg. Customer Rating:  (29 reviews)
Sales Rank: 15501
Format: Color, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Original Recording Remastered, Subtitled, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), Portuguese (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled)
Rating: Unrated
Media: DVD
Running Time: 103 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.4 x 0.9
MPN: 2252009
UPC: 024543520092
EAN: 0024543520092
ASIN: B00158K1AA
Release Date: June 17, 2008
Theatrical Release Date: December 24, 1943
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Her girl-next-door looks combined with a sultry singing voice made Alice Faye one of Hollywood's biggest stars in the Golden Age of Cinema.Eadie Allen (Alice Faye) is a chorus girl who dreams of becoming a star. While working at a New York nightclub she meets Sergeant Andy Mason (James Ellison); they fall in love but he is shipped off to war. As Eadie becomes the headliner at the nightclub Andy comes home a war hero. But complications arise when Eadie finds out Andy is unofficially engaged to another woman. It's up to Eadie's friend and nightclub co-star Dorita (Carmen Miranda) to set things straight. The Gang's All Here is filled with leggy chorus dancers and lavish musical production numbers including Faye's flashy neon finale "The Polka Dot Polka."System Requirements:Running Time: 103 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre:MUSICALS/MUSICALS Rating:NR UPC:024543520092 Manufacturer No:2252009
Amazon.com
Here's one of Hollywood's great excursions into surrealism: The Gang's All Here, the legendarily over-the-top wartime musical. Director Busby Berkeley threw every demented idea that every swirled out of his teeming brain into this madcap affair, and decades later the film was still wowing 'em as a campy jaw-dropper. The plot is the nonsensical stuff of homefront musicals, with chorus girl Alice Faye waiting for soldier boy James Ellison to return from the war, little knowing he is engaged to another woman. But the real point here is the crazy production design and the flabbergasting numbers--most famously, Carmen Miranda's "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat," which includes a chorus line of women dancing while holding giant bananas over their heads. It might have been dreamed up by Salvador Dali after an acid trip. Alice gets her due with the equally crazy "Polka-Dot Polka," and Benny Goodman and his orchestra are also around. So are such reliable second bananas (you should excuse the expression) as Edward Everett Horton and high-kicking Charlotte Greenwood. The DVD extras include a 20-minute documentary on Berkeley's peculiar art, plus a charming 25-promotional film featuring Alice Faye reminiscing about her old pictures and extolling the virtues of physical fitness (made for the Pfizer drug company while Faye was their spokesperson). A deleted comedy scene and two episodes from the long-running radio show Faye did with husband Phil Harris are also included. The print itself is a source of controversy; the colors lack the "pop" of the original Technicolor, and the film looks dimmer and vaguer than its original glory. Here's hoping a cleaner, fuller version will emerge. --Robert Horton
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 Fast forward to the GREAT parts! September 8, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
The plot is silly. Really, really silly and trite.
However, this pointless fluff was put into the hands of the one-of-a-kind Busby Berkeley. He added swarms of dancing show girls gracefully groaning under the weight of giant bananas and the always amazing Alice Faye singing as only she can.
The recurring theme of large fruit comes back again when Carmen Miranda dances with an enormously huge Tutti Fruitti Hat -- an image that has lived on for generations on stage, screen, cartoons and I Love Lucy episodes.
If you need a break from the tedium of reality, this is the DVD for you! You just gotta love it.
 The gang's not quite all here. August 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
First, be aware that the reviews included may refer to either the 2007 or 2008 DVD releases. I have no complaints about the 2008 release. The colors are vibrant and images very clear. In addition to the feature film, Dr. Drew Casper hosts a commentary version in which he points out technical details of the production making and comments on some of the personnel. "We Still Are" is a brief nostalgic trip by an older Alice Faye, mostly of interest for a few highlight clips of some of her earlier films. I didn't think the Busby Berkeley documentary was worth a look. I've seen a much better one somewhere else.
Back to the point of my title, where's John Payne, Don Ameche, Cesar Romero and/or Betty Grable? We got used to the presence of at least a couple of these stars in the Fox musicals of the early '40s, along with Alice Faye and/or Carmen Miranda, who star in this film. Perhaps this oversight was intentional, as the leading man's role is less prominent than in previous Fox musicals of this period. There are simply too many other things going on involving various other familiar faces or chorus girls to give the romantic ups and downs and flip flops between the leading characters their usual importance. There is just enough romantic intrigue to provide interest without getting tedious, a problem with some of the other Fox musicals of this time. James Ellison, as soldier Andy Mason, makes a serviceable, if less charismatic, leading man than his predecessors. Near the end, he confronts Alice, his new love, and Sheila Ryan, his "other woman" together, a potentially explosive situation. Alice and James handle the situation well, but it looks like curtains for the Alice-James romance. Don't count on it! This is the second and last pairing of Alice and Carmen in a Fox musical. They basically play the same roles relative to each other in both films: Carmen as the exotic outrageously-dressed spitfire, Alice as the calm dreamy-eyed girl-next- door, who becomes the new girl in the leading man's life.
In the mid-WWII years, Fox included one of the big bands in some of their musicals. Glenn Miller got his chance in "Sun Valley Serenade" and "Orchestra Wives". In this film, Benny Goodman's band is periodically featured, with Benny sometimes doing the vocal. However, his band is not an integral part of the stroy, as was true of the Miller films. Benny doesn't know what to do with his eyes during his vocals, mostly looking down, like he is insecure. Miller's films were in B&W. I can only assume this was because they lacked Carmen. This is confirmed by the fact that "Tin Pan Alley", the only film featuring both Alice Faye and Betty Grable, but lacking Carmen, was also shot in B&W.
Can you imagine a musical prominently featuring Carmen Miranda, with Busby Berkeley the director was well as the choreographer? Well, this is it! The only one. A dream team for a lavish musical-comedy spectacle! Carmen appears in a seemingly endless variety of exotic costumes, both on and off stage. She even sports a fashionable-looking version of the asian peasant conical hat. Her patriotic red, white and blue street outfit includes a pair of blue mouse ears, thus predating the Mickey Mouse Club uniform. Reportedly, she designed her own costumes in her film roles, having been a hat and clothes designer for part of her teen years. Already a veteran performer in Brazil before Sonja Henje encouraged her to move to the US, she demanded that her band be used in her film numbers.
Busby staged a number of his signature lavish chorus girl scenes, with or without Carmen included. The choreography of giant banana-wielding chorus girls is perhaps the most remembered. The film finishes with an elaborate kaleidoscopic treatment of the chorus girls and the stars, and Busby's innovative take on the main actors and actresses taking their bows.
Veteran character actors Eugene(bullfrog) Pallete, Edward Horton and Charlotte Grreenwood add some light comedy as they appear from time to time as the parents of the leading man or his "other woman". Carmen also provides much of the comedy. Her romantic life seems limited to flirting with married middle-aged men, esp. Eugene and Eddie.
Overall, certainly among the most entertaining musical extravagancias ever produced, even without the rest of "the gang" or Glen Miller's band. Well paced, with a good mix of different styles of song and dance, comedy, drama and romance, with some references to the ongoing war. Certainly, a welcomed diversion for the men and women overseas as well as at home, not to mention us in the 21st century.
Don't bother with the plot. Fast forward to the bananas and "No Love, No Nothin'" August 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The only problem with The Gangs All Here is the plot. It keeps getting in the way of the production numbers. Busby Berkeley manages to shoehorn four major numbers in just the first 30 minutes, and he doesn't let up much after that. These numbers include everything Busby Berkeley could think of, from Benny Goodman swinging "Minnie's in the Money" to Alice Faye singing "No Love, No Nothin'" to some bizarre extravaganzas featuring lots of thighs, bananas and Carmen Miranda. You'll want to hit the fast forward button at regular intervals to get past the dull parts between them. The story is corny, the romantic misunderstanding is...yawn... and the acting is often weak (James Ellison as the male lead) or prissily unfunny (Edward Everett Horton). Still, the Technicolor is as garish as you could want and the songs by Harry Warren and Leo Robin work well. There's little time to think of anything except the numbers and what Berkeley does with them. Says a commentator in one of the DVD's extras, "[Berkeley] was a dance director who couldn't dance. In a Berkeley production it was the camera that danced." I'm not sure anyone could watch "The Lady with the Tutti Frutti Hat" and not be in awe of how Berkeley not only made use of all those chorines with the giant fruit, but how he kept the action going using his camera in intricately plotted movement. If you watch the Tutti Frutti number a second time, see how many of the chorus dancers you can spot with grim determination, not smiles, on their faces as they lug those giant bananas around and struggle to hit their marks while the camera swoops and turns.
The story? Alice Faye is a showgirl. James Ellison is a soldier, the son of a wealthy family soon off to the Pacific. They fall for each other, but he has a sort of girl friend. His parents and the girl's parents think they should get hitched. Will Alice and Jim work things out? They do after approximately 100 minutes. Among the relatives and friends are Carmen Miranda, Eugene Pallette, Charlotte Greenwood and Horton,
There are a number of reasons to watch this movie, especially if you're interested in Busby Berkeley. It turned out to be his swan song as a major force in the movies. For me, the production numbers are a lot of fun, but the best reason is that classic song by Warren and Robin that Alice Faye introduced...
No love, no nothin'
Until my baby comes home.
No fun with no one,
As long as baby must roam.
I promised him I'd wait for him
Till even Hades froze.
I'm lonesome, heaven knows,
But what I said still goes.
No love, no nothin'
And that's a promise I'll keep.
No sir, no nothin'
I'm getting plenty of sleep.
My heart's on strike,
And tho' its like
An empty honeycomb,
No love, no sir, no nothin'
Till my baby comes home.
This became one of America's great songs of longing during WWII. If you want to hear more of them, you can't do better than Jo Stafford and her CD, G.I. Jo - Songs of World War II.
new transfer August 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is better than the DVD in the Alice Faye box. Definitely a better transfer.
The 2008 remastered version is a big improvement July 12, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
For fans of this movie: yes, the newly remastered edition is much better than the 2007 release. Colors are back to their original super-saturated intensity. If you love this movie, and have the lackluster 2007 version, buy it again, and use the old copy as your "lend it to a friend" copy (which you'll most likely never see again, since everyone I've ever shown this movie to loves it immediately). It's worth the extra $15 or so to have it right this time. Get it.
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