ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, December 1, 1996               TAG: 9612030147
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 2    EDITION: METRO 
COLUMN: TOM SHALES
SOURCE: TOM SHALES

PBS LOOKS AT THE BEST OF THE BEST OF MUSICALS

Watching the next edition of public TV's ``Great Performances'' series is like touring a forest of Christmas trees - all evergreens and sparkling lights and glittering ornaments.

``Musicals Great Musicals: The Arthur Freed Unit at MGM'' contains clips from more than two dozen timelessly entertaining movies, most of them produced by Freed during his three decades in Hollywood. The films include ``Singin' in the Rain,'' ``An American in Paris,'' ``Show Boat,'' ``The Band Wagon'' and ``Gigi.'' Wow.

The 90-minute special, airing Wednesday on PBS' WBRA (Channel 15) at 9 p.m., doesn't merely duplicate what's already been shown and praised in ``That's Entertainment'' parts one, two and three. MGM musicals are hardly an unexplored topic. If you bought all the expanded home video versions of the three ``Entertainment'' compilations, you'd already have more than nine hours of clips and reminiscence.

But Freed didn't produce all MGM musicals, merely the cream of the cream of the crop. He did it by luring to Hollywood some of the top creative people from the New York theater and by giving them an environment in which to flourish. Stanley Donen, who co-directed ``Singin' in the Rain,'' says Freed had the knack for appreciating talent, ``which is a talent in itself.''

Freed was also a songwriter, with partner Nacio Herb Brown, and while they don't rank up there with the Gershwins or Rodgers and Anybody, they wrote enough good songs over the years to build the entire score of ``Singin' in the Rain'' out of them.

Freed worked on a few MGM films, including ``The Wizard of Oz,'' in the late '30s, but what became known as The Freed Unit, his own private club of brilliant pros, got its first real workout with ``Meet Me in St. Louis'' in 1944. It was directed by Vincente Minnelli, who later married its star, Judy Garland. When members of the Freed Unit strolled into the MGM commissary one day for lunch, Joe Pasternak, another producer at the studio, declared, ``There goes the royal family.''

Survivors of the era who pop up on the program include dancer Cyd Charisse, actress Leslie Caron (of ``An American in Paris'' and ``Gigi''), actor Mickey Rooney, dancer Ann Miller, writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green and composer-arranger Andre Previn. Most of them still look a little dazzled when recalling such rich and rewarding times in their careers. It's exhilarating to be part of a winning team and one that really deserves to win.

Minnelli and Gene Kelly are seen briefly in excerpts from interviews they gave in the '70s. Both, like Freed, have gone on to that big Technicolor sound stage in the sky.

The documentary is not perfect. Frankly, the British would have done it better. They have a way of making films about Hollywood that appreciate the folly of it as well as the glory. Producer Margaret Smilow didn't include enough gossipy anecdotes or backstage poop. Very little in Hollywood is accomplished without fighting and screaming, but Smilow chose to take a rosy view.

Charisse does tell a funny story about chorus girls being inundated in soapsuds when a bubble machine went nuts during the production of ``Ziegfeld Follies,'' and Comden recalls that she and Green shared ``a bleak office in the administration building known as The Iron Lung'' and that the office looked out on a funeral parlor. And there's such rarely seen footage as Judy Garland doing a number for ``Annie Get Your Gun'' before she was fired from the picture and replaced by Betty Hutton.

We are also shown how Fred Astaire was able to dance up the walls and across the ceiling in ``Royal Wedding.''

Though it's not the whole story, and though people who've read books about the Freed years will learn little, virtually everyone who watches ``Freed Unit'' is pretty much guaranteed a joyful spree. That was a primary part of Arthur Freed's prodigious genius: spreading happiness to millions of people he would never actually meet.

And the great thing is, he and his gifted colleagues are still doing it.

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