I sometimes imagine in horror that people, hundreds of years from now, will dig up _Night and Day (1946)_ (qv) or Words and Music and mistake it for actual history. Anachronisms jump off virtually every frame of both films: here for starters, the time line jumps back and forth inexplicably (it's 1925... no 1936! Nope, try a 1927 where everyone dresses like it's 1948). MGM---for obvious reasons--- brushed aside Lorenz Hart's angst over being gay (his actual personality was the polar opposite of Rooney's portrayal), The clothes are all wrong, songs are incorrectly connected to various productions and most glaringly, Perry Como (his last film) inexplicably morphs into himself in the last few minutes. MGM was in dire straits in 1948--- Loew's was breathing down an increasingly out of touch L.B. Mayer's neck over the red ink bleeding across most of the year's releases (1948 could arguably be cited as the beginning of the studio's long slow slide into decline). This is entertaining but, aside from the short shrift given the Rodgers and Hart partnership split and innumerable snubs at marriage proposals, there isn't any real truth in it. It's a collection of good-to-great musical numbers (best: Slaughter on 10th Avenue) tied to a story that never happened. Great R&H songs though... oddly watchable.
Review of Words and Music
