‘C’mon, Get Happy: The Making of “Summer Stock”’
By David Fantle and Tom Johnson
Foreword by Savion Glover
University Press of Mississippi, 312 pages

“The Making of ‘Summer Stock’” sets the standard for books about the history of a motion picture, though I doubt anyone will be able to rival the achievement of this group biography.  

For the last 45 years, David Fantle and Tom Johnson have been interviewing many of the principals involved in creating the film, including its star, Gene Kelly, the director, Charles Walters, and the behind-the-scenes MGM staff. Its other star, Judy Garland, died in 1969, but the authors have spoken with students of her career and her daughter, Lorna Luft.

Here is the book’s layout, chapter by chapter: The Studio; The Story; The Talent; The Production; The Musical Numbers; Marketing, Review, Revenue and Revivals, plus a chronology of key dates, a listing of cast and crew, and an acknowledgments section that explains how the authors went about researching and putting together their work. Appendices go even deeper into the orchestration and recordings of the musical.

“Summer Stock” was no one’s idea of a classic musical. The songs were okay, except for the showstopper that did indeed make everyone happy, but the rapport between Garland and Kelly, plus his phenomenal dancing — and I would add the humor, which I don’t think the authors say enough about — make “Summer Stock” still amusing and sometimes thrilling.

The story is simple: Gene Kelly plays a character who is putting together a musical that he hopes to take to Broadway. He’s had trouble finding a venue to rehearse and his girlfriend (Gloria DeHaven) says the cast can use the barn on her family farm, where her sister, Judy Garland, has remained to try to make a success of it after their parents’ death.

It’s a tired idea, and everyone at MGM knew it, but that’s not how it feels watching the film. I keep waiting, every time I watch it, for Gene Kelly to realize that his girlfriend is no good and that Judy Garland can outperform anyone he’s ever seen.

Enough said, then, about the plot. What remains fascinating is the tension between the city theater people and the rural inhabitants, who regard theatricals as degenerate and the practitioners of such corrupting entertainment downright immoral.

“Summer Stock” is hardly a message picture, yet the goofy, untrustworthy troupe manages to involve a community in a shared uplifting experience. I found the same at Cape May, New Jersey, in 1966 as an apprentice at a summer stock playhouse that was not in much better shape than the barn in the film. The town looked askance at us wayward theater types, but we showed the locals that theater was not only good for business, it was fun, and it could even be edifying.

“The Making of ‘Summer Stock’” is a fascinating encyclopedia of musical theater, explaining how Gene Kelly constructed his dances, the name of the dance steps he perfected, and the remarkable way he performed in very small spaces that had the effect of opening them up in joyous acts of liberation — as he does in his signature routine that involves a squeaky floorboard and a newspaper page.

The authors devote significant attention to Judy Garland, who suffered mentally and physically during the making of this picture and was fired afterward, never to return to MGM after generating millions of dollars for the company over a 15-year span. “The Making of ‘Summer Stock’” is her rehabilitation of sorts, since it shows that production delays were hardly due simply to her problems, which she overcame, but rather were the result of interruptions for various technical and aesthetic difficulties that often plagued musicals. 

“The Making of ‘Summer Stock’” is also an oral biography, in which we hear the voices of contemporary performers whose comments on the film form part of the legacy that is the art of the motion picture. After absorbing their expertise, watch the movie on one of the streaming services with a companion. You may be tempted to pause the action, as I did, and inform your fellow viewer about all the inside information you’ve learned from this book. 

Mr. Rollyson, ex-summer stock performer, is the author of “Lillian Hellman: Her Life and Legend,” and of the forthcoming “Ronald Colman: Hollywood’s Gentleman Hero.”