Lovely to Look At (1952) is a lush Technicolor musical starring six members of MGM's extraordinary talent pool: Howard Keel, Kathryn Grayson, Red Skelton, Ann Miller, and Marge and Gower Champion. As you can imagine, it's packed with songs, dances, comedy routines, and a glittering finale with a sixteen minute fashion show/musical performance.

This was not the first time the story appeared on film. The original source material for Lovely to Look At dates back almost twenty years to the 1933 novel Gowns by Roberta by Alice Duer Miller which was quickly turned into a Broadway musical by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach. Kern and Harbach's show, entitled Roberta, premiered on Broadway in 1933 with a cast packed with future Hollywood stars including George Murphy, Bob Hope, Fred MacMurray, and Sydney Greenstreet.

RKO snapped up the film rights to the musical and made Roberta (1935) starring Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Irene Dunne, and Randolph Scott. After that film, the frenzied production of projects inspired by Gowns by Roberta slowed until the mid-1940s when MGM bought Roberta from RKO.

Newspapers announced casting and production news for at least two different MGM productions in the 1940s, though neither actually happened: in 1946, the Hollywood Reporter announced Lucille Ball had been cast in Ginger Rogers' role in an MGM remake, and then two years later the Los Angeles Times wrote Roberta would star Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, and Betty Garrett. (It seems Roberta was replaced with Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) with Esther Williams substituting for Garland.)

After those false starts, MGM finally produced its version of Roberta, Lovely to Look At, in 1952. (The title comes from a song written by Kern with lyrics by Dorothy Fields, and it was nominated for Best Song when it appeared in Roberta).

Lovely to Look At features the same wonderful songs as Roberta, as well as the same setting and basic plot of a failing fashion house in Paris. But the similarities to Roberta end there. In Lovely to Look At, the two male leads from Roberta (Astaire and Scott), are expanded to three men (Keel, Skelton, and Champion) desperate to produce their Broadway musical. The subplot of the fake countess, played by Ginger Rogers, is eliminated completely, the Russian royalty angle is gone, and the role of Roberta is altered, too.

When Lovely to Look At starts, Roberta, the head and namesake of the fashion house, has already passed away. (She dies later in the 1935 version.) Her death sets the plot in motion because her nephew, Skelton, inherits part of the fashion house and comes to Paris with his buddies to check it out. They plan to sell their share and use the money to finance their musical, so they are disappointed to learn the business is deep in debt and creditors are about to pounce.


The three men originally plan to skedaddle, but Keel is extremely taken with Roberta's head designer, played by Kathryn Grayson, and Champion falls for her sister, his real-life wife Marge. Meanwhile, Skelton is nursing a secret love for Keel's girlfriend, Ann Miller. (This movie was a reunion for many of the actors: Keel and Grayson had previously starred together in Show Boat (1951), which also featured Marge and Gower Champion. Keel and Grayson would make one more movie together, Kiss Me Kate (1953), also starring Ann Miller.)

Fueled by love (and the hope of making enough money to produce their musical), the gang decides to 'put on a show' to save Roberta's. Fortunately they're all top-notch musical talents! Along the way, romantic and professional troubles pop up, a beautiful Frenchwoman, played by Zsa Zsa Gabor in her first film, provides comic relief, and MGM gets to play with sets, music, and costumes.

There are some fantastic musical numbers, including the standards 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes' and 'I Won't Dance.' The latter had been performed by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Roberta, but the lyrics were slightly updated for Marge and Gower Champion's rendition in Lovely to Look At.

Originally, the song went, 'When you dance you're charming and you're gentle/Especially when you do the Continental,' a reference to Astaire and Rogers' big number in their previous film, The Gay Divorcee (1934). But that line was no longer relevant in Lovely to Look At, so lyricist Dorothy Fields changed it to 'When you dance you're charming and you're gentle/If our lips should brush it's accidental.

The setting in a Paris fashion house is a great excuse for extended fashion show sequences, and Lovely to Look At takes full advantage. MGM lured famed costume designer Adrian back to the studio for this film. He had been head of MGM's Costume Department from the late 1920s until 1941 when he left to start his own fashion house. The studio publicized his return, and there is a nice meta-moment in the movie when Keel mentions 'Adrian, the great American designer.' This was Adrian's last movie.

MGM spared no expense, and Adrian created some spectacular costumes for the fashion show extravaganza, reportedly costing 00,000, and the finale is a wild example of opulence for opulence's sake. The outfits are amazing, and the sets and staging are just as magnificent. It was the last sequence to be filmed, but before they began director Mervyn LeRoy was called away to another project. MGM asked Vincente Minnelli to step in and direct it. Minnelli later said he wanted to give Adrian's lavish designs 'as extravagant a mounting' as possible, and he certainly did. Minnelli's involvement explains some of the rich color, imaginative staging, and dreamlike quality of the sequence.

Once MGM bought the rights to Roberta and produced Lovely to Look At, the studio kept the earlier film out of circulation to avoid competition, or perhaps comparisons. MGM didn't sell Roberta to TV until the 1970s, and for decades it was difficult to see except at rare art museum screenings. Fortunately, Roberta and Lovely to Look At are readily available now. Both films are delightful in different ways, and are excellent examples of their eras. Perhaps a double feature is in order?

Cameron Howard has loved classic movies since she was a kid checking out VHS tapes from her local library. Today she lives in Durham, NC, and writes about classic Hollywood at The Blonde at the Film.