This is one of the few movies I've had a hard time sitting through to the end. One might guess that the title was an intentional effort by MGM to draw an audience in the dark times of the Great Depression that had just begun. The film came out less than six weeks after the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929. Otherwise, the title, "It's a Great Life," is meaningless with the story.
This is one of the first MGM sound pictures, and it even has a couple of short scenes at the end that are in color. Those are of staged dance and costume extravaganzas. But, at best, they are B-level talent and entertainment. The film's opening scene is a real hoot and the only real comedy in it. What this movie is otherwise, is a scripted play that serves to knit together a few skits and song and dance routines of the Duncan Sisters, Rosetta and Vivian. They were a vaudeville team for some time, and Vivian wrote some of the songs for their act. They had played the title roles in a Broadway musical, "Topsy and Eva," that ran just over four months from late December 1924 to early May, 1925. Those were black face roles of the two characters from "Uncle Tom's Cabin," in a musical play written as a sequel to the Harriet Beecher Stowe story.
MGM was casting about looking for the talent that would soon make it the master and premier studio of cinema musicals. But this film clearly is third-tier for entertainment. The singing would hardly qualify for professional anywhere. The hoofing of the sisters amounts to nothing more than some synchronized steps and movements. And their comedy is lame. It may have been good enough for the smaller venues of the huge vaudeville circuit of the late 19th and very early 20th centuries. In that time, every town big enough to have a theater and people hungry for entertainment had vaudeville.
Some of the early 1929-1930 films with vaudeville-like revue formats had very talented entertainers, some of whom went on to have successful careers in cinema. But, others had people with lesser talents who wouldn't make the cut. This movie is in that group. Besides the lesser music and dance talent, the three leads are very hammy throughout. And the screenplay is sappy melodrama and overacting in the frequent epithets of disgust between Jimmy and Casey.
So, it It should come as no surprise that this was the only sound picture and last of three total feature films that the Duncan Sisters made. But for one more short they made together seven years later, they were finished in films. It is interesting, though, that most of the rest of the staff, including the bit players here, had long careers in film. Jed Prouty who plays David Parker would have 149 credits in films and then television into the 1950s. Benny Rubin who plays the Hogan Sisters' agent, Benny Friedman, acted in cinema and TV for more than six decades, and has 212 credits. Others have more.
One doubts that many people today would find this film entertaining. Most would probably give up on it by halfway through. I'm something of a cinephile who's interested in all aspects of the cinema and its origins and performers. Some others with similar interests, or students studying cinema may appreciate this film for those purposes. But I doubt that there will be many more to join the few who have commented positively on this film to this time. Most may even find my four stars a stretch. But the opening scene is worth one all by itself, and the color sequence toward the end with the choreography and unusual sliding scene earn it one more of the four stars I give it.
Here's an example in the dialog where the vaudevillian hamminess blots out the slight humor. Babe Hogan, "Jimmy, Jimmy, were...were you really thinking of me when you wrote that?" Jimmy Dean, "Sure I was. Every great composer has a girl who inspires his masterpieces."