Search - In the Good Old Summertime on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Suitable for Children Movie Release: 1949 DVD Release: 04/06/2004 Format: DVD - Closed Captioned Edition: Dual Layered Audio Tracks: English Subtitles: English, French, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 43 mins Studio: Warner Home Video Members Wishing: 25 Genres: Comedy, Romance, Musical Comedy, Musical Romance

In the Good Old Summertime is a musical remake of the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch comedy The Shop Around the Corner, which in turn was based on a play by Miklos Laszlo. The locale has been changed from Hungary to Chicago, but the turn-of-century time frame and the plot remain the same. Van Johnson and Judy Garland play a couple of clerks in a sheet-music store who detest each other on sight. Both reserve their words of affection for their respective pen pals, whom they've never met. The audience, of course, is aware that Johnson is Garland's pen pal, and she his, but it's fun to anticipate the fireworks when the characters on screen make this discovery. Buster Keaton, then employed by MGM as a "comedy consultant," is provided with one of his best parts in years as the bumbling nephew of shop owner S.Z. Sakall. The songs sung in Summertime consist of period numbers like "I Don't Care", "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie", and the title tune. This is the film in which 18-month-old Liza Minnelli (Garland's daughter) toddles into the closing number, though it is not her film debut, as has often been claimed: an even younger Minnelli popped up briefly in Garland's previous MGM musical Easter Parade. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Judy Garland - Veronica Fisher
Van Johnson - Andrew Larkin
Buster Keaton - Hickey
S.Z. Sakall - Otto Oberkugen
Spring Byington - Nellie Burke
Clinton Sundberg - Rudy Hansen

Though it was a musical adaptation of The Shop Around the Corner, the story in In the Good Old Summertime is probably most familiar to young moviegoers as the basis of the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan film You've Got Mail. Judy Garland and Van Johnson star as a pair of rival sheet-music store owners who don't realize that they're each other's secret pen pal. The DVD presents the film in its original full-frame aspect ratio and the soundtrack is in mono. English, French, and Spanish subtitles are also included. Along with the feature presentation, the disc provides several supplemental features. An introduction to the film is included by Judy Garland biographer John Fricke, as is a pair of MGM shorts: Chicago the Beautiful and Night Life in Chicago. Rounding out the extras are the trailers for The Shop Around the Corner and You've Got Mail. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide