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In the Good Old Summertime

In the Good Old Summertime
Inthegoodoldsummertimevhscover.jpg
Directed by Robert Z. Leonard
Buster Keaton (uncredited)
Produced by Joe Pasternak
Written by Miklos Laszlo (play)
Screenplay by Samson Raphaelson
Albert Hackett
Frances Goodrich
Ivan Tors
Buster Keaton (uncredited)
Based on Parfumerie (1937 play)
Starring Judy Garland
Van Johnson
S. Z. Sakall
Spring Byington
Clinton Sundberg
Buster Keaton
Liza Minnelli
Music by Fred Spielman
George Evans
Betti O'Dell
George E. Stoll
Jimmy Wakely
Robert Van Eps
Cinematography Harry Stradling Sr.
Edited by Adrienne Fazan
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date
  • July 29, 1949 (1949-07-29)
Running time
102 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $1,577,000
Box office $3,534,000

In the Good Old Summertime is a 1949 Technicolor musical film directed by Robert Z. Leonard. It starred Judy Garland, Van Johnson and S.Z. Sakall.

The film is a musical adaptation of the 1940 film, The Shop Around the Corner, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, and starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, and written by Miklós László based on his 1937 play Parfumerie. For In the Good Old Summertime, the locale has been changed from 1930s Budapest to turn-of-the-century Chicago, but the plot remains the same.

Veronica Fisher (Judy Garland) enters Oberkugen's music shop, looking for work. Although Otto Oberkugen (S. Z. Sakall) is reluctant to take on more staff, she wins a job by persuading a wealthy matron, through her singing and musical expertise, to buy a harp at almost $25 over Oberkugen's list price. Neither she nor Andrew Larkin (Van Johnson), the shop's senior salesman, suspects that they are each other's anonymous pen pal. They bicker constantly at work although becoming increasingly attracted to each other.

Garland introduced the Christmas song "Merry Christmas" in this film; it was later covered by Johnny Mathis and Bette Midler.

Buster Keaton devised a way for a violin to get broken that would be both comic and plausible. Keaton came up with an appropriate fall, and the filmmakers then realized he was the only one who would be able to execute it properly, so they cast him in the film. Keaton also devised the sequence in which Van Johnson inadvertently wrecks Judy Garland's hat, and coached Johnson intensively in how to perform the scene. This was Keaton's first MGM film after he was fired from the studio in 1933.


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