I just finished watching this scene on the extras from That's Entertainment III. This is a wonderful scene. The reason this scene and may other scenes from films were cut, was because the running time was too long and they had specific run times so they could show the movies at specific times and more times during a day. It's too bad, it's a wonderful scene. I love Jane Powell in this scene and I love the little boy. He was really good.
Thank you SO much for identifying the music. I’d been introduced to this delightful number by a previous posting of the clip, and for years have wondered what classical piece it had been adapted from. IMDb’s soundtrack list shows Ralph Freed wrote the lyrics for four of the songs in the film, which makes me think it’s likely that these were his too. The full cast list at the AFI Catalog includes Warner Lee as “Chinese boy”, an “Offscreen Credit...derived from contemporary sources”. The choreographer was Stanley Donen. Back when I first saw the clip and was Googling to try to find more about it, I had found a newspaper review that had mentioned the number. I don’t know why Google didn’t offer it easily this time; I had to search using every combination of terms I could think of, and in the end, thinking I remembered that it hd been in a Brooklyn paper, was able to get it by searching the Brooklyn Daily Eagle archive. In fact there are two reviews that both mention among the musical highlights, “Why So Gloomy, Why So Sad”: Thurs. August 8, 1946, page 17, Holiday In Mexico, “coming to the Capitol Theater screen on Thurs. Aug. 15”, with, live on stage, Gene Krupa and his band, Mitzi Green, and others, and Wed. November 13, 1946, page 23, at Loew’s Metropolitan Theater, on a double bill with The Dark Horse, a comedy about a political campaign. So evidently some lucky few audiences DID get to see this before it was cut. I suppose one reason the idiot powers that be figured the number was expendable is that the lyric is too specific to the occasion. It’s not a monetizable generic love song.
Great detective work! The August pre-release blurb could have just come from a studio press release written before the song was cut, but the November review seems to indicate it was shown. At least Warner Lee got to see it at some point! I also found this at AFI; "According to an Aug 1945 memo in the file on the film in the MPAA/PCA Collection at the AMPAS Library, the Hays Office complained to producer Joe Pasternak that the film had portrayed Mexicans as only "underlings and servants," and urged him to "find some way to get into your picture some nice Mexicans." Memos in the file also indicate that Pasternak complied with the Hays Office's request by changing the character of the boy who dances with Jane Powell from a French boy to a Mexican boy."
Run times, thats silly. Who cares if it's 3 min longer. Look at all the time spent on making it. In 1939 Gone With the Wind had intermission. How dare they cut Jane Powell., now that's sinful
