Pacific Paradise

A short review hosted by Cliff Edward. Clarence Muse sings a song about the Congo, we see various Hollywood stars at a horse race in Mexico, and then a Mexican band plays a tribute to Lupe Vélez.

Some of MGM's musical stars review the studio's history of musicals. From The Hollywood Revue of 1929 to Brigadoon, from the first musical talkies to Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain.

Various MGM stars from yesterday present their favorite musical moments from the studio's 50 year history.

With his sidekick Rusty, Jeff Harper sails to paradisiacal tropical isle Ahmi-Oni to bargain on behalf of his cattle baron father for land owned by transplanted Irishman Dennis O'Brien. But Jeff falls in love with O'Brien's daughter, Eileen, and even his father can't break them up after he arrives and himself falls under the spell of island splendor.

Real-life mother and son entertainers Grace and Peter Lind Hayes star as a mother and her son. She’s a fading Broadway star working as a maid to prep for a possible comeback role and he’s the offspring who wants to follow in mom’s footsteps.

Young Bart Collins lives with his widowed mother Heloise. The major blight on Bart's existence is the hated piano lessons he is forced to endure under the tutelage of the autocratic Dr. Terwilliker. Bart feels that his mother has fallen under Terwilliker's sinister influence, and gripes to visiting plumber August Zabladowski, without much result. While grimly hammering away at his lessons, Bart dozes off and enters a fantastical musical dream.

Donald Hardwick (Dick Powell) is a stuffed-shirt, classical music professor. His family and small-town music college that he works are of equal mindset. When Don visits his black-sheep aunt in New York in order to find a buyer for his Rhapsody he is exposed to her shocking swing music crowd. His life begins to make dramatic changes after drinking a "lemonade" that turns out to be a Hurricane.

Winners of the Lucky Stars National Dance Contest - one woman from each state of the United States - are welcomed to Palm Springs. Being the desert playground for the movie stars, the women are introduced to the cavalcade of famous faces vacationing in Palm Springs at the time of their visit.

A series of vignettes with a loose plot. Featured are Frank Morgan, Groucho Marx, Frank McHugh, Robert Benchley and The Brian Sisters. Not bad, more interesting for the historical significance than for entertainment.

An aspiring actress is offered the lead in a major new play, but discovers that her mother, a more seasoned performer, expects the same part. The situation is further complicated when they both become involved with the same man.

During World War Two, an American band leader, Jack arrives on a Tahitian island , and via a chain of unexpected events, soon finds himself soon about to be betrothed to Luana, the princess of a local tribe.

The spoiled daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a tumultuous romance with a cynical profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.

When the gentle woodcarver Geppetto builds a marionette to be his substitute son, a benevolent fairy brings the toy to life. The puppet, named Pinocchio, is not yet a human boy. He must earn the right to be real by proving that he is brave, truthful, and unselfish.

Dumbo is a baby elephant born with over-sized ears and a supreme lack of confidence. But thanks to his even more diminutive buddy Timothy the Mouse, the pint-sized pachyderm learns to surmount all obstacles.

Created for Disney's 100th anniversary, the short features Mickey Mouse corralling a gallery of legendary Disney characters for a group photo.

An airport manager tries to keep his terminals open during a snowstorm, while a suicide bomber plots to blow up a Boeing 707 airliner in flight.

Walter Burns is an irresistibly conniving newspaper publisher desperate to woo back his paper’s star reporter, who also happens to be his estranged wife. She’s threatening to quit and settle down with a new beau, but, as Walter knows, she has a weakness: she can’t resist a juicy scoop.

Jiminy Cricket hosts two Disney animated shorts: Bongo about a circus bear escaping to the wild, and Mickey and the Beanstalk, a take on the famous fairy tale.

Two different social classes collide when Cary Scott, a wealthy upper-class widow, falls in love with her much younger and down-to-earth gardener, prompting disapproval and criticism from her children and country club friends.

England, 1763. After being convicted of a crime, the young and beautiful Abigail Hale agrees, to escape the gallows, to serve fourteen years as a slave in the colony of Virginia, whose inhabitants begin to hear and fear the sinister song of the threatening drums of war that resound in the wild Ohio valley.

A grieving widow embarks on a new romance when she discovers her late husband had been cheating on her.

A happily married woman lets her catty friends talk her into divorce when her husband strays.

A former prostitute works to create a new life for herself in a small town, but a shocking discovery could threaten everything.

When hired killer John Gant rides into Lordsburg, the town's folk become paranoid as each leading citizen has enemies capable of using the services of a professional killer for personal revenge.

Circus owner Buck Rand kidnaps Boy to perform in his show. He forces a pilot to fly him, Boy and his animal trainer out of the jungle. Tarzan and Jane follow them to New York.

Two gamblers must leave New York City after one loses a lot of money. Doing what all gamblers in trouble would do, they hurry to the gambling capital Las Vegas to turn their luck around.

A woman seduces a professional golfer, then offers to kill his opponent if the golfer will kill her psychiatrist, who wants her committed.

This generous collection includes 46 of the 48 shorts that starred Goofy between 1939 and 1961 (but none of the great Mickey-Donald-Goofy films from the mid-'30s). The "How to Ride a Horse" sequence in The Reluctant Dragon (1941) set the pattern for many of these cartoons. An elegant narrator (artist John Ployardt) explains a sport that Goofy attempts to demonstrate. The character that animator Art Babbitt described in a 1935 lecture (quoted in the DVD bonus material) as an easygoing dimbulb gave way to an enthusiastic but spectacularly maladroit figure. One of the funniest entries in the series, "Hockey Homicide," contains several studio in-jokes: dueling stars Icebox Bertino and Fearless Ferguson, and referee Clean-Game Kinney are named for artists Al Bertino, Norm Ferguson, and director Jack Kinney.

Pinky Scariano, Allan Ross, and Frankie Davis all join the Army Air Forces with hopes of becoming pilots. In training, they meet and become pals with Bobby Grills and Irving Miller, and the five struggle through the rigid training and grueling tests involved in becoming pilots. Not all of them succeed, and tragedy awaits for some.

An American draft dodger and aspiring writer named Nero Finnigan becomes involved with the notorious Mr. Go, an organized crime mastermind. They conspire to blackmail an American weapons scientist into providing secrets to Mr. Go's organization for resale to the highest bidder. "The Dolphin" then arrives, who is an American CIA agent and James Joyce scholar, and is charged with recovering the scientist and his work by whatever means necessary.

Band tries to get an audition for a job at a prestigious nightclub.

In the city, Goofy finds his daily job much too stressful so he decides to leave this hustle and bustle for a more peaceful life in the tropics. He finds life there most enjoyable collecting shells from the beach, making a hut in which to live, getting back to nature, and even joining in the big luau feast (with meals such as shark fin soup). Yes, Goofy thinks nothing can go wrong in this paradise...until the natives need to sacrifice someone to their volcano.