De Paul: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers Film Soundtrack - Original Movie Score for Romantic Comedy & Musical Lovers

This musical western was one of MGM's biggest hits of the 1950s, and with Michael Kidd's athletic choreography and an original, memorably lusty score by Gene de Paul and Johnny Mercer, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is still rollicking good fun today. Twelve of the brides and brothers were played by a refreshingly unfamiliar company of singers and dancers plucked mainly from the studio chorus line. But in the best roles of their careers, as the remaining bride and brother, were brawny baritone Howard Keel and pert, sweet-voiced Jane Powell, their robust performances bringing out all the folksy vigour and charm of "Bless yore beautiful hide", "Wonderful, wonderful day", and their tender duet "When you're in love". Presented in bracing widescreen stereo and replete with a whooping anthem for the sex-starved brothers ("Sobbin' women"), a foot-tapping guide to "Goin' courtin'", the lilting "Spring, Spring, Spring" and choice moments from Adolph Deutsch's background score (namely the invigorating barn-raising sequence), few other musicals are as heartily entertaining as this MGM classic. --Robert Seeley