Opinion
They Learned About Women is a contender for the worst title ever given to a film musical. ‘Playing the Field’ and ‘Take It Big’ were other suggested titles, but undoubtedly lend themselves to innuendo. The other contender, ‘The Pennant-Winning Battery’ would arguably have been worse.
Van and Schickel were very popular entertainers, and their musical performances give an inkling of why they were so liked. But they were no great shakes as actors and it seems likely they would have gone the same way as the Duncan Sisters after It’s a Great Life, if Schickel’s untimely death had no rendered the matter moot.
They Learned About Women was the second Metro musical outing for the songwriting team of Milton Ager and Jack Yellen, and is notable for being the first of the studio’s musicals with a score entirely written by one team. These remained a rarity for the next forty years. It’s a fairly average set of numbers, though ‘Ten Sweet Mamas’ is notable for several reasons. It is a very early integrated number, in two senses: it is sung by Gus Van not on a stage, but in a shower room, with the chorus engaged in their ablutions while singing; Van washes himself then lies face down on a massage table.
The song is also integrated in the way it comments on the themes and plot
of the film. ‘Ten Sweet Mamas’ is a variation on ‘Ten Green Bottles,’ with the number of mamas reducing throughout the song; in fact, Van starts singing at the seven point. The song’s subject is unfaithfulness, ostensibly female (“Can’t trust a woman/I have found”), though in fact the blame swings both ways (he loses his last mama because she catches him with his wife). The lyrics foreshadow Jack’s fickleness and Daisy’s duplicity. The shower room setting, coyly shot though it is, positions the film as pre-code, as does the lyric “Had two sweet mamas for my jelly roll,” which was a euphemism for sexual intercourse.
The film’s other highpoint is its one production number, ‘Harlem Madness,’ which gave Nina Mae McKinney, the breakout star of Hallelujah, her second and final opportunity to shine. Her singing and dancing is joyously eccentric enough to merit the song’s title.
The direction in They Learned About Women is fairly lacklustre, even though it took two directors to achieve it. It was far from unusual at MGM, at that time, for one director to complete another’s film, but it seems unclear why, on this occasion, Conway and Wood were given a shared credit.
Bessie Love works hard, as always, but there are diminishing returns for her third dose of heartbreak in a year. Frankly, Jerry is as big a chump as Terry in Chasing Rainbows; she would probably have been better off with Jerry.
