Going Hollywood–Brown and Freed, Bing, Beautiful Girl

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In A Walkthrough Shows, Songs and More
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It is Saturday, and that means it is time to listen to some music that may or may not connect to a Broadway show. Today, like last Saturday, we are going to look at music that came from a movie. The movie that we are going to look at is the entirely forgettable film, Going Hollywood.

However, aside from its value as a movie, we need to look at it for two reasons: one is that it has some great tunes and performances by Bing Crosby; and two, it laid the ground work for another collaboration 19 years later.

The music in Going Hollywood was written by Nacio Herb Brown and Arther Freed. Arthur Freed would go on to form one of the great musical production units in the movies, the Freed Unit within MGM. The music director in 1933 was Lennie Hayton, who had been working with Bing Crosby on a number of earlier recordings.

Later, Lennie would join Freed’s musical team at MGM, and in 1952, Lennie and Arthur would join forces together again to produce Singing’ in the Rain.

Singin’ in the Rain would re-use one Brown/Freed song from Going Hollywood, “Beautiful Girl.” in 1933, Bing sang this as a solo with comedic help from Sterling Holloway. In Singing’ in the Rain, this song would be sung as an example of a large chorus number.

Let’s see how Bing performed it.