THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! CD BOXED SET
RELEASE DATE: APRIL 25, 2006

From Rhino Records:

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! RECEIVES ENCORE

Newly Expanded and Upgraded Version of Beloved Six-Disc Anthology From Turner and Rhino Mines the Best Musicals of MGM's Golden Age Including an Entire Disc of Unreleased Performances Box Set Is Available April 25 from Rhino Records.

Movie music fans rejoiced in 1995 when Turner Classic Movies Music and Rhino Movie Music partnered for an exhaustive six-disc collection featuring indelible musical performances from MGM's golden age. A decade and more than 200 classic movie soundtrack releases later, Turner/Rhino revisits the centerpiece of its successful ongoing partnership to create a truly definitive collection of MGM musical magic.

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! THE ULTIMATE ANTHOLOGY OF MGM MUSICALS [updates] the original landmark release with an entire disc of never-before-released music, and uses new technology to upgrade the sound quality of 30 percent of the original box set.

The newly expanded and upgraded version of THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! is available April 25 at regular retail outlets and online at www.rhino.com for a suggested price of $89.98.

CLICK HERE
for pop-up window with complete track listing!

COMING APRIL 25, 2006
NEW DVD BOXED SET FEATURING THREE OF JUDY'S FILMS

NOTE: Click on the images to see the DVD cover art for those films!

WARNER HOME VIDEO PRESS RELEASE:

Warner Home Video have announced the Region 1 DVD release of Classic Musicals from the Dream Factory for April 25th, 2006. This collection of five newly-remastered favourites from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Golden Era are all making their debut on DVD, and include It's Always Fair Weather, Summer Stock, Three Little Words, Till the Clouds Roll By, and Ziegfeld Follies and contain some of the most memorable numbers by the greatest stars of the genre, specifically the Hollywood musical's golden trio of immortal legends - Judy Garland, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.

The famous MGM slogan "More Stars Than There are in Heaven" was never truer than in this spectacular collection of the fabled studio's vintage musicals which features some of the most eye-popping numbers in the history of the film musical. In addition to Judy, Fred and Gene, the studio piles on Lena Horne, Esther Williams, Cyd Charisse, June Allyson, Frank Sinatra, Van Johnson, Kathryn Grayson, Lucille Ball, Red Skelton, William Powell, and too many to name them all!

Each feature film in this collection has been meticulously restored and remastered from its original elements by Warner Home Video and complimented with new featurettes, rare outtake musical numbers, audio only bonus outtakes and vintage cartoons. The titles will be available individually for $19.97 SRP and the five-disc collection will sell for $59.92 SRP.

Classic Musicals from the Dream Factory Collection

It's Always Fair Weather (1955)
Originally conceived as somewhat of a follow up to the wildly successful On the Town, It's Always Fair Weather didn't reunite the original cast of that landmark 1949 MGM musical, which starred Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin, six years earlier. By 1955, Sinatra was unavailable and Munshin was blacklisted, so the project needed to have a fresh approach while still remaining very much a Gene Kelly vehicle. "Fair Weather" teamed Kelly for the third and final time with the top creative talents including Stanley Donen as co-director and co-choreographer, producer Arthur Freed and writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green. This impressive group had revolutionized the movie musical, first with On The Town (1949) and then the masterpiece Singin' in the Rain (1952). This final collaboration was a highly original film, and was the Kelly/Donen directorial partnership's first project in Cinemascope. 25-year-old "wunderkind" Andre Previn, who was already an MGM veteran of almost a decade, was hired to write all the songs for the film's original score (with lyricists Comden and Green) and also served as musical arranger and conductor.

Sparkling with satiric wit and exuberant production numbers, It's Always Fair Weather centres on three World War II buddies (Kelly, Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd) who vow to reunite for old time's sake in 10 years. When they do, they discover that their lives have moved in different directions. But romance, the fight game, the ad biz and a new medium called TV combine to restore their bond. Highlights include the buddies' high-spirited romp using trash-can lids as dancing shoes, elegant Cyd Charisse's k.o. of a routine with broken-nosed pugilists, and Kelly's joyful, astonishing roller skating tap dance. Previn's music was nominated for an Academy Award® as was Comden and Green's writing.

DVD Special Features:

Summer Stock (1950)
Summer Stock was Judy Garland's last picture under her long-term MGM contract, but she went out on a high note with one of the most spectacular production numbers of her stellar career, the joyous "Get Happy." Performed in a man's fedora, suit jacket and black tights (eventually a signature look), with a chorus of men behind her, it's just plain vintage Judy.

Gene Kelly performs some great numbers, including the shuffle-and-squeak "You, Wonderful You" dance solo making use of loose boards and newspaper on the floor. Also featured is "Heavenly Music", a Kelly-Phil Silvers duet as country-bumpkins backed by woofing canines.

The picture, a throwback to the early Judy-Mickey Rooney films (Babes in Arms, for one) with their "putting-on-a-show-in-the-barn" back story, also represents the third and last on-screen pairing of Garland and Gene Kelly (the others being For Me and My Gal and The Pirate). Garland plays Jane Falbury, a farm owner more than a bit riled when her aspiring-actress sister (Gloria DeHaven) shows up with a theatrical troupe wanting to stage a musical. Any guess who becomes the show's sudden star after its lead runs off with a Broadway actor?

With sharp direction by Charles Walters, and great new songs by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon, the film has become a beloved audience favourite over the years.

DVD Special Features:

Three Little Words (1950)
Unlike most composer biopics proliferating in the late '40s, Three Little Words is actually a very accurate depiction of the lives of tunesmiths Bert Kalmar (Fred Astaire) and Harry Ruby (Red Skelton). Kalmar always wanted to be a magician but all it takes is a disastrous opening night to make his dream go poof! So Kalmar moves on - and finds songwriting magic with collaborator Ruby.

Highlights include Astaire tap-dancing as only he can, including a lovely duet with Vera-Ellen (the first time they danced together); Gloria DeHaven recreating her mother's original performance of "Who's Sorry Now" and Debbie Reynolds, in her third screen appearance, portraying Boop-Boop-a-Doop girl Helen Kane (resulting in a Most Promising Newcomer Golden Globe nomination). It's movie magic as only MGM could create.

DVD Special Features:

Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)
Till the Clouds Roll By finally receives the deluxe presentation it deserves with its first legitimate DVD release, with this stunning new transfer directly from the original studio Technicolor camera negatives. The epic film begins with a glorious, musical-within-a-musical recreation of the 1927 opening of Jerome Kern's "Show Boat" and ends with a spectacular musical cavalcade of Kern classic melodies, climaxing with Frank Sinatra singing Ol' Man River, a number Ol' Blue Eyes would reprise throughout his career. From start to finish, the glittery biopic about renowned stage-and-screen composer Kern (Robert Walker) features 25 stars and a nearly equal number of Kern tunes. Highlights include Judy Garland as Marilyn Miller asking "Who?" to a bevy of top-hatted admirers; Dinah Shore hauntingly recalling "The Last Time I Saw Paris"; and Lena Horne's just "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man".

DVD Special Features:

Ziegfeld Follies
Two years in the making, Ziegfeld Follies was a distinct departure from musicals that preceded it. Presented in a revue format with no storyline, Ziegfeld Follies allowed the stars to shine in a musical extravaganza without that pesky plot getting in the way.

With the "créme de la créme" of credited and uncredited Hollywood creative talent, this all-star revue is heaven to fans of movie musicals. Fred Astaire dazzles not once, not twice - but four times, including "The Babbitt and the Bromide" with Gene Kelly, the first time the two greatest dancers in musical history dueted. Red Skelton reprises his funny "Guzzler's Gin" skit. Esther Williams swims, Lena Horne sings and Judy Garland spoofs snobbery. Add to this a Verdi opera and the legendary Fanny Brice (who rose to stardom under the Ziegfeld touch) enacting one of her inimitable comic numbers and the result is the musical form at its purest.

DVD Special Features:

December 1, 2005:
THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE OFFICIALLY ANNOUNCES
THE JUDY GARLAND STAMP FOR 2006

From the USPS web site
(click on image to see close-up of the stamp):

As the 12th inductee in the Postal Service's Legends of Hollywood series, Judy Garland is considered by many to be one of the greatest entertainers of the 20th century. An all-around performer, she acted with equal effectiveness in comedy or drama, sang a varied repertoire with unparalleled skill, and partnered with the leading male dancers of her time, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire among them. Her show business colleagues have been nearly unanimous in their praise of Garland's natural brilliance - indeed, she was a "star of stars."

Garland triumphed in most media of her era. She appeared in 32 feature films, winning international fame as Dorothy, the girl who rides a tornado from her home in Kansas to an imaginary land in the 1939 musical The Wizard of Oz. She also was a best-selling recording artist who released more than a dozen albums and nearly 100 singles and made hundreds of radio broadcasts. She starred in her own television show and made guest appearances on many others. Her live performances, widely regarded as her supreme showcase, frequently broke box office records for theaters, concert halls, and nightclubs.

Garland's extraordinary talent was honed from an early age. She was born Frances Ethel Gumm, June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, MN, where her father, Frank, managed a theater, and her mother, Ethel, played the piano. The family was musical: Frank and his wife billed themselves as Jack and Virginia Lee, Sweet Southern Singers, and their three daughters performed as The Gumm Sisters. Frances made her professional debut at the age of two, on December 26, 1924, first singing with her two older sisters, Mary Jane and Virginia, and then delighting the audience with a solo rendition of "Jingle Bells." A laudatory review in a local newspaper noted that "the two oldest girls are becoming accomplished entertainers, while the work of Frances, the two-year-old baby, was a genuine surprise."

In 1926, the family moved to California, settling in Lancaster (north of Los Angeles) in 1927. In her new home, "Baby" Gumm, as she was known, continued to receive glowing reviews. As a student at Lawlor's Hollywood Professional School, where she was enrolled by her mother, Frances first met Mickey Rooney, also a student. They first shared the bill at a Lawlor recital in 1933.

The Gumm Sisters renamed themselves The Garland Sisters in 1934 at the suggestion of entertainer George Jessel, headliner at Chicago's Oriental Theatre when the girls played there that year. Frances soon began to be called "Judy," a name she chose after hearing it in a song, and was signed in 1935 to a contract with MGM. She made her network radio debut shortly thereafter.

It took some time to find an appropriate property for the precociously talented girl who sang with the voice of a woman, but within four years MGM had made Garland a star. When the box office records for 1939 were posted, two Garland movies, The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Arms, were on the list of top 10 pictures. In 1940, Garland won a special Academy Award "for her outstanding performance as a screen juvenile during the past year" and one of the songs she sang in the Wizard of Oz, "Over the Rainbow," won the Oscar for "best song."

The movie, For Me and My Gal (1942), in which Garland co-starred with Gene Kelly, set box office records and received rave reviews. Garland had an even bigger hit with Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), in which she sang "The Trolley Song" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." She played her first dramatic role in The Clock, released the following year.

Garland vividly conveyed a range of emotions when performing, and was felt by many who saw her in concert to erase the line between popular and high art. She won a special Tony Award for her storied run at New York's Palace Theater beginning in 1951, and frequently moved audiences to tears.

Garland received an Academy Award nomination as "best actress" for her role in A Star Is Born, the 1954 film in which she sang another of her signature songs, "The Man That Got Away." She received another Academy Award nomination for her supporting role in the drama Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), in which she played a German matron.

In April of 1961, Garland gave a concert in New York City at Carnegie Hall that immediately became a show business legend. The recording of that celebrated performance topped sales lists for 13 weeks. "Judy at Carnegie Hall" won five Grammy Awards in 1962, including those for "album of the year" and for "best female vocal performance."

A television special, "The Judy Garland Show," featuring Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, was broadcast in 1962 and garnered several Emmy nominations. The following year, Garland began work on her own series for the CBS television network.

In addition to her many professional achievements, Garland was also the mother of three accomplished children: Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft, and Joe Luft.

After her death on June 22, 1969, Judy Garland was lauded around the world for enriching the lives of her legion of fans. Many celebrated contemporary entertainers, Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, and Bette Midler among them, have hailed Garland as an inspiration and influence.

CLICK HERE to see the USPS's page listing all of the commemorative stamps scheduled for 2006.