Rex Reed
Great Songs from the Movies
Music Instrument Museum (MIM) Theater, Phoenix, AZ, September 18, 2025
Reviewed by Lynn Timmons Edwards
Rex Reed arrived in New York City in the 1960s to begin a colorful, outspoken, and celebratory life as a writer and film critic. He became acquainted with the Hollywood elite and the stars of films made from 1939 through the 1950s, which he considers the best era for movie music. Now well into his 80s, he has mounted a cabaret that reflects on the songs from those films that have recently graced the stage of the MIM. He brought top talent to join him: music director and genius pianist Tedd Firth and singers Nicolas King, Maude Hixon, and Ann Hampton Callaway. (Each of these can carry a cabaret on their own.) They sat patiently in chairs on stage right while waiting for Reed to introduce their songs, which did not come often enough.
Reed has been known for his scathing rhetoric, including his pan of Frank Sinatra’s 1974 Concert The Main Event at Madison Square Garden, in which he called the music icon “sloppy” and a “Woolworth rhinestone.” He has taken credit for Sinatra shredding 25 pounds after reading that review. So, in the spirit of being direct, Great Songs from the Movies has room for improvement. We can forgive Reed for his age, for forgetting a name or two (including Judy Garland’s), and for sitting at a podium holding his script. But Reed sat sideways on his chair facing Firth rather than the audience with his mic off to the left. His stories were long and at times rambling, and the outstanding and rare film clips that he shared were shown only twice, at the end of Act I and the start of Act II. The show was too long, coming in at 2 hours and 45 minutes with intermission.
About a third of the mostly senior audience did not return for Act II, and they missed what Reed said was Bette Davis’s only performance of a song on film: “They’re Either Too Young or Too Old” (Frank Loesser/Arthur Schwartz) from the 1943 film Thank Your Lucky Stars. The other gem that he shared was “Ice Cold Katie” (Loesser/Schwartz) from the same film sing by Academy Award-winning actress Hattie McDaniel (in a rare moment when Warner Brothers did not relegate her to playing a servant).
Reed could have crafted a great show around his (edited) stories, many of which were indeed quite funny, by simply using clips of the music and stars from his past. Instead, he hired a trio of cabaret stars who took turns moving center stage to sing. They were not integrated into the patter of the show, although Callaway garnered one of the biggest laughs of the night as she pantomimed scooping something off the floor. I do not know if it was scripted, but when Reed asked what she was doing she said, “you are dropping so many names, I am picking them up for you.”
King is small in stature but large in talent. He has a buttery smooth voice; Reed even likened him to Mel Tormé. He sang “Laura” (David Raskin/Johnny Mercer) and one of Torme’s signature songs “The Best Things in Life Are Free” (Lew Brown/Buddy DeSylvia) in a medley with the Rodgers and Hart classic “Blue Moon.” He was also given a song in which he paid homage to Fred Astaire, “Too Late Now” (Burton Lane/Alan Jay Lerner). I kept thinking “Too late and too many ballads.”
Minnesota-based Hixson is a devotee of classic cabaret. Her style is lyric-driven, and her vocal tone has a delicate beauty. She was also trapped in Reed’s ballad bondage giving us “Over the Rainbow” (Harold Arlen/Yip Harburg), “Secret Love” (Sammy Fain/Paul Francis Webster), and “Whistling Away the Dark” (Henry Mancini/Mercer). She glided through quick lyrics and high floating notes on “Lose That Long Face” (Harold Arlen/Ira Gershwin) from the 1954 film A Star is Born, but she was never given the chance to show much diversity or sass.
Callaway, who continually tours to present her own concerts, was her usual brilliant self, albeit in small quantities. Perhaps she took the gig for the chance to sing some of her arrangements with Firth who is the crème de la crème of cabaret accompaniment. Her first number, Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies,” started as another ballad but then picked up to a swing that infused the room with musical energy. She used her stock “my ex-husband is in the first row” joke to add extra spice to “Blues in the Night” (Harold Arlen/Mercer). Reed believes that great movie music started and ended with Judy Garland, from The Wizard of Oz to her 1954 rendition of Esther Hoffman’s rise-to-fame story in A Star Is Born. Reed had Callaway perform “The Man That Got Away” (Arlen/Ira Gershwin) from that score, and she gave us a master class on how to deliver a torch song.
Reed talked of “bad songs from good movies, good songs from bad movies, good songs from movies no one saw.” He chose to sing many of the songs himself, which had a certain charm but little musical integrity. He has little breath support these days. Callaway could have closed the show, but Reed told one more story about Ann-Margret and Lana Turner that did have a funny punchline. Audiences still want to hear what the famous film critic has to say, and a director could tighten the show into a cabaret that would be a highlight of any club’s season.
