Summer Stock (1950)

Yup, another "summer" movie. I was unaware of the theatrical term to which the title alludes. There might be a double entendre, considering the agriculture herein.

Somewhere in New England, Jane (Judy Garland) has just had two farmhands quit on her due to poor outputs of late. Fortunately, her fiance, Orville Wingait (Eddie Bracken), has a rich father (Ray Collins) willing to buy her a tractor to make up the loss...and unwilling to let her forget it. Jane's work faces further disruption when her sister, Abigail (Gloria DeHaven), begs to let her troupe practice and perform in the barn, because they never get a good place. Jane agrees on the condition that all the actors/singers/dancers pull their weight in farmwork, which they don't do well. Stage director and star Joe (Gene Kelly) is Abigail's fiance, but he and Jane start emotionally straying toward each other. It doesn't help that the Wingaits disdain show business....

Easter Parade (1948)

What a ripoff: We never see the parade itself! ...OK, I didn't really come for that, and probably neither did others. In truth, the story doesn't have much to do with Easter festivities; it just happens to start on one Easter and end on the next, possibly because Irving Berlin didn't feel like stopping the theme with Holiday Inn.

Apart from Berlin, whose lyrics account for a large percentage of the dialog, the main draws are Fred Astaire and Judy Garland in her most attractive years. Fourth place might go to the employment of Technicolor to highlight the fashions, which were sadly anachronistic for the early 1910s. (Why did Garland keep playing characters from earlier generations, anyway?)