History of Musical Film
Screen 1940s: Part II
by John Kenrick
(Copyright 1996 & 2004)

• Universal: Deanna Durbin
• Columbia: Miller & Co.
• The Fox Blondes

(The images below are thumbnails – click on them to see larger versions. 

Universal: Deanna Durbin
Operatic ingénue Deanna Durbin remained an audience favorite, starring in more than a dozen Universal Studios musicals during the 1940s. But some of these vehicles clunked. Spring Parade (1940) featured Durbin as a young baker's assistant who sings her way to glory in Imperial Vienna – the results were colorful but idiotic. Can't Help Singing (1944) was Durbin's first adult role, with a score by Jerome Kern and E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, but the story of settlers in the Wild West seemed a strange choice for an operetta. Durbin's vehicles grew weaker as the decade progressed, culminating in a lavish but uninspired screen version of Up In Central Park (1947) that lost most of Romberg's charming stage score. Disenchanted with Hollywood, Durbin retired at age 27, refusing all invitations to return to performing – including a plea from Lerner and Loewe to create the role of Eliza in My Fair Lady.

Columbia: Miller & Co.
Hollywood's most cost-conscious studio concentrated on low budget comedies and action films. Columbia also filmed a series of inexpensive black & white wartime musicals featuring statuesque tap dancer Anne Miller, including the popular Reveille With Beverly (1943). Although the presence of jazz greats Duke Ellington and Count Basie helped draw audiences, the film was made on the cheap, with production numbers that look as if they were staged in a high school auditorium. Miller soon moved on to MGM, where her outstanding dance talents found classier showcases.

Columbia's most memorable wartime musical was Cover Girl (1944), the story of a Brooklyn nightclub dancer who becomes a top magazine model. Designed as a vehicle for screen beauty Rita Hayworth (who's singing was always dubbed), it marked Gene Kelly's transition to stardom. On loan from MGM, his "alter ego" dance with a reflection of himself in a glass window proved to be the first of many classic screen moments. The number was conceived and staged by Stanley Donen, who would play a major role in Kelly's career and the great MGM musicals of the next two decades. Cover Girl was such a hit that MGM would never again loan Kelly out for a musical role.

After the war, Columbia studio boss Harry Cohn (whose harsh managerial style won him the nickname "White Fang") decided to film Al Jolson's life story, taking the usual liberties with historic fact. For once, this parsimonious studio spared no expense, hiring Jolson to record the songs that actor Larry Parks lip-synched to on screen. The Jolson Story (1946) revived Jolson's popularity and led to that rarest of things, a successful sequel – Jolson Sings Again (1949).

The Fox Blondes
The original sheet music for "You'll Never Know," the Academy Award winning ballad introduced by Alice Faye in Hello Frisco, Hello (1943). One of the most popular ballads of its time, it captured the longing of those separated by the war. 

20th Century Fox lost a major asset when Shirley Temple reached her teen years and stopped making musicals. (She retired from the big screen altogether in 1949.) But the studio had a battery of adult female stars who continued to churn out lighthearted musicals, delighting servicemen and civilians alike. Most of these films relied on the same premise – an all-American girl (usually a blonde) tries to hold onto her man in the crazy world of show business. For example –

– Tin Pan Alley (1940) featured Alice Faye as a singer romancing insecure but handsome songwriter John Payne through their adventures in the crazy show biz worlds of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, London's West End and World War I -- as sidekicks Jack Oakie and Betty Grable cheer them on. The peerless Nicholas Brothers add to the fun with one of their patented knockout tap duets.

– Betty Grable (who had become Hollywood's top wartime pin-up girl) starred in Springtime in the Rockies (1942) as a singer trying to keep the love of John Payne (yet again) amid the crazy showbiz world of the big bands. Grable shows off her famous legs and eventually gets her man, but Brazilian comedienne Carmen Miranda steals the film. (Grable and Payne used the same formula in The Dolly Sisters (1945) -- set in the crazy showbiz world of vaudeville.)

– Hello Frisco, Hello (1943) starred Alice Faye as the girl who loves (who else?) John Payne, an egotistical producer in the crazy showbiz world of the Barbary Coast. The film is best remembered for Faye introducing "You’ll Never Know," this author's nominee for Hollywood's most irresistible love song. Disputes with idiotic Fox executives led Faye to retire from the screen in 1945 -- at the peak of her popularity. She never regretted the decision, but her millions of fans sure did.

Dick Haymes, Vivian Blaine and Jeanne Crain appear on the original sheet music cover for "It's a Grand Night for Singing," the hit waltz from State Fair.

– State Fair (1945) was the only Rodgers & Hammerstein musical written directly for the big screen. This gentle, reassuring bit of Americana involved the adventures of an Iowa farm family at the annual state fair. The score featured "It's a Grand Night for Singing" and "It Might As Well Be Spring." One of its subplots involved a farm boy (Dick Haymes) who tries to hold onto his girl (Vivian Blaine) in the crazy show-biz world of touring bands . . . R&H took the sacred Fox formula and reversed the genders!

As impressive as all the above efforts were, there was one studio that turned out a superior musical product throughout the decade.

Next: 1940s Film Part III - MGM