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Wednesday, July 31, 2019

SWEET ADELINE (1934)

Unfortunate. Two years after ‘torch singer’ Helen Morgan went legit on B’way, breaking out as ‘Julie,’ her featured role in the 1927 musical SHOW BOAT, Oscar Hammerstein & Jerome Kern gave her the lead in a sweetly sentimental turn-of-the-last-century pageant that took her, and three suitors, from German Beer Garden singer to stardom. It’s now forgotten, partly due to this unhappy film adaptation that loses two-thirds of the score while adding risible melodrama, presumably by movie scripter Erwin Gelsey, involving stage sabotage & international espionage by a jealous singer. Yikes! Fortunately, the first half of the film hews closer to the stage show and we get to hear Irene Dunne (Kern’s favorite interpreter) sing the three American Songbook Standards Kern & Hammerstein wrote for the original production: Why Was I Born?; Don’t Ever Leave Me; Here Am I. Sharp eared listeners will also note a brief background music cue to the heavenly ensemble number Some Girl Is On My Mind.* Director Mervyn LeRoy is out of his element on this one, but does let Dance Director Bobby Connolly, fresh from the ZIEGFELD FOLLIES Revival on B’way, make like Busby Berkeley in a big ‘numbo’ near the end. Note that Dunne sings Why Was I Born live, not to a synch track; and that even given woeful material, deadpan comedian Ned Sparks manages to get his laughs.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: In 1936, Morgan joined members of the original or touring companies of SHOW BOAT for a near definitive film adaptation with Dunne playing Magnolia as she had on tour.

LINK: *Conductor John McGlinn chose four numbers from ADELINE for SHOWSTOPPERS, his fine album of B’way rediscoveries. Here’s the original arrangement of ‘Some Girl Is On Your Mind’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8S_1_MPRo4
And here’s Helen Morgan’s 1929 recording of Why Was I Born: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99wYcVEPqW0

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