1h 49min | Musical | 26 January 1953 | Color
Director: Mitchell Leisen
Stars: David Wayne, Ezio Pinza, Roberta Peters, Anne Bancroft.
David Lichine ... choreographer
Sol Hurok ... technical advisor
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046441/
Watched online, blurry.
Somehow this takes the musical biopic a step too far. Because it's about an impresario instead of a composer, lyricist or performer, it lacks the cohesion you get from seeing similar works brought together in one place. And because the only commonality of Hurok's clients is they perform in the classical world, we get no cohesion there either.
DW is better used in other films I've seen. I don't know who should have played this instead, because I don't know anything about Hurok from this other than a very broad outline. From DW I get affable, distracted, lover of classical music. Neglected his wife for his clients/career. She encouraged him to bring his ambitions/dreams to reality.
3 songs listed in the Soundtracks, which is laughable. I just added the 15 additional pieces from the AFI catalog, but no links and no performers. I don't want to go through the film again to see what I can identify, which won't be a lot.
Shrug-worthy. Then again, maybe at a future date I'd welcome this hodgepodge. Maybe someone will flesh out the Soundtracks and make this a concert that can be followed with a program.
Fox, dir. Leisen; 6
