Starring Clifton Webb, Ruth Hussey, Debra Paget, and Robert Wagner
Directed by Henry Koster
Music by John Phillips Sousa and others; Lyrics by various
We continue All-American Weekdays with a second biography set a few years before George M! John Phillips Sousa became one of the first great American composers in the 1880's and 1890's with his beloved marches. Many of them continue to be associated with American holidays and Americana to this day, including the rousing title song. How does the film about his life look today? Let's begin with Sousa (Webb) the day he meets handsome Private Willie Little (Wagner) when they're both in the Marines and find out...
The Story: Sousa announces that he's leaving the Marines band. He simply doesn't have the money to keep leading it. He's allowed to bring along Little, who has been causing trouble and fighting with his fellow officers. Sousa is touched when Willie creates a musical instrument and calls it the Sousaphone after him. He takes Sousa to a concert...which turns out to be a dance hall where his girlfriend Lily (Paget) performs. They're barely able to save the young lady from ending up in jail when the show is raided for decency.
Sousa eventually creates his own band, featuring the finest musicians from around the world, but he doesn't allow married men to join. This becomes a problem for Willie when he and Lily get married. He finally convinces Sousa to hire her as the band's singer so she can join them on their many concert tours. They even play at the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exhibition and managed to draw three times as many listeners as previous bands.
Willie and Sousa rejoin the Marines after the US enters the Spanish-American War. Sousa wants to start another band, but he ends up going home after a bout with typhoid. The long trip does give him the time and impetus to write his most famous composition, "Stars and Stripes Forever."
The Song and Dance: I was expecting a biography of a great composer of marches to be loud and bombastic, but this is surprisingly low-key and charming. Webb did appear in musicals on Broadway, but this was one of his rare chances to do one on the big screen. He's not only looks something like the real Sousa, he's as passionate and stubborn as the real one was said to be. Warm and intelligent Hussy more than matches him as his beloved wife Jennie. Gorgeous costumes and sets and some nice cinematography beautifully recreate Sousa's world of expositions, outdoor band concerts, and lavish European-style operettas.
Favorite Number: Our first actual number is "My Love Is a Weeping Willow," which Webb performs right before leaving the Marines. "Oh, Why Should the Spirt of Mortal Be Proud?" with lyrics from an 1824 poem, is the patriotic tableau performed by Paget and the chorus girls in skimpy white costumes...right before one rips her tights and gets them all arrested. Paget shows off that dance hall training at the Sousa home, to the shock of the Sousas, as she cavorts around the living room to "Father's Got 'Em!"
My favorite number is ironically one not written by Sousa. The all-black Stone Mountain Choir performs a stirring rendition of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" at the Atlanta Cotton States Exposition. Paget and the chorus provide a more traditional musical routine, the original song "When It's Springtime in New York," as a lead-in to the real-life 1890's hit "The Bowery" describing colorful New York nightlife in the late 19th century. "I'm Afraid" is supposed to be from Sousa's operetta El Captain, but despite being energetically danced by Paget and the chorus at the rehearsal for that show, is another original song. The movie ends with the famous title march performed by the current Marines Band...lead by the ghost of Sousa, seen wherever his most famous composition is played.
What I Don't Like: Like most musical biographies, this one plays fast and loose with the subject matter. For starters, Sousa invented the Sousaphone, not a young Marine officer. Willie and Lily are purely fictional, and frankly, their side plot with them hiding their marriage is silly, boring, and cliched. I really would like to have seen more focus on Sousa and how he developed some of his most famous marches and less on Willie and Lily and their romance. Sousa created "Stars and Stripes Forever" after war canceled his European vacation, not on his way there. And "Stars and Stripes" debuted in 1887 and was not performed at a veteran's concert.
The Big Finale: Worth checking out if you love Sousa, Webb, or the big, bright, colorful musicals of the 1950's.
Home Media: Was released in a combination DVD/Blu-Ray set in 2011 that is currently out-of-print. You may be better off looking for this one used.
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