Up next: Carnegie Hall (1947)
This is another oddity, a filmed valentine to Carnegie Hall and the world of music (at least classical music) from director Edward G. Ulmer. I have to say I was surprised to see his name on this film as I mainly associate him with movies like The Black Cat and the noir classic Detour. But it turns out that Ulmer did a lot of different genre films that were all over the map: like The Man From Planet X (1951)!
Like "A Song is Born", the main attraction of this movie is all of the musical talent on display. The movie was made with legendary conductor Fritz Reiner and has many famous musicians. Musically this movie is more satisfying than "Song" as there is simply more music; the performances are allowed to go on longer. The plot involves an Irish immigrant mother who gets a job cleaning floors or something at the Hall and has a son. She is so moved by all of the music she is immersed in that she does everything she can to make sure her kid is a successful classical pianist. As luck would have it, once the son ventures out of the sheltered life of Carnegie Hall, he's immediately tempted to take a job playing for Vaughn Monroe's band which is completely unacceptable to his mother (she should have been more upset that he chose Monroe and not held out for Benny Goodman etc). The son and mother are brought back together when he performs at the hall as a famous jazz/classical composer/performer appearing with Harry James. Aww.
The non-musical elements of this film are better than "Song" but the story/characters are still pretty two dimensional and that's okay. It's just fun to see all of the great music being filmed well.
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