20th Fox Lets It Snow
Sun Valley Serenade (1941) Is A Swing Vacation
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| Fox Crew and Cameras On Location at Sun Valley |
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| The Nicholas Brothers with Dorothy Dandridge |
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| Back in Hollywood and Shooting a Sun Valley-Set Dance Number |
posted by John McElwee at 7:11 PM
21 Comments:
Thanks a lot for clearing that up, Supersoul. I had been curious about the train service since watching the film last week.
The Glenn Miller Estate apparently has four licensed, authorized "ghost bands" to this day, one in the U.S., and the other three based in the U.K., Germany, and Sweden.
Back in the 50s and maybe into the 60s, Disneyland would regularly feature big bands in the park. According to the book "Mouse Tales", several headliners, including Cab Calloway and Bob Crosby, brought their own costumes and music, but a Disney staffer would book freelance musicians to form a band for that gig. The trick was rotating musicians so they wouldn't be readily recognized week to week.
I'm assuming this wasn't unusual. No bandleader could support a permanent lineup without a packed calendar, with either long tours or a weekly broadcast gig like Lawrence Welk's.
I'm right with you in your high opinion of "Sun Valley Serenade". As a matter of fact, I'd say most of the Henie vehicles at Fox stand up pretty well. She may not have been quite as imposingly beautiful or as skilled a romantic comedienne as sister athlete Esther Williams. But I really did find her cute and sympathetic. It always surprised me that such an accomplished sports figure (three time Olympic champion by the time she launched her film career at age 24) could morph into such an endearing and hugely successful movie star. Of course, the cozy, suger-frosted vehicles Fox mounted for her - full of ski chalets, ice ballets and moonlight sleigh rides - suited her to a tee. Seventy-five years later that atmosphere looks more inviting than ever. “Happy Landing”( 1938) is pretty diverting. And “Second Fiddle”(’39) has fun spoofing Hollywood’s search for Scarlett O’Hara. Instead of “Gone with the Wind”, the tome in question is “Girl of the North” and skating schoolmarm Sonja turns out to be the chosen one. That movie also has Tyrone Power in top form plus an original score by Irving Berlin (no big hits – but every song’s a gem). The wartime vehicles “Iceland” and “Wintertime” both deliver the sparkle of crunchy snow and wonderful big band music. And as a bonus “Wintertime” features Cesar Romero’s funniest performance. But certainly “Sun Valley Serenade” is the pinnacle. The absolute best combination of all the ingredients that made the Henie musicals hits. Compared to today’s skaters, Sonja’s on-ice maneuvers are rudimentary, I guess. But her best films survive as more than just time capsules. She – and they - still give off a glow.
I'd wondered why Joan Davis has so little to do in this picture, and your ad clinches it: "I'm Lena, the Ballerina" has to be a Joan Davis specialty that didn't make the final cut. I always enjoy this picture but I always gnash my teeth because on different occasions the Miller orchestra starts playing the introduction to the beautiful "At Last"... and then doesn't play the song! The vocals had been recorded by John Payne and Pat Friday (the latter dubbing for Lynn Bari) and the song was removed from the film, but the recording came out as a commercial Glenn Miller record, with Payne and Friday unbilled.
I went to a revival house about 30 years ago that booked SUN VALLEY SERENADE for a single midweek show. This house was changing bills twice a week so the one-day spot playdate was surprising. The place was packed, and I still remember one breathless fan who arrived very late (maybe an hour-and-a-quarter in) and addressed the crowd: "Has she done the black ice yet?"
I can see how a 70's revival would have been well attended by people with fond memory of seeing "Sun Valley Serenade" in 1941. Some of those safety prints from the 1954 reissue were probably still in circulation for years after. Wonder how this one would play to a modern audience ...
Sometimes I do not envy you, Mr. Greenbriar. Last week, George Murphy and Ronald Reagan. This week, Sonja Henie. At least, in between you got to see "Bandolero!"
According to this site:
http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/4068
... the Sun Valley Opera House plays "Sun Valley Serenade" every weekend and it's played on a dedicated channel in the hotel.
Yes, Stinky, it was an interesting week with those three. But at least they represent a variety ...
CollCatDaddy, I'm very pleased to hear that Sun Valley has not forgotten its 1941 "Serenade." I'd assume the Opera House plays it digital, and hopefully HD, as did FXM. This is a title that Kino should license for release on Blu-Ray, along with their other Fox pick-ups.
Yes, during the winter in New York you can always find plenty of iceskaters in the rinks outside 30 Rock and inside Central Park. It's delightfully old school compared the frenetic skateboards in the streets.
There is a soundtrack CD available, Glenn Miller In True Stereo. When recording the tracks for Sun Valley Serenade it was found that by placing multiple microphones around the orchestra and recording on separate tracks, a better sound mix could be achieved before mixing it down to mono for movie theaters. When the folks who put together the CD discovered this, they remixed them to give a true stereo sound. Only four of the tracks are in stereo, but it's pretty cool listen.
Sounds like what Rhino was able to do with a lot of those old MGM musical soundtracks for CD release.
Warners also did this for some home video releases. It's jarring to see a 40s or 50s musical you know was originally released in mono suddenly burst into beautiful stereo during the musical numbers.
The 1943 "Girl Crazy," with its "I Got Rhythm" finish, is a good example of mono-to-stereo outburst on a DVD, although in this instance, the dual-track may be limited to a disc extra.
Sun Valley was a great location for movies and TV.
The I LOVE LUCY folks did a one-hour special there in 1958 with guest star Fernando Lamas, even though Fred Mertz called him Ferdinand.
Craig Reardon recalls "It Happened In Sun Valley" from the once-was-great AMC network:
And that's a reduction of the actual lyrics! I guess "not to very long ago" is pretty relative, isn't it? Yet, to me, born in 1953, they're awfully accurate!
I still remember a very nice Christmas when AMC network, then still prominently featuring their old movies format (in fact, I think the acronym stood for 'American Movie Channel', way before endless zombies changed their model), programmed a day full of Christmas movies, naturally featuring Fox's most-popular "Miracle on 34th Street", but also smartly including this one. BTW, one of the cohosts of AMC's movie program was Nick Clooney, brother of Rosemary, and father of George. I'd never seen "It Happened in Sun Valley" prior to that airing. However, I was familiar with its title tune, due to the fact that the late, great Mel Torme had recorded a perfect Christmas-themed album in the early '90s. And Torme addressed the fact it was his first-ever, saying that fans often said to him, "What was that Christmas album you once recorded...?", presuming that the co-writer of the Christmas standard "The Christmas Song" had to have made one, yet to which he'd always replied, "Nope, never done one!" But, now, he said, there is, at the time of the album's release on Telarc in 1992. And it remains a winner. Mel, with his huge appreciation of all kinds of music, was clever enough to include "It Happened in Sun Valley", which he delivered in a definitive performance with the Cleveland Pops Orchestra (as I recall, without having to go downstairs and find the CD and double check.) It was therefore a pleasure to encounter the film it came from, those several years later, on AMC. John Payne is quite good in it, in spite of the fact that music and musical numbers are its chef raison d'être . I grew up seeing its star, John Payne, on TV in a program I later learned he also produced: "The Restless Gun". Anyone my age (over 60, and then some) will recall that Westerns absolutely clotted the airwaves in the first burgeoning decade of television, the mid-'50s forward. And I believe Payne was smart with his money and retired a very rich man. But he'd apparently begun as a versatile song and dance man as well as straight actor.
Part Two from Craig Reardon:
Sonia Henie apparently (according to double-dyed fans of Tyrone Power) had an affair with Fox's top male star, and I do mean Ty Power. One website about Power has lip-smacking details about their supposed assignations in those boxes on wheels that were the private dressing rooms then, the status symbol for stars of that day, way before the ubiquitous luxury mobile homes [chiefly Winnebagos] that have dominated in the years I worked in the 'biz'. The funniest apocryphal story I ever read about affairs conducted in the old-style dressing rooms, though certainly not funny for the spouse[s], had to do with Leslie Howard being walked in on by his wife while 'otherwise engaged', and turning and scolding her with the immortal reproof, "Get out! We're rehearsing!"
Yes, I digress, and how! And, not very Christmas-themed, unless maybe it's that other old Christmas standard, "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus"! But I couldn't help it. And what's Hollywood without its trove of tales of extramarital affairs?
It's interesting for me to know that the great future film and TV composer Henry Mancini got early professional experience and exercise composing the 'charts' (which is mid-20th century pop music lingo for scores or arrangements) for the Glenn Miller Orchestra during its Tex Beneke permutation. From there he was hired on by the Universal-International music department in the late '40s, and labored there anonymously until he 'broke out' via early projects produced there by Blake Edwards, and a permanent partnership was forged thereby. I don't think I'm mistaken in saying that Edwards had first seen an early solo credit of Mancini's for U-I, the now-celebrated super 'B', "Touch of Evil", and was so impressed he sought him out.
I saw the Glenn Miller Orchestra under Tex Beneke circa 1983 (I remember the girl I went with so I'm sure of the date). Seems pretty amazing now that something dating back to those days was still roaming the country then, though plenty of rock and roll bands of the same age now are still performing.
For the record, AMC stands for "American Movie Classics." How many know it was "Montage" before that? :)
Oh yeah, I recall seeing Helen O'Connell in Disneyland in 1970.
I do remember the old, commercial-free AMC, when it lived up to its name of American Movie Classics, and had Nick Clooney and Bob Dorian as hosts. That's where I saw "Sun Valley Serenade" in its restored splendor in the mid '90s, the highlight for me being the "Chattanooga Choo Choo" number.
AMC's first original series was "Remember WENN," created by Rupert Holmes (of "Escape: the Pina Colada Song" infamy), about a fictional Pittsburgh radio station in the '40s. It was hampered by a low budget, and a lack of understanding how radio shows were produced in that era. ("Mad Men" wouldn't come until long after AMC started airing commercials, enabling them to afford to do a period show right.)
The first John Payne musical I saw was "Garden of the Moon," a Warner Bros. film that aired on TNT in its early years. (Studio publicity claimed that he was related to John Howard Payne, composer of "Home, Sweet Home.") Jerry Colonna stole the show, singing "The Lady on the Three Cent Stamp."
Payne's TV series "The Restless Gun" was based on Jimmy Stewart's radio show "The Six Shooter."
Joan Davis indeed recorded and filmed "I'm Lena, The Ballerina" for this picture. It was shown in early previews of the film and for some reason was cut from the final release prints. Some folks have suggested this comedy number was removed due to objections from Hollywood censorship office at the time. I have never heard of a soul who has ever heard this song. It wasn't on a mass soundtrack score disc set (released earlier this year or last year) of "Sun Valley Serenade"/"Orchestra Wives".
Another song, "The World Is Waiting To Waltz Again," was recorded and filmed by Glenn Miller (with augmented strings) and sung by ho-hum John Payne. This recording is available in the wild if you look for it, and it's rather short. It was intended as part of the ice ballet finale but was cut, along with another "unknown" melodic instrumental insert written by Harry Warren.
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