I Dream of Jeanie

No, this ain't "The Stephen Foster Story." That's in Bardstown, Ky, a place that Stephen Foster never saw in his short and tragic life. Foster's real life was tragic and depressing and might make an interesting "All That Jazz" style film. But this ain't it. This is a razzle dazzle musical comedy with the music of Foster as an added plus.

This is the kind of musical film that used to be common but are now long gone. It's an attempt by Republic Picures producer Herbert J. Yates to cash in on the success of MGM's 1951 hit "Showboat" but with the lowest budget possible. In view of that the film manages to look much more lush than it really is. Of course the use of the Foster song catalog didn't cost Repbulic anything. Surprisingly the color quality of the print the DVD I viewed was mastered from held up surprisingly well considering the obvious neglect it was subject to.

The production has the feel of the composer bio pics MGM used to churn out during this era. You could easily recast the film in your imagination with Metro contract players from that time.

Director Alan Dwan obviously had the expertise to make a cheap programmer like this look better than its budget should have allowed. The pic is almost set bound with few exteriors and limited interiors. But Dwan keeps the pace moving at a brisk clip with the musical numbers occurring so rapidly you have little time to think about the silliness of the plot.The songs have been given arrangements more suited to the 1950s and are not the reverential treatments that might be expected. They are instead bright Hollywood musical comedy numbers. These numbers were staged by associates trained by Nick Castle (I guess Republic couldn't afford Mr. Castle himself) and are brisk and lively. There has obviously been an attempt to integrate some of the songs into the action but if some of the cues and other proceedings seem laughable, well go ahead and laugh. It's all in fun, so enjoy it for what it is.

The cast perform competently and seem to be enjoying themselves which helps to make the film more enjoyable to the viewer. Of course Ray Middleton, the original Broadway Frank Butler opposite Ethel Merman in "Annie Get Your Gun" almost steals the proceedings with his bombastic performance.

The film was of course made in a more politically incorrect era. But it is not much more incorrect than ...say.."Holiday Inn'.

The film is a perversely delightful relic of a by gone era and well worth the dollar the DVD sells for in many areas.

Probably because the songs of Stephen C. Foster were in the public domain and therefore cost penny pinching Herbert J. Yates not a dime, Yates decided to do a minstrel show musical comedy with the life of Stephen C. Foster to hang the story on.

The songs of Stephen Foster retain their beauty to this day, sad though that they do reflect the times they were written in. Since the famous minstrel star and entrepreneur E.P. Christy was the one who popularized Foster's work, to not have a minstrel show in the story would be historically way inaccurate.

But this film isn't anything close to the story of Foster's life. For all the inaccuracies of that film, 20th Century Fox's Swanee River which starred Don Ameche as Foster and Al Jolson as E.P. Christy is far more accurate.

The thin plot seems to be borrowed a bit from Bing Crosby's Mississippi where Bing is courting Gail Patrick, but it's really Joan Bennett who's crushing out on him. Here William Shirley as Foster is courting Muriel Lawrence, but it's really Eileen Christy as, guess who, Jeanie who's giving him the come hither glance.

One thing I will say, the Foster songs are given magnificent vocal treatment. The women both sing well and Shirley most famous for his behind the camera vocalizing in Sleeping Beauty and My Fair Lady has a terrific tenor voice. Ray Middleton however, most famous as the original Frank Butler in Annie Get Your Gun, gives the best performance in the film as the egotistical E.P. Christy.

The rest of the cast, acting wise, is pretty weak. The plot is razor thin and in 1952 there was no excuse for calling a young black kid, Chitlin. Rex Allen, Republic's last cowboy B picture star makes a guest appearance here in blackface as a minstrel and that sure didn't help his career in any way.

I'd stick with the Ameche-Jolson version of the Stephen Collins Foster story.

The great American songwriter Stephen Foster (born 1826, died 1864 during the Civil War) wrote many enduring American songs, and you can hear 16 of them here, rather beautifully sung, including "Oh! Susanna," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Old Folks at Home," "Beautiful Dreamer," "Camptown Races," "Old Black Joe," and "I Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair." In the context of his times, Foster did much to dignify African-Americans and draw attention to the indignities to which they were subjected, yet the film offers a minstrel show, complete with blackface and racist jokes, and even though it portrays a period in American history when such things were accepted with glee, it makes you blink in astonishment that the film was made in 1952. Even though there are a couple attempts to show the kind of misery Foster observed and apparently deplored, the movie can only be seen as a whitewashed history lesson in American racism. There are also a couple of attempts to show the miserable side of Foster's life, but the end result is a typical Hollywood romanticized musical that doesn't come close to others of the 1950s and '60s (such as "Show Boat"). The leads in the film-Bill Shirley as Foster, Ray Middleton as the minstrel show star, and Muriel Lawrence and Eileen Christy (playing the Jeanie of the title) as two singing sisters-are all talented but made few other films of distinction. Favorite line, uttered by Foster to the family of a sick Negro child: "I learned everything I know about music from you people."

Stephen Foster lived a pretty interesting, and tragic, life, but this production, ambitious by Republic standards, reduces that life to sitcom level. Played by a game, sweet-voiced Bill Shirley, he's so besotted with nasty Muriel Lawrence that he utterly ignores how much nicer her sister, Eileen Christy, is, and how besotted she is with him. That's the main drama, and along the way we get a fair amount of minstrelsy, including a big minstrel show led by Ray Middleton, as E. P. Christy. Middleton's terrific, taller than anybody else and a great, rich-voiced ham, though you may have to look away when he dons blackface. According to this movie, Foster lived happily ever after once he decided which sister he loved; actually he lived to 38, and his final years were heartbreaking. The music's nicely presented, anyway, and Allen Dwan, whose directing career goes from about 1910 into the '60s, keeps it moving. Note: The copy viewable on Amazon Prime is in black and white, which is a shame, because the color version is a good look at fading '50s Trucolor.

It's a biopic of Stephen Foster, which means that its relationship to reality is a bit rocky. Nonetheless, it does its best to be entertaining, with basso Ray Middleton as Edwin P. Christy becoming the strongest advocate for Bill Shirley's songs, after Shirley's brother, Dick Simmons, strong-arming publishers and performers into actually paying for them.

As the movie starts out, Shirley -- as Foster -- is living in Lynn Bari's barn and yearning for snobbish Muriel Lawrence, while ignoring Miss Lawrence's adoring kid sister, Eileen Christy. Foster is portrayed as an idiot savant, hearing music in all sorts of unlikely things, but having no idea of how anything operates in the world. This allows him to suffer, as all real artists must, I suppose, and occasionally sing a song himself. Otherwise, it's Middleton in big production numbers in front of his blackfaced Minstrels. They offer some good slapstick, and Glenn Turnbull performs a fine eccentric tap dance.

Modern audiences will have issues with the blackface, of course, and may not care for the sentimental tone of Foster's songs. They were enormously influential, and still popular when I was a child being forced to take lessons on the piano. They were an early example of nostalgic culture, for the old, lost rural America which appealed strongly to the city dwellers in the in the industrializing north.... and their sentimental view of slave culture made them popular down south. Director Alan Dwan made sure that the costume design by Adele Palmer was historically accurate, even if story story was not.