Swanee River

My mother took me to see this movie in 1939, when I was 6 years old, at the Sanders theater across from Prospect Park in Brooklyn. I liked the music, and still do, but have this memory of Stephen Foster killing himself with a straight razor. I remember the water in the wash pan next to him filling with blood. Heavy stuff for a six year old. I asked my Mom why he would do that and she said she didn't know. Of course, later in life I found out why.

The music was great and the color very impressive for the time. Anyway, I always liked Don Ameche and remember seeing him sing and dance on Broadway in 1953 at the Winter Garden theater co-starring with Hildegarde Neff. I believe the show was Silk Stockings.

This is hardly an accurate biography of songwriter Stephen Foster, but it's an awfully good movie thanks to its beautiful score, breathtaking photography, and scenic design. Its pictorialization of antebellum America and the South in particular rival the same year's Gone With the Wind. Producer Darryl Zanuck was especially gifted at producing these Techniciolor extravaganzas, and this one's as good as it gets. Even if one can't stand the story,--and it's a sad one--the movie is worth seeing and hearing for the remarkable skill with which it was made. Don Ameche is a pleasing Foster, and Al Jolson is on hand as Christy (of the OLD Christy Minstrels fame), and sings the songs with a gleefully vaudevillean relish which at times seems a bit over the top for the historical period. On the other hand the movie seems quite accurate in other respects and feels, to me, more like nineteenth century America than 1939.

Proof that not every 1939 release was part of the Golden Age. It's the life and not-so-hard times of Stephen Foster (Don Ameche), who despite a heart condition and a taste for the drink manages to crank out hit after hit. This is the cliched sort of composer bio in which every key event turns out to be instant inspiration for a new ditty, and the moment an on-screen audience hears a new song it can immediately join in for a reprise and know all the words. Still, Al Jolson is sturdy as E.P. Christy, the Technicolor is ravishing, and there are several convincing recreations of minstrel show numbers...and that last fact is why you won't see this film around, no way.

It's just not P.C. to show all that blackface any more, let alone the condescending approach to black people. (When Foster has ripped off "Oh Susannah" from a slave work song but is stuck on the last line, Jeannie--she of the light brown hair fame--comments that she's grown up among black music, their simple culture..."Hmmm...Here's how I think the Negroes would end it." Bingo, smash hit.) "Swanee River" is no great shakes as a movie, but it's a shame that people can't see it because of cowardice.

This is a slow moving not exactly true bio of Stephen Foster. However, I had to comment on it because I always like Don Ameche who plays Foster, and his daughter was played by Diane Fisher, who is the sister of a good friend of mine. Ameche does a good job, but it's Al Jolson, and his "Mammy" songs that steal the show. It seems Emmet Kelly, the famous clown, was in it, so I guess that is something to look for.

The first time I saw this film was well over 50 years ago on WOR TV's Million Dollar Movie. It was almost a requirement in my house as my father was a big fan of Al Jolson and my mother happened to love the melodies of Stephen Foster.

Two years after Swanee River was out, Foster and other songwriters of his era had a revival of sorts as the American Society of Composers and Publishers got into a wing ding battle with the radio and record industry and banned its music from broadcast and vinyl. What was done was that a lot of music that was in the public domain got revived in all kinds of strange ways. Swing versions of various classic and folk melodies invaded the airwaves. Country type music got it's own licensing agent in Broadcast Music Incorporated set up as a rival to ASCAP. It all got settled before Pearl Harbor and the country moved on to more important disputes. But Swanee River as a film gave Foster kind of a leg up on some of his other public domain contemporaries.

Don Ameche, fresh from another biographical triumph in Alexander Graham Bell, makes a charming, talented, but weak of character Stephen Foster. The man who created some of the most beautiful melodies ever composed, was no businessman as other reviewers pointed out. He also suffered from alcoholism which led to his early demise. Andrea Leeds is his patient and loving wife for whom I Dream of Jeannie was composed.

As was also pointed out by another reviewer, there was no such thing as ASCAP to protect the creators of melody from exploitation. What Al Jolson's E.P. Christy did to Stephen Foster insofar as his first song hit, Oh Susanna is concerned was not only true, but quite the norm. What Christy did was also decide maybe he ought to cut Foster in on the profits to keep the creative spigot flowing.

Jolson as Christy was the premier minstrel artist of his day when that form of entertainment was acceptable and popular. Of course Jolson got his start in minstrel shows and damage to his reputation has come because he never would discard the black-face. This is the only time on film that Jolson plays a real life character and he sings the Foster songs with feeling and the inimitable Jolson style.

By dint of the fact that his songs were minstrel show material and some and only some glorified the old South, Foster himself has come down as damaged goods in these politically correct days. That's a pity because items like Beautiful Dreamer, Old Dog Trey, My Old Kentucky Home are the stuff of genius.

It's not the complete truth, but Swanee River still holds up as a nice account of America's premier melody maker of his century.