My Love Came Back

Olivia de Havilland is smart and funny as Amelia Cornell, star pupil and violinist at a prestigious music academy.

Wealthy patron Charles Winninger means well when he instructs his company's vice president (Jeffrey Lynn) to start sending de Havilland $100 scholarship checks to help her make ends meet; unfortunately his patronage looks fishy and starts a round of misunderstandings and modest deceptions that keep the plot moving but are really not too worrisome.

Along the way, de Havilland and Lynn meet and fall for each other, not surprisingly. Jeffrey Lynn never made it too big in Hollywood but he did have several featured roles right around this period, and he's actually quite good—handsome, energetic, snappy.

De Havilland's roommate Jane Wyman (also a violinist) and her boyfriend Eddie Albert (piano) are hilarious as fellow musicians hoping to form a swing band—really, the scenes featuring Wyman and Albert are the movie's funniest.

S.Z. Sakall is fun as always as the academy's orchestra conductor; Spring Byington has a fine bit as Winninger's smart wife; and William Orr and Ann Gillis are both good as suspicious siblings.

I guess it's all pretty silly….Olivia de Havilland certainly had more challenging starring roles. Still, as a light comedy the picture is completely enjoyable. Also: de Havilland delivers a great last line!

This movie is basic definition of a programmer, a movie devoid of any ideas of its own except those that have been gleamed from other movies, and characters that are composites of characters that we have seen in other movies, stock characters so they are called. That said, the movie is delightful and it was a hit in its year of release, not a big hit for a hit none the less. Olivia de Havilland, a few years before becoming Oscar winning actress headlines this stepper. Obviously, it was to escape movies like this that Olivia sued WB and won but there is a fun to this cut-out characters. The story is that of a girl whom is a violin prodigy and has a school scholarship but is working on the side to make money to send back home to the suffering family. To make things easier, a benefactor gives money to her disguised as a scholarship. This causes people to think she is his "unknown woman". Complications arise and all is well that ends well. Note, there is a bit of whimsy flight of fancy on the part of director Curtis Bernhandt who turns Olivia and co-star Jeffrey into peris dancing on a large scale of written compositions for great classical music as they dance to the music.

Two future Oscar winning actresses grace the cast of My Love Come Back, a pleasant lightweight comedy from Warner Brothers. It is ironic that both Olivia DeHavilland and Jane Wyman would have to leave Warner Brothers in order to get serious roles on a continuing basis. Olivia was in continual battle with Jack Warner for those parts and at this point no one was taking Jane seriously enough, her being always cast as the heroine's best friend. That this was a film originally meant for Priscilla Lane and when she proved unavailable, Jack Warner ordered DeHavilland into the film.

The film concerns a phenomenon of the time, swing bands playing swing versions of the classics. DeHavilland is a violin prodigy at a prestigious music school and is ready to be tossed out on her classic when millionaire and music buff Charles Winninger takes an interest in her case. He provides some laundered scholarship money, but when it's discovered he's doing so everyone misinterprets Winninger's motives. Not the least of which are Winninger's children Ann Gillis and William T. Orr and Jeffrey Lynn his Vice President at his music publishing business. Only wife Spring Byington keeps a cool head about her and talk about unusual casting.

Wyman and Eddie Albert are fellow music students who want to start a swing band using the classics. Right around this time Larry Clinton and Freddy Martin were doing just that and populating the Hit Parade with just such material. And of course Tommy Dorsey did an unforgettable swing version of Song Of India. The film in that sense was most topical.

Add Grant Mitchell as the director of the school and S.Z. Sakall as, what else, the old music master from the old country and you've got a really outstanding cast that lifts the material in My Love Come Back quite a bit beyond what it is. It's a good comedy, but not where a couple of actresses named DeHavilland and Wyman wanted to be at this point in their careers.

"My Love Came Back" is another film that must have stretched the minds and imagination of the Warner Brothers team for a title. Youth, age, music, family, romance, and comedy are what this film is about. Considering the year, it seems a good and much more descriptive title might have been, "Music for all Ages."

This isn't a musical in the sense of revues or plays set to music. Rather, it resembles musical biography when the subject or main character is a musician - singer, song writer, composer, instrumentalist. The star here is Amelia Cornell, a gifted and outstanding violinist in the Brissac Academy of Music. Olivia de Havilland plays the role superbly in a fictional story that mixes some fine classical and swing music into something of a wacky story. It's a good one, but it involves a few subplots and genres that are centered around the musical world.

Thus, it mixes in business, family, friendship, livelihoods, and study with jealousies, suspicion, misconceptions, innuendo, romance and comedy. The humor is in the situations, and it holds this whole plot together, which otherwise would not be very good as drama. What brings this all to life and makes it such an enjoyable film is a cast of superb supporting actors and emerging stars of the day. The second female lead is Jo O'Keefe, played by Jane Wyman. She and de Havilland would go on to win Academy Awards, and they would be in one more comedy together - "Princess O'Rourke" in 1943.

The male lead isn't so well defined, although Jeffrey Lynn has first billing as Tony Baldwin. His role is okay, but Lynn never seemed to put much life or oomph into his roles. But Charles Winninger as Julius Malette and Eddie Albert as Dusty Rhodes add to the zest that Amelia and Joy provide. S.Z. Sakall is very good as Gez Payer, the academy music conductor. Spring Byington is good as Mrs. Malette in a somewhat subdued role from her normal persona. Grant Mitchell is the best known of the rest of the cast, as Dr. Kobbe. William Orr and Ann Gillis play Malette grown children, Paul and Valerie.

This is a humorous, warm and entertaining film that fans of any of its cast, especially, should enjoy.

The best part of this film was the musical interlude where a serious band plays swing. Other than that sequence, you can forget this film.

It's 1940 and everyone is so young here. Fresh from her Oscar nomination as Melanie Hamilton in "Gone With the Wind," Olivia de Havilland plays a promising violin student who needs to make money for her indigent family. She will be forced to leave where she is studying since she is on a scholarship and the latter forbids her from giving violin lessons.

Enter the lovable Charlie Winninger as a music impresario who secretly gives additional scholarship money to her so that she can remain. When the money is funneled by way of Jeffrey Lynn, sparks fly. When the adult children of Winninger find out, they think that their father is having an affair with deHavilland. Then, they turn their attention to Lynn.

A very youthful Eddie Albert and Jane Wyman have supporting parts as players in the band who really want to swing with the swing music.

Lynn is rather droll as de Havilland's love interest. The chemistry between them never really ignites.

With the writing going somewhat awry, you'd think that the able Winninger and others could pull it through. Sweet, ever pleasant Spring Byington plays his wife but she really plays her role as having to do it under contract.