The Helen Morgan Story

Clearly inspired by other biopics like Love Me or Leave Me (1955) and I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955), this is another tale of a chanteuse whose career success is affected by booze and bad men. Helen Morgan was a star in the 1920's, a nightclub singer who crossed-over into theater for Flo Ziegfeld on Broadway in Showboat. However like so many others, a rapid ascent gave way to a slow decline.

The screenplay by Oscar Saul, Dean Reisner, Stephen Longstreet, and Nelson Gidding, rationalises that the sado-masochistic love of Helen (Ann Blyth) for Larry Maddox (Paul Newman) is what brings her success and failure. Her alcoholism is an ironic symptom of the era of prohibition. Helen is ambitious, but her love for Larry tells us that she would give it all up if he would agree to marry her. However as Larry isn't the marrying kind, she is miserable, not a good state for an entertainer to be in. The lower class milieu that accompanies showbusiness is a breeding ground for these crooks, who see talented women as their meal ticket and a way to improve themselves, and it's no coincidence that Ruth Etting and Fanny Brice too had their troubles with gamblers. When Larry slaps Helen repeatedly and calls her a tramp, the scene could be from any number of biopics.

The dialogue uses period slang for amusing affect eg 'You made those dames look like they were hanging out to dry', Larry is 'stuck on' Helen and tells her 'You're hooked'. When Helen is drunk at a rehearsal, it is said of her 'She's only running on 4 cylinders. It's the gasoline she uses'. The narrative has period oddities such as a lesbian at a rent party, and the wife of lawyer Russell Wade (Richard Carlson) who has an arrangement where it appears she too can be a lesbian, though she refuses to release her meal ticket. Helen gets the standard self-pity in 'I'm no good' and 'Everything I touch turns bad', and we hear the tale of the death of her father when she was a child (Freud, anyone?). However what no one seems to notice is that when Helen is appearing in Showboat and at her nightclub AND drinking, the plain fact seems to be is that she is overworked. Also when Ziegfeld offers her the part of Julie in Showboat that would make her famous, there is no indication that she can even act.

Although the biopic is one of Hollywood's most corrupt genres - revisionist history existing as a star vehicle - it is redeemed when the person biographed is presented as a star. Although Ann Blyth can sing, her vocals are (inexplicably) dubbed, not with Morgan's recordings - Morgan died in 1941 - but by Gogi Grant. Grant's voice is lovely, has that Garland loudness and heartthrob sincerity for ballads, and is also able to jazz it up for 'On The Sunny Side of the Street'. Director Michael Curtiz only lets us see Helen as a star in two numbers - 'The Man I Love', and Why Was I Born?', both when she is supposedly drunk and of course, in perfect voice. Curtiz uses the genre standard cut-aways so we have others opinion of how wonderful Helen is, but otherwise we get Helen singing numbers interrupted or up-staged by drama. There are two other numbers which Helen completes in full - her two songs from Showboat performed in non-Showboat settings, Bill and Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man, but the songs are less showy.

Blyth uses Morgan's signature scarf and sits on the accompaniest's piano as she sings, however often her buck teeth up-stage her. Blyth had been memorably directed by Curtiz in Mildred Pierce (1944) with Joan Crawford, and the later Helen recalls Crawford, in her stark make-up and, in a scene where she is required to tell a lie, where her face is a grimace. Curtiz uses expressionist camera-work to indicate Helen's drunken point of view, and the numbers she falters in when performing are camp - her tipsy rehearsal for 'Somebody Loves Me' wearing a hideous dress, and 'You Do Something to Me' where she falls off the piano. Curtiz cuts from her fall to a newspaper headline 'La Morgan stops Broadway show - flat on her face!'. When Helen is 'missing' on a drunken binge, she gets splashed by a passing car, and is ridiculed in a bar when she sings along to a radio broadcast of her own vocal. However, Blyth's screams of Helen in detox jump over camp into empathy.

Curtiz uses the cringe-worthy orchestration of Morgan songs behind dialogue scenes - you can bet 'The Man I Love' gets a workout in the Helen/Larry scenes, but also the silhouette of someone who hangs themselves. Newman is too young for his role - he was actually older than Blyth when the film was made, but he seems younger - and his technique shows. But although he has practically nothing to do, Alan King is good to have around.

If there was any reason to make a motion picture about the life of legendary performer Helen Morgan it would have been to highlight her distinctness, a style both as an actress and as a singer which set her apart. A tremulous soprano whose emotions were so close to the surface that she often seemed to be breaking into a sob, she could also deliver powerful dramatic fireworks as in the 1929 classic early talkie "Applause." Ann Blyth in the title role does a good job of lip-syncing Gogi Grant's voice on the soundtrack, but Grant's strong rich tones barely suggest the Morgan sound. Also, Blythe is too spunky and hard-edged for the soft, sweet, shy, sensitive person she is playing. Even in her prime Morgan looked wan and somewhat dissipated.

The tedious plot, largely invented, is an indifferently assembled heap of clichés, none of which give insight into how Morgan developed the alcohol habit that figures so powerfully in her life journey. There are four screenwriting credits. At one point Morgan, out of nowhere, reminisces about a childhood bout with scarlet fever and a traumatic episode involving her father. Perhaps those lines were leftovers from a plot layer from one of the writers that was otherwise abandoned.

Paul Newman, still in phase one of his illustrious screen career, is a strong presence but cannot give substance to the sketchily written character of Morgan's (fictional) caddish off-and-on lover. Because the central story is so barren, it's up to the supporting players to keep the viewer's interest. Cara Williams steals the show in the opening scenes as a high-spirited fellow show biz wannabe and Alan King has some effective bits as the second banana to Newman, but later both King and Williams are relegated to supportive wisecracks. Walter Winchell and Rudy Vallee, who operated in the same stomping grounds as Morgan back in the day, play themselves in extended cameos.

Like other 1950s biopics about beloved show biz figures of the Roaring Twenties and Depressed Thirties, the era in question is haphazardly or anachronistically represented in musical arrangements, set design, costuming and, most glaringly, hair styles. The general impression one gets from this bloated but empty effort is that of a large mug of weak tea sweetened with saccharine.

If for no other reason, the movie is memorable for the great vocals by Gogi Grant. It has its inconsistencies, such as Helen Morgan wears the same 5 inch stillettos throughout the movie. Were they even available in the 1930s? Go past that and this makes a great tearjerker, or a "rainy-day stay in the house and curl up on the couch" movie. Today, I'd say it would be reated PG-14.

Mostly fictional, miscast biographical hogwash of hard luck songtress Morgan. Ann Blyth, in her last theatrical feature, was the wrong actress for the title role, many were considered she was probably the least suitable, so the film starts off with a major flaw from the get go. Judy Garland whose style especially when young was compared to Morgan's would have been ideal. Another shortcoming is that although Blyth was a singer whose voice was relatively close to the real Helen Morgan's she is dubbed by Gogi Grant, also a fine singer but completely different from Morgan in sound and technique. If they were going to dub her why not use Helen Morgan's voice? Curtiz direction is unremarkable here, a few of his more customary florid touches would have helped greatly. Paul Newman who was just starting out when this was made is adequate but missing that loutish air that is needed for the reptile he is playing either Kirk Douglas or Robert Ryan would have been more suitable. The real Morgan story is a compelling one so this comes off as a wasted opportunity.

Since I was born decades after this film was made and this film was made about the period of Helen Morgan's life decades before 1957, I wasn't sure I would be able to appreciate it as much as perhaps it deserved to be. Actually I found it to be somewhat timeless in its depiction of the eternal quest for fame and fortune and the pitfalls that occur along the way. Even in today's headlines we see talented performers who achieve fame and fortune only to stumble due to relationship difficulties, substance abuse and shady characters in their entourage. Although I am not familiar with the real Helen Morgan, Ann Blyth does a credible job in portraying how stardom doesn't always lead to happiness and Paul Newman is very good as an opportunist with a conscience.