Up in Central Park

Durbin and Price are in top form; both are charming, and hit just the right light note in their acting style. Dick Haymes sings very well, but lacks charisma and spark as an actor. The actor playing Durbin's Irish father is strictly from the Barry Fitzgerald school of ersatz Blarney.

Contrary to what another reviewer said, this 100% soundstange shot film shows all to clearly that Universal didn't spend much money on it. Sets are unusually limited in scope for a musical. One example: In one number immigrant Durbin on the deck of a boat coming to America sings about the new countries glories. Not only is the boat deck tiny with the only backdrop a painted sky, but there is not one shot showing what she is singing about, what is supposedly inspiriting her song.

The plot and characters are hardly realistic, but work just fine for a musical. The dialog is well written, better than in the majority of musicals of this era.

The music, what there is of it, has big, well written orchestrations, and the fidelity is excellent on the VHS tape. Johnny Green is credited as composer- music director, and I believe he was head of MGM's music department at the time, so I suspect Universal farmed out musical duties to MGM (L.B. Mayor was father in law to Universal's chief). If so, it was a good decision.

As was standard practice in this era, only a few of the songs written for the stage show on which the film was based made it to the film. The glaring omission is "We'll Be Close As Pages In A Book", which I believe is the only song from the theater production to become popular and have a life outside of the show. It's not in the film, but is very prominently featured in the instrumental title music and is the music which closes the film. Makes me suspect they filmed the song, but cut it before the film was released.

"Up in Central Park" is set in New York City in the 19th century. Boss Tweed (Vincent Price) and his political machine (Tammany Hall) have been in charge of the city for years...and cheating, graft and voting irregularities will keep him in power. At the time of the election, an Irish man and his daughter, Rosie (Deanna Durbin), arrive in the city...and are paid to vote the Tammany Hall candidates even though they aren't citizens. Tweed himself takes a special interest in them...mostly because he finds Rosie to be gorgeous. She, in turn, is smitten with him...unaware or perhaps unwilling to accept the man's evil reputation might just be true. A reporter (Dick Haymes) is fighting Tammany Hall and he tries to get Rosie to see the light...but getting her attitude to change will be a tall order, as around her he's the perfect gentleman. What's going to come of naive Rosie and Boss Tweed?

This is an enjoyable film but not without its problems. The first one I noticed was that although Rosie's dad has a thick Irish accent, Rosie sounds like a native-born American! She didn't even attempts a trace of the Irish accent...and it made little sense. The second was that even for a Durbin film the musical numbers were dull and too high brow...especially the ballet sequence. Third, and worst of all, the ending was very abrupt and unsatisfying. On the positive side, Vincent Price was great as the slimy Tweed and the story mildly interesting. But to me, the negatives slightly outweigh the positives.

Up In Central Park marked a successful return to Broadway for Sigmund Romberg as this musical about the Tammany Hall era of Boss William Marcy Tweed ran for 504 performances during the 1945-46 season on Broadway. Instead of the elegant Vincent Price as the powerful Boss of Tammany Hall Civil War and post Civil War, the part was played by Noah Beery, Sr. Now that certainly would have called for a different kind of Boss Tweed.

Musically what Universal Studios gave us is a half baked version of the Broadway Show. Dick Haymes and Deanna Durbin are in good voice for th Sigmund Romberg-Dorothy Fields numbers still left, but because the music is cut the emphasis of the film turns to Price.

Young Deanna Durbin and her father Albert Sharpe are freshly arrived from Ireland and immediately as was the tradition back in the day, welcomed to the shores by the Tammany political machine. Sharpe takes to the repeat voting the way that Brian Donlevy did in The Great McGinty, but his rise only consists of becoming the superintendent of Central Park which the Tweed Ring plans to 'improve' with many kickbacks for themselves.

In the meantime Durbin comes to the attention of Price, but she also comes to the attention of crusading reporter Dick Haymes. They make beautiful music together and apart in what little is left of the Romberg-Fields score.

If Up In Central Park had been done at MGM it surely would have gotten the production needed for this musical. Unforgivably the big hit song of the film Close As Pages In A Book was not performed and it's a duet which I'm sure Haymes and Durbin would have been great at. I'm betting it ended on the cutting room floor. Close As Pages In A Book is heard on the soundtrack as background music

There's another nice song called It Doesn't Cost You Anything To Dream that was also cut. But what I was most disappointed in was a number called The Fireman's Bride that was not included. It's a rollicking number that I have a recording of Jeanette MacDonald and Robert Merrill doing and I'm sure it must have been great on stage. When it wasn't in the film I was truly disappointed.

Casting Vincent Price as Tweed was a stroke of genius. I truly think that a young woman's virtue would have been far more in danger from him than from Noah Beery. Remembering the villains Beery played on screen, he would have to get really overbearing and physical which he must have on stage.

As a musical Up In Central Park is disappointing, but fans of Vincent Price will appreciate this actor displaying the fact he could do far more than horror films.

Despite not featuring in the top billing, this film really belongs to the honest emigrant Irishman "Moore" (Albert Sharpe). Straight off the boat with his feisty daughter "Rosie" (Deanna Durbin) he bumps into a welcoming committee that lets him know how he can take part in the democratic process (for a new mayor) and make a few bucks at the same time. He excels at his task and by a quirk of fate finds himself superintendent of Central Park - on a wapping great $3,000k per year! He is hands on, so likes to feed the animals - an activity that is clearly prohibited and attracts the attention of journalist "Matthews" (Dick Haymes). Realising the man's job and the purpose of the feeding - geese, grouse, duck all destined for the table of kingpin "Tweed" (Vincent Price), he writes a column, gets "Moore" fired and rouses the wrath of "Rosie" who intercedes for her father and also manages to attract the attention of "Tweed" too. It's quite a fun tale of corrupt local politics, naivety and integrity this, with Sharpe delivering well and Durbin doing the lively characterisation that she always did engagingly, too. Price makes for a reasonable sophisticate-cum-power-broker and Hobart Cavanaugh also chips in nicely as the hapless Mayor just doing what he is told. The ending is all a bit rushed, the story is really quite incomplete on a number of fronts and the musical numbers don't do a great deal for maintaining the pace, but it has a certain plausibility to it. It's quite possible this is what New York might have been like at the start.

The dialogue and the overflowing production values of 'Up in Central Park' are two pleasurable surprises so many years afterwards to someone who is only just discovering the legacy of Deanna Durbin.

What never ceases to amaze me is the high standard of her films. They were, actually and in the flow of things, pretty run-of-the-mill, but the majority of them work incredibly well today, and 'Up in Central Park' is one of the most delightful. It has a magnificent script about a magnate, in actual fact a kind of dictator of New York City who whitewashes his money through Central Park, has the puppet mayor elected by bribing immigrants just off Ellis Island to vote in the names of dead constituents, and is just overall a very bad guy. He is played by Vincent Price, of course, soft-voiced, seductive and insinuating. An utter gentleman even at the end. "I wish more patriots like you would come to this country", he says, debonairly and hilariously. Deanna Durbin is the young Irish girl with dreams of becoming an opera star. She has just arrived in New York with her illiterate father who is given the position of superintendent of Central Park, because Vincent Price thinks his daughter overheard his evil plans for the city. Then enters young, ambitious reporter Dick Haynes with his lovely tenor voice, and he wants to bring the mighty down.

So we have young budding love, we have the older lecher, we have filial duty, and we have scathing political satire, believe me. "If you're strong enough to take something, it belongs to you", Vincent Price says, and the film takes him seriously as it well might, and the jokes aside Price's character is not too far off the mark.

The music is pleasant, the acting a sheer joy, and the pacing admirable.