Movie Review: Till the Clouds Roll By

Movie Review: Till the Clouds Roll By

This 1946 musical, filmed in glorious Technicolor, is loosely based on the life of songwriter Jerome Kern (Robert Walker).  It opens with the opening of Showboat, the famous Oscar Hammerstein play he wrote the music for.  After several numbers, we skip to the end of the performance.  Mr. Kern asks his chauffeur to take him to a certain neighborhood that has special meaning to him, and we go into a long flashback.

This turns out to be the beginning of his long relationship with music arranger James Hessler (Van Heflin) and his daughter Sally (Joan Wells/Lucille Bremer.  Mr. Hessler is tired of silly love songs and wanting to write a symphony, but Mr. Kern’s music convinces him to arrange again.

Things aren’t doing too well on Broadway, and Mr. Kern has to travel all the way to England, where he meets his future wife, before he can convince a producer to take a chance on an American songwriter.  After a near miss with the Lusitania, Kern and Hessler finally find success with a hit show.

As the years pass, Sally becomes convinced she wants to  be in show business, and Mr. Kern is able to swing her a plum spot in his latest production.  However, the producer of the show takes away Sally’s big number and gives it to established star Marilyn Miller (Judy Garland).  Sally has a fit and runs away to seek her own fortune, not even returning when her father dies.

Distraught after his friend’s death, Mr. Kern is unable to write until  he finally finds Sally singing in a club near the Mississippi, determined to succeed on her own merits.  Heartened, he is also inspired by the river to create the music heard in Showboat.   The flashback over, Mr. Kern worries that this is the natural end to his career.  The chauffeur assures him that it’s not, and drives him to the afterparty.

A quick montage of success later, the now elderly Kern is brought to Hollywood to do music for the movies, and is pleased to see that Sally is by complete coincidence the star of the one he’s working on.  The movie ends with a medley of Kern hits.

Like many musicals, the plot is a little thin, but there are some great musical numbers sung by such luminaries as Angela Lansbury, Lena Horne and Frank Sinatra.  And it’s in color, which is always nice.

One interesting bit; the parts with Judy Garland were shot early, and with a different director, Vincente Minnelli, as she was pregnant at the time and they wanted to make sure she wouldn’t show.  Jerome Kern was still alive at this point and visited the set shortly before he passed.

Thankfully, there’s no overt sexism or racism in the movie, although the latter is in the metatext–Lena Horne’s number is carefully framed so that it could be removed by Southern theater owners without causing a noticeable gap, and there are two versions of “Old Man River”, one with a black performer (as part of Showboat) and then at the end with young Frank Sinatra in an all-white showcase.

The romance is kept nice and clean.  There’s some smoking and drinking–one scene takes place during Prohibition with the booze served literally under the table.

This film is in the public domain, so easily findable, and well worth it for the musical numbers alone.