Sufrir es mi destino

After Doris Day scored a success with Ruth Etting in Love Me or Leave Me and Susan Hayward did well with both Jane Froman and Lillian Roth in With a Song In My Heart and I'll Cry Tomorrow, it was decided that chanteuses of the past were good box office. So Ann Blyth gave it her best effort in a whitewashed version of The Helen Morgan Story.

Problem is that those other women had reasonably happy endings to their stories. Helen Morgan died in 1941, ready to make a comeback, but the years of booze, legal and illegal, took their toll on her body. She was only 41 years old, but packed a lot of hard living and heartache into her body and soul.

I guess it was decided that the audiences wouldn't take to her real unhappy ending so an ending that was out of This Is Your Life was tacked on to this film. It ends roughly in the middle thirties.

Although it's not mentioned at all in the story, Helen Morgan had a Hollywood career. She did an early sound film Applause, shot in New York while she was still on Broadway and introduced in that What Wouldn't I Do For That Man. That was one of her biggest hits and absent from this film. I guess Warner Brothers couldn't secure the rights.

Of course her two best known shows were Showboat and Sweet Adeline. Irene Dunne played her role in the film adaption of Sweet Adeline, but we are fortunate to have Helen doing her original role of Julie in the 1937 Universal film of Showboat. It's where fans today can see and appreciate her best. She also has a number in Al Jolson's Go Into Your Dance and sings another of her hits, The Little Things You Used to Do. Now Warners had the rights to that one.

The Helen Morgan presented here is a hard luck woman who had the misfortune to love and be loved by two wrong men for her. Bootlegger Paul Newman and married attorney Richard Carlson are the men in her life. Actually she did have two marriages, late in her life, and way after the action of this film takes place.

Newman plays one of the first in a long line of cynical characters he breathed life into in his career. To paraphrase a current hit film, he just can't seem to quit Helen nor she him. And Richard Carlson just wants to have his cake and eat it to, wife and kiddies at home and a tootsie on the side, many in fact.

Ann Blyth does a fine acting job. Why she wasn't allowed to use her own fine voice is a mystery since she actually sounds more like the real Helen Morgan than the dubbed Gogi Grant does. You'll see that for yourself in Showboat. Personally I'd have told Jack Warner to take the part and put it in an inconvenient place with that kind of arrangement.

It's hardly the real Helen Morgan Story, but it's a grand excuse to hear some fabulous Tin Pan Alley tunes of an era never to return.

It's all there, professional hardware and expertise, up on the

cinemascope screen - but for two oddities: the lead roles.

Newman and Blyth look good (she even looks like Debbie's older

sister as seen in Singin In the Rain) and Newman at 30 is about at

handsome as the 50s screen ever was........but they are both light

for grim roles. Doris Day pulled it off in Love Me Or Leave Me and

Cagney was the full gargoyle as Marty the Gimp which is probably

what the Larry role Needed from Newman...but he was really too

pretty. Looking alot like how Some Like It Hot turned out, it looks

like it wants to be a comedy....which it probably now almost is.

Anne Blyth is Minnie Mouse, I think and that is what doesn't help.

And where's Joan Blondell when WB need her......and I bet Richard

Carlson kissed Michael Curtiz feet in gratitude for the high profile

role here after all those D grade schlockers he had prior. He even

had his name in lights in the fabulous credits. This is alot like the

1933 CASE OF THE LUCKY LEGS without the laughs. This film is

so well made, but it doesn't work, whereas other bios from the

same period are dynamic. Like for Doris Day and Susan Hayward.

During the wild and reckless 1920s, pretty small-town girl Ann Blyth (as Helen Morgan) gets her start as a singer for sex-minded bootlegger Paul Newman (as Larry Maddox). Although deserted after a "one night stand" in Chicago, Ms. Blyth hooks up with Mr. Newman for the long haul. "The customers drink more when they cry," advises Newman, and Blyth becomes a successful "torch singer" (one who sings the blues over lost loves). For publicity and profit, Newman enters Blyth in a "Miss Canada" beauty pageant, although she is not Canadian. Blyth is kept out of jail by kindly lawyer Richard Carlson (as Russell Wade), who becomes the another significant man in her life...

Gogi Grant sings beautifully for Blyth, but one wonders why the actress wasn't allowed to sing for herself. Her style more closely fit the real Helen Morgan's range. Morgan was a big star during the 1920s and 1930s and anyone listening to the radio in 1957 would also be familiar with Ms. Grant's hits - and the titular heroine's real ending. Moviegoers in 1957 must have been puzzled. Blyth is given a role to showcase her acting skills, but holds back; she'd be least haggard looking alcoholic on skid row. Newman had recently been making progress, but appears to still be finding his way. Shadowy scenes staged by director Michael Curtiz and photographer Ted McCord are a strength.

***** The Helen Morgan Story (10/2/57) Michael Curtiz ~ Ann Blyth, Paul Newman, Richard Carlson, Gene Evans

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.

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.