Melody for Three

Twelve years ago, Fay Wray was a music student in Paris. She got married and divorced to Walter Woolf King, then she returned to America to become a music teacher in Doctor Christian's town, and raise the son King never knew she bore. The son has grown into a violin prodigy like his father, and guess who shows up in town, engaged to Astrid Allwyn?

The next to last of the Doctor Christian series, Jean Hersholt is more an observer than a participant in the story, which includes a goodly amount of classical music and a pretty good cast. Schuyler Standish plays the fiddle pretty good for a 14-year-old.

The series could have gone on for more than one additional film, but Hersholt was getting tired of the role and movie acting; he would appear in only four more movies , even though he would continue on as radio's Doctor Christian until 1954. He still had his humanitarian work, as well as his translations of Hans Christian Andersen and scholarly work on his fellow Dane.

We may know someone because his face appears on a movie screen, but that is not the totality of a man. Jean Hersholt died in 1956 at the age of 69. Those privileged to know him mourned the loss of a good man.