Marjorie Lawrence

Another of the movies that I had seen show up on TCM quite a bit, but for some reason never got around to watching, is yet another musical biopic: Interrupted Melody. So one of the more recent times it showed up on TCM, I made a point to put it on my DVR. It's got another airing, tomorrow, Sept. 3 at 6:00 AM, so I watched it to be able to put up a post for tomorrow's showing.

Eleanor Parker plays Marjorie Lawrence, and as the movie opens it's the mid-1920s on a farm in a rural part of Australia where Marjorie lives with the rest of her family including dad (Cecil Kellaway in a small role) and brother Cyril (Roger Moore in an early role). Marjorie is desperate to catch the train for Geelong, because there's a music competition being held there that she's been hoping to enter despite the fact that Dad doesn't quite approve. However, she wins the competition, and the prize of a music scholarship in Paris, so Dad figures that if God gave her this talent, she might as well use it.

On what we presume is her first day in Paris, she accidentally bumps into an American medical student, Thomas King (Glenn Ford). She then gets taken on as a student by a celebrated music teacher by singing outside the teacher's window, which makes no sense since she had supposedly won a scholarship in Paris. One would think such a prize involves having some one (or a school) engaged for the teaching already. But Marjorie works with the teacher, Cécile Gilly, and is eventually able to get a job with an opera company. Stardom follows although Dad dies, and Cyril serves as Marjorie's on again, off again manager.

Marjorie and Thomas keep running into each other even though it's implied that someone of more noble birth is more appropriate for Marjorie to be involved with. Not that she cares, as she eventually pursues Thomas to the point that she claims she's willing to give up her career to marry him. Thomas loves her and her singing, and he has no plans of letting her abandon the opera just to be his wife and the mother of his kids. Granted, balancing his obstetric practice with her career which has her traveling isn't necessarily going to be easy. But they do get married.

And then tragedy strikes. Marjorie is doing rehearsals for Tristan and Isolde, and she has trouble hitting some of the high notes. Worse, she takes a nasty fall which lands her in the hospital. The diagnosis is polio, which is a likely career ender. Except that with a movie like this, you have to expect that Marjorie might be able to overcome such a tragedy even if you didn't know that it's based on a true story.

Marjorie spends a while being pissed at the world since she's trapped in a wheelchair and doesn't have the vocal range she once did. It gets to the point that she considers suicide. But just as she's about to do that Thomas shows up to stop her and work with her to the point that one of Thomas' doctor friends suggests singing for the injured soldiers fighting World War II. (The real-life Lawrence contracted polio in 1941.) She's even able to return to opera in stagings that are modified to fit a singer who can't walk around the stage.

Interrupted Melody is a well-enough made movie, although I think even more than a lot of the other musician biopics I've done reviews on, it's the sort of material that's going to feel really dated. It's also opera, which is a genre that has a narrower appeal than the song standards that a lot of those other biopics had. And, in a move that surprised me on reading about the movie, MGM didn't have Marjorie Lawrence herself do the dubbing for Eleanor Parker.

So I have to say that I'm glad I've finally seen Interrupted Melody, but at the same time must admit that it's not my favorite and not the first thing I'd think of recommending to people for a movie of any of the stars involved or any of the themes in it.