Your Cheatin' Heart

Another of those movies that shows up on TCM often enough, having been made at MGM, is the Hank Williams biopic (for some values of biopic) Your Cheatin' Heart. So the last time it was on TCM I recorded it, and recently watched it to do a post on it for the next airing, which is on tomorrow (September 25) at 8:00 AM as part of a morning and afternoon of the films of George Hamilton.

George Hamilton plays the adult Hank Williams, but before the opening credits there's a scene of a juvenile Williams, shining shoes during the Depression in Alabama and singing with local blues singer Rufus "Teetot" Payne (a small role for Rex Ingram) before Teetot dies right in front of little Hank. (In reality, Hank did know Teetot in childhood and did receive some music lessons from him, but lost contact before Teetot's death.)

After the credits, we see an adult Hank William trying to hawk a tonic at a medicine show. He concludes the show by singing a song he wrote, and it's already quite clear that Hank has a tremendous amount of talent. And wouldn't you know it, but showing up at that day's installment of the medical show is a professional musician, Audrey Sheppard (Susan Oliver), together with manager Shorty Younger (Red Buttons) and some backup singers. Audrey sees a meal ticket and gets Hank to join her and the rest of the band on tour, eventually getting him to marry her.

Audrey keeps pushing Hank's career, including sending one of the songs Hank has written to music publisher Fred Rose (Arthur O'Connell) in Nashville. The song is "Your Cheatin' Heart", although in the real world Hank only wrote that in 1952. Rose likes the song, but wants Hank to prove he can write something original. Hank does that to Rose's satisfaction, and Rose gets Hank a job on the Louisiana Hayride radio show out of Shreveport, LA. Audrey keeps pushing Hank's career, but he is for whatever reason not always comfortable with the limelight and turns to drink.

Somewhat surprisingly, not only is that not the likely reason the real-life Hank turned to drink, but the real reason is one that I think would have had no issue getting past the Production Code which still had not fully disintegrated by the time the movie was made. Hank Williams was born with spina bifida, which left him with back pain all his life, exacerbated by various injuries. (The movie does show Hank falling off a horse at one point.) Being of poor Depression-era stock and with medicine not being quite so advanced, Hank basically self-medicated, even if the long-term result was going to be that it destroyed the marriage to Audrey as well as ultimately his life. I presume most American music fans know Hank Williams died aged 29 in the back seat of the car he was being driven in to his next concert.

Your Cheatin' Heart as a movie is in large part typical of the sort of biopic that studios put out in the Golden Age that was by 1964 decidedly waning. It's full of hokum, backlot work, and stuff that just didn't happen at all the way it did in real life. But the movie is also partially an attempt by Audrey Williams, who was credited as an advisor, to burnish Hank's image and bascially make herself look better. That's partly because Hank remarried a few months before he died but there was a serious question as to whether that marriage was valid. In fact, the movie doesn't even mention this second marriage. There's also the casting of George Hamilton as Williams, which will probably really put some people off. The one really bright spot is the music; George Hamilton only lip-synched the songs which are actually cover versions by Hank Williams Jr. who was all of 15 at the time and already showing his phenomenal talent.