So This Is Love

I've commented before on how there seemed to be a vogue of musical biopics in the decade or so after World War II. One that I hadn't seen before it showed up on TCM is So This Is Love. Unsurprisingly, not having seen it, I recorded it so that I could do my usual thing here of watching it and then writing up a post on it.

So This Is Love tells the story -- or the first half of the story -- of Grace Moore (Kathryn Grayson). Moore was a multitalented singer who transitioned into becoming a film and radio star before her untimely death in a plane crash in 1947, half a dozen years before this movie was made. But as the movie opens, Moore is backstage at the Metropolitan Opera, about to make her debut there in 1928. Grace talks about how this was always her dream, so as you might guess, we get another highly original flashback here....

The flashback is to about 1906, when Grace would have been eight years old, living in the small town of Jellico, TN with her parents (Walter Abel and Ann Doran). She's a precocious and somwhat mischievous girl, as we see her having gotten atop a circus elephant of her own initiative to advertise the circus coming through town! Her "trouble" raising gets to be too much, and Mom gets Grace enrolled at a Washington DC finishing school.

There, Grace and the other students meet singer Mary Garden, and Grace is forward enough to get an invitation to do a guest spot in a year's time. But Dad finds out about the singing, and is not pleased about it, coming up to Washington to get Grace. Grace learns what her dad is planning, and runs away to New York to pursue her musical dreams. But New York is a big, tough place, especially for someone who hasn't worked professionally in any of the entertainment fields before, and she almost fails.

She does finally get a job, with the help of promoter boyfriend Buddy Nash (Merv Griffin). But just as she's about to get an audition for a better role, she develops a severe case of inflamed vocal cords. the cure for this is complete rest without talking. Buddy, meanwhile, has been putting pressure on Grace to marry him, but with the expectation that she more or less give up her career to have children. So after the three months of enforced silence at a cabin in Maine, Grace learns that Buddy has gotten married to another woman.

Grace returns to New York and is able to get roles in musical comedies, but still harbors the dream of appearing in serious opera. As we know from the beginning of the movie, as well from Moore's real life, it's a dream that comes true. It all happens fairly quickly to wrap the movie up too.

So This Is Love is the sort of movie that Hollywood liked to make back in the Studio Era, but the sort of film that I can't imagine a studio putting money into today. The movie is competently made, although it's clearly a vehicle for Kathryn Grayson and not a "serious" biopic. Ending the night of Moore's met premiere isn't the best choice, although I read the suggestion that this might have something to do with the movie being made at Warner Bros. and Moore's Hollywood career not being at Warner Bros. (In that regard, it would be like The Will Rogers Story overlooking Rogers' sound era movie career with it having been at Fox.) Grayson does well, but there's nothing terribly original here and Grayson's vocal stylings are definitely an acquired taste.