One Hundred Men and a Girl
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| One Hundred Men and a Girl | |
|---|---|
 original film poster |
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| Directed by | Henry Koster |
| Produced by | Joe Pasternak Charles R. Rogers |
| Written by | Charles Kenyon Hanns Kräly Bruce Manning James Mulhauser |
| Starring | Deanna Durbin Adolphe Menjou Leopold Stokowski Alice Brady Eugene Pallette |
| Music by | Leopold Stokowski Charles Previn Sam Coslow Friedrich Hollaender Franz Liszt Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky Giuseppe Verdi |
| Cinematography | Joseph A. Valentine |
| Editing by | Bernard W. Burton |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 1937 (USA) |
| Running time | 85 min. |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
One Hundred Men and a Girl is a 1937 musical comedy film, written by Charles Kenyon, Bruce Manning and James Mulhauser from a story by Hanns Kräly and directed by Henry Koster. It was the first of two motion pictures featuring the famed orchestra leader Leopold Stokowski, and is also the film for which Deanna Durbin is best remembered as an actress and a singer in film.
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[edit] Plot
Patsy Cardwell (Deanna Durbin), the daughter of struggling musician John Cardwell, (Adolphe Menjou) forms a symphony orchestra made up of his unemployed friends following a chance encounter with a society maven (Alice Brady). When the maven realizes that Patsy took her blandishments seriously, she flees to Europe. This forces her husband, John R. Frost (Eugene Pallette), to break to John and his friends the harsh reality: that he cannot sponsor them, as they had supposed, unless they attract a well-recognized guest conductor to launch them on their opening night.
Patsy, undaunted, sets out to recruit none other than Leopold Stokowski to be that conductor. Stokowski at first definitely refuses--though when Patsy sings as the orchestra is rehearsing Mozart's Alleluia, he strongly suggests that she seek professional training and eventual representation.
Patsy's campaign seems to have ended--except that while dodging the doorman and hiding in Stokowski's office, she has taken a telephone call from the local music critic and informed him that Stokowski would conduct an orchestra of unemployed musicians, and that John R. Frost would broadcast the concert on the radio! When this utterly false story breaks, an outraged Frost protests his embarrassment to his friends--who then suggest to him that he ought to make it real, because of the valuable publicity it would bring to his other businesses. Frost immediately signs the one-hundred-man orchestra to a contract, though Patsy tries to tell them that Stokowski has not agreed! Frost then calls Stokowski to verify his engagement and is shocked to hear of Stokowski's refusal. Frost visits Stokowski at his house and leaves suspecting that one of his friends has played a trick on him.
But Patsy has also entered Stokowski's house surreptitiously--along with the entire orchestra. After telling them to "set up" on the stairs of Stokowski's balcony, she enters his studio to apologize to him. When he protests that he would like to hear her reason for planting such an outrageous story in the newspaper, she signals the orchestra to perform. Stokowski at first tries to ask them to leave, but is so moved by their performance of Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody that he postpones a European tour and agrees to the engagement. The concert is a rousing success for everyone, especially when Patsy, called upon to make a speech, instead agrees to sing the number titled "Brindisi" from Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata.
[edit] Background and Production
Leopold Stokowski was, at the time of the film's release, co-conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra with Eugene Ormandy. Political and artistic differences with the orchestra's board had already led Stokowski to allow Ormandy to assume a greater leadership role at the orchestra, and eventually would lead Stokowski to break with the orchestra entirely. This might explain why the city in which the film is set, and by extension Stokowski's "regular" orchestra, is never positively identified in the film.
[edit] Cast
- Deanna Durbin as Patricia "Patsy" Cardwell
- Adolphe Menjou as John Cardwell
- Leopold Stokowski portraying himself
- Eugene Pallette as Mr. John R. Frost, the eventual sponsor of the "One Hundred Men"
- Alice Brady as his wife
- Alma Kruger as Mrs. Tyler, John Cardwell's landlady
- Mischa Auer as Michael Borodoff, a flutist and one of John Cardwell's neighbors
- Billy Gilbert as the owner of the garage where the "One Hundred Men" rehearse
- Jed Prouty as Tommy Bitters, a man engaged in a good-natured war of pranks with John R. Frost. (Frost suspects Bitters of planting the Stokowski story in the newspaper until Patsy confesses her role to Stokowski.)
- Jack Smart as Marshall, Leopold Stokowski's doorkeeper
- Frank Jenks as a taxi driver who keeps a running tab for Patsy and later calls it an "investment" in her singing voice
[edit] Reception
The film opened to highly favorable critical reviews and is remembered as a hit. Of all the elements of the film, Deanna Durbin's ability to sing and act drew the highest praise.[1]
[edit] Awards and nominations
The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. In addition, Charles Previn, in his role as head of the music department for Universal Pictures, won the Academy Award for Original Music Score. (No specific composer credit was ever specified.) Previn's scoring consisted of using two original songs (by Sam Coslow and Friedrich Hollaender) and a carefully chosen selection of music from classical symphonies and operas. The other three awards for which this film was nominated were Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Original Story.
[edit] References
- ^ The Deanna Durbin Page - One Hundred Men and a Girl (accessed 14 July 2006 at 15:40 UTC)
