8 Movies / July 27
You could spend a lot worse time on an idle Tuesday than in the company of some good musicians, particularly piano players with abundant talent in their fingers and a few dark secrets in their lives. Our daytime offerings range from comedy to horror, from a landmark concert documentary to crime thrillers and a couple of versions of one story with some unlikely romantic leads.
George Arliss was 64 years old when he played the object of 24-year-old Bette Davis’ affections in The Man Who Played God (1932). Reprising his own role from a play and a silent picture he starred in 10 years earlier under the same title, Arliss plays a concert pianist who loses his hearing in an accident and discovers new meaning in his life. The Oscar-winning actor (Disraeli, 1929) was so generous and helpful to his co-star, in her first major role, that Davis credited him all her life with being an important career mentor and inspiration.
The same story was remade as Sincerely Yours (1955) with the pianist and TV/nightclub star Liberace in one of a small handful of screen performances he made and his only starring role. Relatively unencumbered by the screen beauties surrounding him (including Dorothy Malone and Joanne Dru in a part Doris Day had been considered for), the entertainer got to please his fans with renditions of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” the old standard “Tea for Two” and “Chopsticks.”
Another remake is in the line-up with Hands of a Stranger (1962), in which a concert pianist has new hands grafted onto him after losing his own in a car crash, only to be driven mad by the fear that the new appendages are forcing him to commit evil acts. This is the fourth version of the story, which had previously featured in the lead role Conrad Veidt (The Hands of Orlac, 1924), Peter Lorre as a mad scientist rather than the beleaguered musician (Mad Love, 1935) and Mel Ferrer (The Hands of Orlac, 1960).
Physical disabilities also plague the protagonists of Night Song (1947) and The Seventh Veil (1945). In the first, Dana Andrews is an embittered blind piano player, with Merle Oberon as the wealthy socialite who fakes blindness to get closer to him. In the latter picture, Ann Todd is a once world-famous pianist undergoing psychotherapy after a suicide attempt. James Mason is her bitter and controlling guardian in this #1 hit at the British box office and winner of the Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay.
There’s a lighter touch at work in the romantic comedy Too Young to Kiss (1951), as talented pianist June Allyson masquerades as a child prodigy to get a career break from impresario Van Johnson. This was the fourth of five times the popular screen team played an amorous couple.
