Oh, You Beautiful Doll
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
John M. Stahl
June Haver
Mark Stevens
S. Z. "cuddles" Sakall
Charlotte Greenwood
Gale Robbins
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
In his "Four-to-a-Bar" saloon, Lippy Brannigan reminisces about the old days when many major song writers used to frequent the New York saloon. As the newly revived song "Peg O' My Heart" plays on the juke box, Lippy tells a reporter about the song's composer, Fred Fisher: Back in the early 1900s, a young song-plugger, Larry Kelly, comes into Lippy's recently opened saloon with promotional materials for one of the songs he is plugging, "Oh, You Beautiful Doll," currently being performed by Marie Carle at a local vaudeville house. Another customer picks a fight with him, but Larry throws him out onto the sidewalk, where he collides with passing classical musician Alfred Breitenbach. Alfred is on his way to attend a luncheon being given for Gottfried Steiner, conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra, which is about to leave on a European tour. At the luncheon, Steiner invites Alfred to play some selections from his new opera, but he is interrupted when Zaltz, another guest who has been showing off a ring that once belonged to Johann Strauss, suddenly discovers it is missing. When each guest is asked to turn out his pockets, Alfred gets up from the piano and leaves the dining room. He explains to Steiner that he could not turn out his pockets as he is so impoverished that he had food from the luncheon in them. Steiner, whom Alfred's father had once helped, promises to help him when he returns from his tour. At home, Alfred tells his wife Anna, who takes in sewing to help make ends meet, that the performance at the luncheon was a great success. Soon after, Larry comes to return a letter Alfred dropped in the confusion outside the saloon and also to recover a pawn ticket he had mistakenly given him. Larry meets Alfred and Anna's daughter Doris, who later attends a performance at the theater where "Oh, You Beautiful Doll" is being promoted and, from the audience, joins in the singing. Larry spots her and invites her to join him for a meal. He learns that she is a classical violinist and pianist and suggests that one of her father's compositions might be adaptable for the popular music market. Doris becomes very interested in Larry, but discovers he is very friendly with Marie Carle. After Doris plays part of her father's operatic score for Larry on a piano, she tells her father that Larry is going to write lyrics for his music. Doris and Larry perform the first song in front of her parents at Volk's Casino. When music publisher Ted Held tells Alfred and Larry that the song will be a big hit, Alfred does not want it published under his real name and chooses a pseudonym, Fred Fisher, from a brewery calendar. Larry and Alfred continue to collaborate, and the earnings from their songs enable the Breitenbachs to move to a larger house. Later, at a small dinner party, Larry arrives with Marie but later explains to Doris that he and Marie are simply business associates and that, when Doris is a little older, he intends to marry her. Steiner then returns from Europe and tells Alfred that he is looking forward to seeing his opera performed. Embarrassed, Alfred explains his new prosperity by saying that his wife's uncle left them some money. Although Larry has written several more songs based on Alfred's operatic score, Alfred refuses to work on any more on popular music. Later, in an effort to get his new song in front of the public, Larry phones Al Jolson and convinces him to introduce it. Larry then is arrested for breaking street lights to plug the song, "There's a Broken Heart for Every Light on Broadway." When Alfred goes to help Larry, he, too, winds up behind bars and a photo of them appears in a newspaper. Alfred disappears, leaving Anna a note that he is going to rewrite his opera and forget "Fred Fisher." Doris and Larry try to find him, but he is hiding out in a hotel in Hoboken. Desperate, Doris goes to see Steiner, who offers to perform Alfred's music as a way of drawing him out. Meanwhile, Alfred has broken the window of a music store whose loudspeaker was featuring his songs, and among the shattered remains, Alfred sees a poster for Steiner's Mayolian Hall concert featuring his music. Lippy and Held patrol the front of the hall and spot Alfred arriving late, and although Alfred doesn't identify himself he is given a special box seat. Steiner introduces Alfred's music by telling the audience that they may not recognize the name Breitenbach, but that he is known to all of them as one of America's greatest melody writers, Fred Fisher. As the orchestra performs a potpourri of his popular music, Anna joins Alfred in the box, while Doris and Larry join the orchestra. Afterward, Alfred takes a bow.
Director
John M. Stahl
Cast
June Haver
Mark Stevens
S. Z. "cuddles" Sakall
Charlotte Greenwood
Gale Robbins
Jay C. Flippen
Andrew Tombes
Eduard Franz
Dick Rich
Curt Bois
Torchy Rand
Ray Walker
Victor Sen Yung
Myrtle Anderson
John Mylong
Robert Gist
Marion Martin
James Griffith
Billy Wayne
John Davidson
Robert B. Williams
Phil Tully
Harry Seymour
Clyde Courtright
Sam Bernard
Charles R. Henshaw
Sid Marion
Eddie Kane
William J. O'brien
Lester Sharpe
Ray Teal
Joan Douglas
Joe Forte
Al Klein
Don Kerr
Warren Jackson
Sam Ash
David Newell
Sam Finn
Crew
Larry Airhart
Jeff Alexander
Nat D. Ayer
Felix Bernard
Clara Bing
Johnny S. Black
A. Seymour Brown
Alfred Bryan
James B. Clark
Ken Darby
Leonard Doss
Seymour Felix
Fred Fisher
Myrtle Ford
Paul S. Fox
Max Golden
Joe Goodwin
Earle Hagen
Roger Heman
Ignace Hilsberg
Renè Hubert
Bruce Hunsaker
Harry Jackson
George Jessel
Howard Johnson
Ferdinand Kahn
George Lane
Charles Le Maire
Albert Lewis
Thomas Little
Louis Loeffler
Bernard Mayers
Joseph Mccarthy
Felix Mendelssohn
Cyril Mockridge
Alfred Newman
Ben Nye
Maurice De Packh
Ernest Palmer
Edward Powell
Maurice Ransford
Irving Rosenberg
Bob Schafer
Stanley Scheuer
Fred Sersen
William Shirley
Herbert Spencer
Al St. Hilaire
Urban Thielman
Tom Tuttle
Marie Walters
E. Clayton Ward
Lyle Wheeler
Bonnie Lou Williams
Saul Wurtzel
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
In the film's opening credits, June Haver receives billing over Mark Stevens, but in the cast list at the end the situation is reversed. Although Ernest Palmer is listed on Hollywood Reporter production charts as the film's director of photography and James B. Clark is listed as the film editor, Henry Jackson and Louis Loeffler are credited, respectively, in those positions in the screen credits. According to documents in the Twentieth Century-Fox, Records of the Legal Department Collection at the UCLA Arts-Special Collections Library, the studio bought an original, unpublished, uncopyrighted preliminary treatment entitled "Oh, You Beautiful Doll" from Albert and Arthur Lewis in July 1948. The Lewises had previously acquired rights to the Fred Fisher story from his widow, Mrs. Anna Fisher Berrens. The studio paid the Lewises $50,000 and Mrs. Fisher $65,000. Writer Virginia Van Upp was briefly involved in the writing of the screenplay but, according to studio documents, no part of her version was used. According to a Twentieth Century-Fox publicity release in the AMPAS Library, June Haver played piano for the first time onscreen. As a child, Haver won three successive Cincinnati musical contests and had played the Haydn Surprise Symphony with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. This was veteran director John M. Stahl's first musical and his next-to-last film. According to studio publicity, producer George Jessel arranged for Al Jolson to record the lines used in the telephone conversation in the film. Certain Twentieth Century-Fox cast lists include Eula Morgan, Edward Clark and Maurice Samuels in the cast but their appearance in the final film is doubtful. The title song was not written by Fisher, but by Nat. D. Ayer and A. Seymour Brown. Abel Green, who reviewed the film for Variety, knew the Fishers and wrote that, apart from the correct use of their names, "The rest is 100% fiction."
