Seven Sweethearts

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Seven Sweethearts
V. Heflin K. Grayson Seven Sweethearts 1942 Frank Borzage.png
Van Heflin and Kathryn Grayson
Directed byFrank Borzage
Written byFerenc Herczeg play
Screenplay byWalter Reisch
Leo Townsend
Based onSeven Sisters
Produced byFrank Borzage
Joe Pasternak
StarringKathryn Grayson
Marsha Hunt
Cecilia Parker
Van Heflin
CinematographyGeorge J. Folsey
Leonard Smith
Edited byBlanche Sewell
Music byFranz Waxman
Production
company
Distributed byLoew's Inc.
Release date
November 13, 1942 (1942-11-13)
Running time
98 min.
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$752,000[1]
Box office$1,686,000[1]

Seven Sweethearts is a 1942 musical film directed by Frank Borzage and starring Kathryn Grayson, Marsha Hunt and Van Heflin.

Seven Sweethearts generated legal trouble seven years later. In 1949, Hungarian playwright Ferenc Herczeg sued MGM, producer Joe Pasternak and screenwriters Walter Reisch and Leo Townsend for $200,000, claiming they had plagiarized his play Seven Sisters, which he had written in 1903 and which Paramount Pictures had adapted into The Seven Sisters a 1915 movie starring Madge Evans.[2]

Kathryn Grayson's real-life sister, Frances Raeburn, played "Cornelius."

Plot summary[]

Mr. Van Maaster (S.Z. Sakall) is a hotelier in Little Delft, Michigan. By family tradition, the oldest of his seven daughters must marry first. But Regina (Marsha Hunt) wants to go to New York, to become an actress. The youngest, Billie (Kathryn Grayson), has the sweetest singing voice, and she ends up marrying Henry Taggart (Van Heflin) while the other sisters including Regina also get married at the same time, so all sisters marry in the same ceremony.[3] Although sometimes tagged as a musical, all the songs in the film are diegetic, i.e. there is no unheard accompaniment to the songs, and all with Billie as soloist. They include an English-lyric ("There is a Dreamboat on High") version of a berceuse (Wiegenlied/lullaby), long attributed (and in the film) to Mozart but in fact composed by Friedrich Fleischmann (Schlafe, mein Prinzchen, schlaf ein, 1799)[4] Interestingly, a scene where a pianist-lodger plays a melody intended to lull the father/hotelier to sleep features Rock-a-bye Baby, derived from the often-retexted English ballad Lillibullero, itself derived from the quickstep section of a march by Henry Purcell. At a climactic moment in the tulip festival, she sings the beginning of the aria, "Je suis Titania" (polonaise, from Act II, Scene 2 of the French opera Mignon by Ambroise Thomas, lyrics by Jules Barbier). Other songs featuring Kathryn Grayson as soloist, by the songwriting team of Walter Jurmann (music) and Paul Francis Webster (lyrics), include "You and the Waltz and I", "Little Tingle Tangle Toes", and "Tulip Time".

Cast[]

Reception[]

According to MGM records the film made $638,000 in the US and Canada and $1,048,000 elsewhere (a rarity for MGM, as most movies earned more money domestically until after WWII);[5] this gave the studio a profit of $364,000.[1]

References[]

  1. ^ a b c The Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles: Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study.
  2. ^ http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/2833/Seven-Sweethearts/articles.html
  3. ^ "Seven Sweethearts (1942) - Frank Borzage | Synopsis, Characteristics, Moods, Themes and Related | AllMovie".
  4. ^ or Bernhard Flies. Goretzki, Elfriede; Krickenberg, Dieter (1988). "Das Wiegenlied 'von Mozart'". Mitteilungen der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum. Salzburg. 36 (1–4): 114–118.
  5. ^ Kyle W. J. Tabbernor, "'Subbed-Titles': Hollywood, the Art House Market and the Best Foreign Language Film Category at the Oscars" (Ph.D. diss., University of Western Ontario, 2013), 16-17. See also Richard Shale, The Academy Awards Index: The Complete Categorical and Chronological Record (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), 277.

External links[]

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