Exclusive“Music for Millions” (1943): First Orchestra Musical

🎶 Have you got it? Yes, it's right here in my bag. Well, we have to tell her. In her condition, a shock like that would make her lose the baby for sure. She's almost lost hope as it is. But it's her telegram and he's her husband. It's not right to keep it from her. We can at least wait until after the baby comes, can't we? Then at least she'll have something to hold on to. Well, alright. Come on then, the concert's about to start. Let's go out there and make music for millions. I'm Tiffany Brannan. I'm Rebecca Brannan. Welcome to Real Thoughts on Cinema. It can be hard to choose a favourite, something you love, like a favourite film or a favourite actor. But one thing that I definitely know is my favourite is that I have a favourite classic film producer. And that's Joe Pasternak. Absolutely. All of his movies are so sincere and heartfelt. And they really have an accent on human relationships. As well as a deep appreciation for all kinds of great music. One film which exemplifies all these qualities is Music for Millions from 1944. This is a heartwarming World War II story about a little girl, Mike, who goes to live with her older sister, Babs, who plays string bass in a classical orchestra. The maestro of which is José Turbi, the famous pianist. Mike soon finds out that Babs is expecting a baby. But her husband is overseas in the Pacific. And not having heard from him in a long time, Babs is quickly losing hope. When a telegram arrives from the War Department, Babs' roommates receive it and decide not to tell her for fear that she'll lose the baby. Hardly even meaning to, Mike brings joy and hope to everyone around her with her strong faith and her belief that everything will turn out well with the power of prayer. This film was an MGM production. It stars Margaret O'Brien, June Allison, José Turbi, Jimmy Durante and Marcia Hunt. As well as several other female actresses. It was directed by Henry Koster and produced by Joe Pasternak. This film really has quite an interesting lineup of stars. Yes, it does. But right at the front of it are these two sisters. It really is a sister story. And interestingly, the two actresses who played these sisters are Margaret O'Brien as the younger sister and June Allison as her older sister, who were known around MGM, if not Hollywood, as the town criers. Because they both were really good at crying. It was kind of a competition with them, in fact. Margaret O'Brien herself has said if she would ever be struggling to cry, like in her scene famously in her most famous movie, Meet Me in St. Louis, her mother would just say, well, I think we'll just have to call June Allison and tell her that she is the best crier now. We can have them put some fake tears on you. And that was all it took. She burst into tears. So she was so good at crying on cue. And June Allison was noted for playing really sweet, sensitive, girl-next-door type of characters. And they both get to show off their crying abilities in this film. Yes, indeed. It runs in the family. But this role was not originally intended for June Allison. It was first going to be Lana Turner, her first role after having a baby, interestingly. But the scheduling didn't work out, I believe. And then I think Donna Reed was cast in the part, but eventually June Allison ended up playing it. And it's interesting because this movie has so much music in it. Right. But it's not really a musical in the traditional sense. Other than a couple of specialty numbers by Jimmy Durante, there isn't any singing in it. Right. And June Allison was quite well known as a singer, but this was one of kind of a string of non-musical films that she made. And she became one of the only actresses in Hollywood at the time who could really successfully transition back and forth between the musical genre and doing just regular comedy or romantic comedies that were not musical. That's a good point. This really is a woman's picture. Beyond it's about those two sisters and their really touching relationship and the experience of a young war bride and an expected mother, as well as this much younger sister who is very mature. And it seems that they seem to be orphans. Right. There apparently was an aunt who was taking care of the younger sister, but not only those two characters, but then the several other girls who are also in the orchestra and they stay in the same room, the same boarding house with Babs, several, if you're a classic film fan, you'll recognize all these actresses. But the main one, the one who gets the most speaking lines and is really important character is Marsha Hunt. But Marsha Hunt went back and forth between playing comedy, drama. She was a very prominent young actress at MGM being in those films in the late thirties, early forties, and then just continued acting for years and years. The very unique actress. Yes. She really gets to show a lot of her range in this film. She plays a character here who's strong yet sensitive. She sort of takes control of the group and it's really her decision to keep that news to herself about Babs's husband, because she sees herself as a protector of the group. Yes. Sort of like we call the mom friend now. She's the harpist in the orchestra. And some of the other prominent characters are a girl who has very few lines, but it's Madeleine Lebeau, whom you might recognize from Casablanca. Right. The only letter she plays, because she has a French accent. She plays the flutist slash piccolo player. Then, of course, the clarinetist is Marie Windsor. She's sort of the comic relief. Right. Who's most well known for playing Irma in the My Friend Irma series. Very similar character here. And then a really great actress who was in a couple of notable series in the late thirties, both Andy Hardy and Dr. Kildare, is Helen Gilbert. And she plays another quite prominent friend, I would say. Right. She is a cellist actually. And the thing that's interesting is she, I believe, is the only one in the group who actually is playing her instrument. Because she got her start in the MGM orchestra. She actually was an instrumentalist. And I think they discovered she was just too pretty to stay behind the scenes all the time as the cellist. So she ended up making movies, like I said, in 1939. She was in both the Andy Hardy and Dr. Kildare series. This is a few years later, of course. But she doesn't have that big of a role, but she's one of the friends. And there are at least two other girls who don't really have many prominent lines, and they're not as well-known of actresses besides that main group. But the story is very interesting in that it's about the Battle of the Home Front. It's not a combat film, but it's very much a World War II film, since it was made in modern times during the war. 1944, right during the middle of it. I'm sure it was very relatable to audiences at the time, because it was dealing with a lot of the struggles that so many women on the home front did have at the time. And it also depicts how women played many roles and executed jobs that they wouldn't commonly have done at that point. Like, there's a female taxi driver. And the main thing about the story is that there are all these women in this major orchestra. At that time, there were very few women in major symphonies. It was still a mainly male profession. Of course, there were female instrumentalists, but not usually in the main symphony orchestra. Usually just the harpist. Now, according to IMDb, and I'm not positive this is accurate, but apparently, during the war, there actually weren't that many totally female orchestras as is presented in this film. It's sort of exaggerated. I would think that could be true, because a lot of instrumentalists are older. And even now, one doesn't that often see as many female brass players. Because at the end of the film, it's all women except for the drummer. Or percussionist. Of course, it was an exaggeration. It becomes kind of a joke, actually, particularly between Jimmy Durante and José Turbi. Because Jimmy Durante is playing sort of the manager of the symphony. And he's just losing his mind over it. They keep losing musicians, and they just keep having to add more women. And then he says, and then the waves and the wax are going to get them, and then we'll have nothing. Yeah, it's true. But I don't know this for sure. But I would guess that a lot of those female musicians you see were from the MGM Orchestra. Because, obviously, the fact that Helen Gilbert was in it, it says they had more female musicians. I feel like for a couple times I have seen the MGM Orchestra. Yeah, you see them in a couple movies. There are a lot of women in it. Because I would say that by this point, the only reason they didn't have as many women is for the optics. It looked more uniform to just have a bunch of men, and then the one beautiful harpist or whatever. Completely different, like, white gown. As opposed to all the men in their tuxedos. But it doesn't matter how they look with the behind-the-scenes. That's true. So there was more reason why they would have female instrumentalists. And I think more often there would be a female soloist. Like, there was a very famous solo violinist who was a woman at that point. But I love seeing the uniformity of their attire. Because now, especially in lower-level orchestras, they go with concert black. And even if the men are wearing tuxedos, the women just wear very assorted black dresses. But the women are wearing sort of a uniform. Long black skirts, black sort of like tuxedo coats with white button-ups. So it looks like they're wearing tuxedos, but a very feminine version. Which I think is very interesting. And then in the finale, they're all wearing the same white dress, I believe, with kind of black trim on it. But interestingly, there's a full chorus at that point, and all the women in the chorus are not, or choir, are not wearing the same outfit. They seem like a real choir. And that's unusual, because usually, like you said, usually choirs, you see in movies, all wear the same dress. That's a strange moment of sort of a natural, more realistic. I think a thing that really distinguishes this film is the two specialty musical performers. Right. José Torbi and Jimmy Durante. Not a natural pairing. But there are many movies which Jimmy Durante made, which were produced by Joe Pasternak, in which he sort of paired opposite another musician. Sometimes it was Lortz Melchior, the opera singer. Sometimes it was Xavier Cugat, the Latin band leader. And in this case, it's the uptight classical conductor, José Torbi. Because it's this great contrast. You have this really serious musician, and this fellow who sort of plays the honky-tonk piano, and it's a comedy routine when he does his act, like he's tearing the piano apart, just doing his funny shprechtema singing and banging away on the keys. But he's really talented. He's a great pianist. And he just had such a great vaudeville style. You can see what a seasoned performer he was. But I always love to see with any actor who's primarily known as sort of a specialty performer or comedian, when he gets to really show depth as an actor. And I think Jimmy Durante did a lot. He had a lot of range as an actor. Yeah, he played a lot of really serious acting parts. Yeah, quite near the end of the film. Kind of in contrast to what you've seen before. He's been acting really hard-boiled, especially with little Mike. He's like, oh, you know, he complains about her. Like, I don't want to be a babysitter. But when they're waiting at the hospital and Babs is having her baby, they have a moment when they finally sort of connect, and he admits how much he loves her. Yeah, and he really becomes this father figure for her because, you know, she doesn't seem to have a father. And she also becomes pretty close to José Turbi. Again, she wins him over, too, because she's such a charming, charming little girl. And, of course, this is an early movie for José Turbi, who was a very famous Spanish pianist and conductor, a huge star in his day. Not too well-known now, even to classical musicians, unless people who are a little older or who really have studied. But he was the first classical musician to sell a million records. Wow. And I think it was largely because of his involvement in Hollywood. Yeah. He was very much a purist about music. He didn't like to play classical music in other styles, like making it jazzy or something like that. He didn't agree with that. He was an excellent jazz or blues pianist, even though, again, he didn't really like that. Very strict classical, but he was just so talented. And he's the kind of musician that he can do anything. Yes. He just doesn't necessarily choose to. And it's amazing to see him playing the piano and conducting with one hand. I think my favorite moment was in a rehearsal. Usually, he just conducts from the piano. Yes. So with one hand, he was playing, and then he really wanted to get the orchestra together when they first came in. So he got up and was conducting, and then he ran back to me, like, I have to play now. Yes, he does that several times. He made, I think, seven or eight movies from the early-ish 40s to the late 40s. Yeah. And all of them were produced by Joe Pasternak, highlighting Mr. Pasternak's great respect and admiration for classical music. Definitely. As a Hungarian and a European, he wanted to bring that culture to America, and he helped do that with these classical music-infused films that he made. And, well, two stipulations, actually, that Aturbi had in his contract was, one, he always had to be billed as himself, even if he was interacting with a bunch of fictional characters. And, two, he always had to be a positive character. He could never be something villainous, especially since he was playing himself. He could never be an evil pianist. No evil conductors here. He seems a little gruff at first, and I think the kind of serious and even short-tempered nature you see in this role is more like his real character than some of his other parts because sometimes he's extremely good-natured, but a lot of times he's not bad-natured, he's not mean or anything, but, you know, he's trying to get this orchestra together. It's tough. He's just a very serious musician, but you quickly see that he's a very kind man and he has a very touching moment, first with the little girl. Of course, he's horrified when she wanders out onto the stage in the middle of a concert. But then when he realizes that she's trying to help her sister, like bringing a stool to her, and he sort of deduces that she's expecting a child, his heart is softened, drawing on his real background, that he was a father and grandfather by this point, a widower, so he didn't have a wife anymore. But then he also shares a very touching moment with Babs later as he's playing Claire de Lune in his room and she stops in the doorway and she starts crying because that was the song that she shared with her husband and she's so moved because she hasn't heard from him in months. And he really consoles her and then he starts playing a more cheerful Chopin piece to cheer her up. But interestingly, discussing Claire de Lune, it's earlier on played by this classical harmonica player, Larry Adler, which those aren't two words you expect to go together, classical harmonica. But he was a really interesting specialty performer. I've seen him in one other film, Three Daring Daughters, also with José Torbi. Yes, and another Pesternak production. Right, and he is... It's amazing how he plays the harmonica. It sounds like a different instrument. Just a very, very unusual specialty performer and so talented. And he has some lines in this too, so he gets to be an actor and he has that scene, it's quite touching. Not a song you would expect to hear on harmonica, but it's very lovely. And I believe Henry Koster heard some lesser harmonica player and he was like, I want harmonicans, and he wanted to fire him, but Pesternak, I believe, insisted. No, no, no, he's really good. And it's interesting whenever those two work together, Koster and Pesternak, because they were old friends from Europe and they immigrated to the United States around the same time. In fact, Pesternak helped bring Koster over to help him avoid the Nazi uprising because they both were Jewish. And like I said, they'd worked on the European unit of Universal Pictures. So then they came to America together and they were all good friends, they and their wives, and he kind of got him a start at Universal as a director and then they both ended up working at MGM later. So whenever they worked together, you can see that close bond of their friendship, how they were really able to make these beautiful films with a lot of heart, a lot of sentiment, but always a positive feel-good kind of ending because Pesternak said he didn't want to make movies about people getting sick and dying, he wanted it to be something that could leave you with a good feeling, something very beautiful. Especially during very hard times. Yes, especially during the war. And it's not exaggerated propaganda like people like to say about the war films, it's a realistic view of what life was like and focusing on a few individuals. What's kind of an interesting and really beautiful theme in this film that you don't necessarily expect going into it is it actually has a very strong religious theme. Not heavy-handed or preaching in any way, but just this simple faith of a child. Mike is so, she's a very strong Christian and her older sister Babs is like, I haven't prayed since I was your age, but she kind of brings that faith back to her. Yeah, she seems to kind of take it upon herself. She always, when she's afraid or concerned, she has her Saint Christopher medal and she teaches her sister how to pray, how to just simply ask for Joe to come back. And she's always going to church around the corner and praying and she says sometimes you can give up things. She offers up things. And she just loves ice cream, but she gives up eating ice cream and offers that up for Joe to come back and ultimately see her faith be rewarded. And in the scene when Babs is having her baby, that sweet scene with Jimmy Durante's character, he's talking about the stork bringing the baby and she says the stork doesn't bring babies, an angel brings babies. Yes. This is one of my favourite roles that Margaret O'Brien plays. And looking back at the golden era of Hollywood, we see some really great child actors, both male and female. And I think when naming child actresses, Margaret O'Brien has to be right at the top of the list as one of the greatest, if not the greatest. Well, this year in 1944, the Academy Award ceremony after this, she won a special Honorary Academy Award for all her performances that year because she was in so many great films. Yes, this was right around the same time as Meet Me in St. Louis. And she made Jane Eyre that year and a couple of others. Bob Hope had to lift her up to the microphone so she could... Make her accept his speech. Make her accept his speech and he said, will you hurry and grow up? She made a few films as a, you know, like teenage or young adult actress, but she really had her heyday as a child actress. And when talking about child actors or actresses, you tend to see the dark side because so many of them just had a really rough life because... And still do. And still do, throughout the history of Hollywood and probably all performing arts. It's considered to kind of go along with it when you get to be about 18 or so, you start drinking and getting into trouble. Very happily, that was never the case with Margaret O'Brien. Her mother was such a great supporter of her and even now she goes around, does interviews as she's in her late 80s. And she has such a happy, positive view of what her time in Hollywood was like. She just had so much fun. She was friends with everybody. She would play jokes with them and just have a great time on the set with everyone. And you see that joy she had in all her movies. Right. So it was just acting when she was crying. It wasn't stemming from any deep-seated misery. So she was not a method actress. No, because her mother took care of her and made sure she never was in any bad situations. Right. And she looked out for her, made sure she got the pay she deserved and enough time off so she could have... That's a good childhood. All that it takes for someone to not have a bad experience as a child in any performing arts, you just... If your parents or even one parent really looks out for you, and what mainly usually happens and goes wrong is if the child's sort of neglected in that. Or exploited. A lot of times it's the parents who just see the meal ticket there. Mm-hmm. And I think that's true of any situation, any profession. There just aren't many opportunities in these days for children to be in any business besides acting. Right. Because child labor sort of isn't allowed anymore. But acting is an exception. Acting is an exception. So it's very easy for that to be exploited. Right. But it's good to see a case like Margaret O'Brien where she didn't have that situation and just what a cute, charming job she does. But she doesn't overplay the cutesiness. Definitely. As opposed to Shirley Temple. Nothing against Shirley Temple, but she was a little more on the cutesy side, a little more formulaic. It's more about the fact that she's a little girl. Yes. But Margaret O'Brien was a really serious actress. She was right alongside those top performers. Yes. She's really getting top billing in Toronto. In a cast of very mature and well-seasoned actors. And she was a very well-regarded actress as a result. And I love this movie for her, and it's just a very heartwarming film, as well as a great film about all these women bonding during a difficult time. Right. My outfit is inspired primarily by the fashion worn by Babs, June Allison's character. She wears increasingly loose-fitting garments during her pregnancy, but most of the girls are usually wearing very tailored suits, as was a popular style in the 40s, with simple hats such as this and sensible shoes. My outfit is also inspired by the tailored wartime suit fashion which most of the young ladies wear throughout the film. It's particularly inspired by an outfit which Marcia Hunt wears. She wears a pillbox hat with it, sensible black shoes, and larger earrings. This is very much a film of its time because it was made during World War II, and it was very real and moving for people in those days, about this orchestra that tours around and performs for all these different camps, all these different soldiers. And you can tell some of the footage interspersed is real soldiers watching live music being played, as opposed to the ones where they're the actors. But despite that, I think there are messages and themes in it which are very relevant today. It also helps you get into the whole understanding what life was like during the war. Yes, I find especially Battle of the Homefront stories, films from the World War II era, is so fascinating. It's like a time capsule, a window into what life was really like, even more than combat films. Right. It was less of an everyday experience. And more films made after the war about it or about combat. That's a really good point. Everybody wants to make war films about that, and there'd be the occasional there was a wife back home. But very few people make Homefront movies later because it's sort of like a difficult time you don't necessarily want to remember. Right. Because of the rationing, the people doing strange jobs. And during the war, everyone was seeing so many newsreels of actual combat footage. Right. That was husbands, fathers, brothers. They made some, but at some point, it's like, do you want to go and see a movie about all the horrors that are going on overseas? So sometimes I think these ones are like, you can relate to this. These are the same struggles you're having, but look, it can turn out all right. I think that's more what was more uplifting and maybe more what people needed to see or wanted to see at the time. And still today, I think that people of all ages, and this could be a film that younger children, especially girls, would especially like because there's this really prominent young girl. You could really relate to her part. But people of all ages, I think, can be inspired by this movie's messages of the powers of friendship, faith, and music. This film is widely available. You can rent or purchase it on Amazon Prime Video. You can also buy it on DVD in very beautiful, clear black-and-white copies. We usually only discuss films from the code era, which is, of course, 1934 to 1954, when the Motion Picture Production Code was properly enforced by the Production Code Administration. However, we will make an occasional exception for a special film. Join us next time as we talk about a pre-code film, the first one we've discussed, which is very delicate, tasteful, and artistic because it is based on the same story as one of the most famous and beloved operas. Thank you for watching. Goodbye.