Exclusive“Luxury Liner” (1948): Music, Romance, and Adventure on the High Seas

To sing, for in her heart was spring, The merriness of May was in her voice and she was gay. The sunshine from the sky was smiling in her eye. Then winter came to chill her heart with war and pain to fill her heart. But winters come and go and spring returns to melt the snow. Spring came back to Vienna to bloom again. Spring came back with the lilacs, the fume again. Songs that sang in the winter are ringing in the air. People are singing everywhere. There will be waltzes and laughter and love ever after. For spring came back to Vienna to dry her tears. Spring has always come back for a thousand years. She'll powder her face and be lovely as before. In Vienna, in Vienna, it is spring once more. I finished packing your suitcase, Polly. Thanks. I put your gym shorts in. I don't think I'll need them in Rio. Well, you might want them on the boat. That's true. I guess I better bring them. I'll bet Miss Fenmore was furious when you told her you were going to miss the final exams. What did she say? Nothing. Nothing? No. Then you haven't told her. Well, not yet. Polly Bradford, are you going? Well, of course I'm going. Does your father know you are? Well, not yet. But I'm sure he'll take me with him. Of course, I may have to sell him on the idea. But just you wait. I will be on that luxury liner. I'm Tiffany Brannan. I'm Rebecca Brannan. Welcome to Real Thoughts on Cinema. There's something about talented young singers that really fascinates people. Sprightly young soprani are particularly popular, as is evidenced recently by the young singer Jackie Evancho. This trend really flourished in classic Hollywood, particularly under the direction of producer Joe Pasternak. The last of his musical protégés was Jane Powell, who was very popular in the post-World War II era, making many musicals. Our personal favourite of her many musical films is Luxury Liner from 1948. This is the story of a 16-year-old girl named Polly Bradford who is passionate about opera singing, but is sad that she doesn't get to spend much time with her widower father, who is a sea captain. She determines to remedy this by stowing away on the luxury liner ship which he is captaining to South America. Her father is very disappointed that she disobeyed him, so he puts her to work scrubbing floors, peeling potatoes and generally earning her keep on the ship. She isn't content to just scrub floors, though. She quickly starts making mischief, matchmaking for a nice lady she meets on the boat, Laura Deen, and befriending her hero opera singer Olaf Erikson. Along the way, her father finds romance with the beautiful Laura Deen, and his daughter goes back and forth between helping and hindering him as she sings her way across the seas. This film was made by MGM. It was produced by Joe Pasternak, directed by Richard Worf, and stars Jane Powell, George Brent, and Frances Gifford. First and foremost, this movie is a Joe Pasternak film. Absolutely. He's my favorite producer from the Golden Era, and the reason is that he highlighted classical music, and popular music, too. The really interesting thing about him was that I think he brought the old-world style of Europe to America and then combined it with the best of Hollywood to make just very enjoyable, light-hearted movies which weren't goofy, but they were just really romantic and fun. In the way that directors are so famous for their style now, but then it was more of producers and production units that had their definite style, and Pasternak's production unit was definitely one of the strongest in terms of having its own sort of genre. Yeah, it did. At MGM, I'd say in the 1940s, that studio was the top musical studio. And the number one unit was the Freed unit, Arthur Freed. He made movies like Singing in the Rain. But the second most important musical unit was the Pasternak unit. And before he was at MGM, Pasternak got his start at Universal Pictures, making another young singer, Deanna Durbin, a huge star, and really showing that having a teenage girl who is this little opera singer could be an unlikely but very successful vehicle. And he made her a star, he made himself very successful, and he saved Universal Pictures from bankruptcy with her films. Then he went to MGM in 1942 and did the same thing with Kathryn Grayson and then Jane Powell. So Jane Powell was the last because she still was playing 16-year-olds as late as 1950. So this movie is from 1948, right in the middle of her heyday. And she was... She was 19 at this time. But very petite. Very short, very youthful. Very high voice, so she really does... She's very convincing as a 16-year-old. So this movie has everything that is distinctly Pasternak. It has a real classical musician in it, Lortz Melchior, who was a metropolitan opera star. He was this great Heldentenner, so that's like a big Wagnerian tenor. And he made about six Hollywood films, and all of the ones at MGM were produced by Pasternak. He only made six movies. That's amazing. It feels like I've seen more than that with him. Yeah, and then his last film was at Paramount. But the main films he made, made within just a few years, were at MGM in the Pasternak unit. Kind of a little second career for him. It was. He retired from the Met and then he started making these movies. And then you also have some popular groups. Xavier Cugat, with his orchestra, is playing on the ship as entertainment. The Pied Pipers, a popular singing quartet, is also featured. So you have these groups playing themselves and doing their top hits, but it's not just like a bursting into song kind of thing. They actually are providing background music while people are dancing, while dialogue is happening. Which was very realistic at the time. An ocean liner like that would have a couple of name bands on it. And then we have, of course, Jane Powell is the star, who sings a combination of some actual really classical music. She sings an aria from Manon by Massenet, this French aria. But she also sings a medley based on the peanut vendor accompanied by Xavier Cugat. But then she goes into several classical songs, so it's really a great medley and number. And then there's the obligatory Pasternak, semi-classical English song, Spring Came Back to Vienna. Right, which is sort of a tribute to Vienna after World War II, wouldn't you say? Yeah, I would say it is. Which is interesting because when it's first presented, she's performing a little play at her school, which appears to be a period piece. But it's particularly in the intro to the song, which we don't hear until the end of the film, that it references the war. That's right. So it's a little bit like The Last Time I Saw Paris. And I don't know when this song was written, because if you do research, you'll see this was written for this movie. But it's played as background music in Three Daring Daughters, which was a movie she made before this. Same year. Yeah. So possibly it even comes from earlier. Maybe it was just orchestral and they put words to it at this point. It's hard to tell with some of these Pasternak songs. Or it could be a case of this was actually filmed first, but released. No, Three Daring Daughters was filmed first. It was. It definitely was. That's interesting. I would say the fact that it's featured so prominently, people incorrectly think it was written for this movie. But it's interesting to see how it's the same kind of style you'll see in many other films by Pasternak. But one thing that I think distinguishes this movie is the fact that it has a very serious, dramatic actor playing her father. George Brent. Yes. People who are familiar with Warner Brothers dramas will recognize him from countless Warner Brothers movies back in the 30s. Particularly with Bette Davis. He made so many movies with Bette Davis. He's even in Babyface with Barbara Stanwyck back in 1933. So he was a very serious, dramatic actor who could also do comedy. And in this, he plays her father. So we see his serious side, a bit of some lighter moments, and they have a really great dynamic. As well as then, this is one of the best parts for Francis Gifford, who often would play the second leading lady in MGM films. She's the second lead in at least one Esther Williams movie produced by Pasternak. And I've seen her in a very small part, probably one of her first parts in film back in 1942. But this one is definitely almost a starring part for her. Jane Powell is the leading lady, but she's the mature lead as the leading lady of the leading man, George Brent. And I think this is my favorite, although it's a tussle, but this is one of my favorite movies with Lortz Melchior. Because it's a bigger acting part for him than he often did. Yes, I think his part is really sweet. And he gets to show a lot of range. And just his relationship to Polly, Jane Powell's character, is very sweet. He really plays that mentor to her. He gets to do a lot of comedy. By this point, his English is easier to understand than his first film three years earlier. In this, when he sings Spring Came Back to Vienna, it's one of the only cases where he's singing in English. And you can actually understand most of the words. Because he's just like, okay, you might as well be singing in German. It sounds beautiful, but who knows what you're saying. But you can actually pretty much make out the words. And he sings several good songs in this. He also sings, his first introduction, he's singing an excerpt from Aida in an opera performance. It's a beautiful scene. And then he sings the beautiful Neapolitan tenor aria, Come Back to Sorrento, or Torna e Sorrento, which, if you're familiar with classical music, you might recognize that Pavarotti sang it. It's a really catchy tune. And he sings it very dramatically. He also sings a German song while he's accompanying himself on the piano one morning. And then a Scandinavian drinking song. Yes, so this is a lot of music for him. A great example of really the finest held tenor of the 20th century. To see him up close and personal, singing in multiple languages, acting, being himself. Would you say it was kind of a new step for him in his film career that he did more Italian? He did primarily the German repertoire in his actual operatic career? I would say that's true. He made recordings of some Italian songs. He didn't really play them because he was noted for having bad diction in basically any language except German or his native language, which was Danish. So he could sing any Scandinavian language very well. He has a German accent when he sings Italian. There's no two ways about it. But the music is gorgeous. As far as I know, he never played a lead in an Italian opera at the Met. I know in the early days in Germany he did do a few Italian operas, more as a supporting character. But yes, he did do songs, excerpts, on record and then on film that he probably wouldn't have done just on the stage. His very first introduction in his debut film was singing the famous Aria Vesti la Giubba from Pagliacci. He sang that on the radio, he made recordings of that, but I don't think he ever played that role. There were so many Italian tenors at the time, or even American, who would have been just more convincing in that style. He sings everything a little on the German side, just vocally. If you're familiar with the vocal style, it's not even just his diction. The way he is singing it is with the German technique, so it sounds more like Wagner than Verdi. But it is fascinating to not only hear, but to see what he's doing with his body as he's singing. Now, speaking of opera singers, his leading lady in this film is Marina Koschetz, who is a Russian soprano, and she's sort of like the standard comical, over-the-top soprano, sort of like Carlotta in Phantom of the Opera. She's very funny. She is funny. She was a real opera singer. She was well-trained in Russia. She even had family ties to Rimsky-Korsakov with training. I believe he taught her piano back in Russia. And she sings the Aida part with him. The main other thing she does is a very comical rendition of the Cole Porter standard, I've Got You Under My Skin, which is just meant to be a joke, and it's hilarious. While showing off her Rimsky-Korsakov-trained piano technique. She's actually playing it. It's very good. That's just a really funny moment, and she's hilarious and a great comical character. The first time we saw this film, it was interesting seeing her in this large acting part, because I think the only other thing we've seen her do is she's in Two Sisters from Boston, again with Laurence Malachiara, that starred Katharine Grayson, but she just appears in an opera sequence. That's right. She just sings. With this, she's probably the third female lead, and she spends most of the voyage chasing Jeremy around the ship. This is the biggest acting part that I've ever seen her do, and it was definitely one of the biggest acting parts of her career. Partly because she did have a strong accent, she was mainly a singer, but like Laurence Malachiara, opera singers do have to act in a different way than movie actors, so especially when playing opera singers, they can play themselves very well, and sort of a stereotype of themselves. But I love that in these Pasternak films, they gently poke at the stereotypes without being offensive in the way that some later films were, because they also show the talent and the discipline that goes along with it. And I love that as an opera singer, but I think this movie is just a really fun time. And there's one little behind-the-scenes bit of trivia that has always made me love it, and that's Polly's love interest. Now again, she's still very young here, so her romance is very much secondary or even third. Her main objective is her relationship with her father, and she's that kind of 16-year-old that she's sort of in love with every man. So it's not... she says he's just a passing fancy, but he definitely would be called her love interest. So her love interest is a young officer on the ship who is Dennis Mulvey, and he's played by the actor Thomas E. Breen. Now if you've seen several of our shows before, you might recognize the name Breen. Joseph I. Breen was the head of the Production Code Administration from 1934 to 1954, and Thomas Breen was his youngest child. He had six children, and Tommy Breen was the youngest child. And the interesting thing about him was that like all three of his sons, he served in World War II, and he was a Marine who served in the Guadalcanal, and he was very badly injured. He actually lost one of his legs, and they feared for his life at one point. There's a family photograph of him in a hospital bed in Honolulu as he was recovering, and Spencer Tracy is sitting at his bedside, and you think, oh, this is from a movie. He's like, no, Spencer Tracy was a close family friend, and so he was very concerned about this young man who was probably like a nephew to him. Tommy was very young when he was serving in the war. But then after the war, he was interested in becoming an actor, and he got his start in playing supporting parts in MGM films, like Pasternak films, because Joe Pasternak was a close friend of the Breen family. That's why we watched this movie in the first place. That is why we watched this movie, yes, because of Tommy Breen. This is one of the biggest parts that Tommy Breen had in a Hollywood film. He often would make a walk-on part or a brief speaking role, but he's pretty consistently throughout this movie, and he's a very Irish-looking, handsome young man with nice red hair. But if you know what Joseph Breen looked like, you can see the family resemblance. He's a good actor. He's very serious and very sincere. Of course, his biggest role was in what was technically a British film, The River, in 1951, in which he actually played a veteran who had lost his leg. But in this movie, you don't even notice it. Obviously, he had a prosthetic leg, and he walks around just fine. But it's so interesting to see the whole Hollywood behind the scenes. And I think the movies of Joe Pasternak are a great example of what Hollywood could achieve in the Breen era. These movies that were fun, but sentimental, combining that old-style art. And Hollywood fully embraced that light-hearted family style during the Breen era in a way that it really didn't in other time periods. Right, and it also was a very gentle way of bringing classical music, and particularly operatic music, to a wider audience. It's not in any way what anyone would be turned off by, I don't think. It's just kind of... He just puts it in there, and you see it through Polly's eyes, and she's so passionate about it. It makes you love it. Yeah, it's very cute, and this movie is a good example of the kind of wholesome entertainment which Pasternak loved. He always said that he was proud during his long career that he'd never make a film that the whole family couldn't enjoy. Films that were happy and uplifting. And I think that's one reason why he was good friends with Joseph Breen. A lot of the Breen family's friends were fellow Irish actors, producers, known as the Irish Mafia in Hollywood. But Joe Pasternak is a good example of the fact that they weren't just friends with other Irish people because Pasternak was a Hungarian Jew, so he really didn't have any ethnic similarities or any religious background, but they had a similar family mindset and enjoying a good time. And being immigrants to the United States. Because Mr. Breen's parents had been immigrants. So there's that family feel. Tommy Breen fits really well into that whole mode. And this movie really shows just the beauty of ocean travel at the time. As the war was over and people were now able to travel to Europe, travel to South America, travel again. And a lot of movies around this time were about ocean liners. And so this really shows just how fun it was during the golden age of the cruise ship. The luxury ocean liner. And what goes along with that is the style. The dressing up and changing your clothes many times a day to go to the salon, to fine dining, to see different performances. And that's really part of the joy of this film. My outfit is based on the second costume which we see Laura Dean, played by Frances Gifford, wear when Polly first meets her. It is a short sleeved suit matching coat and skirt with simple gold jewelry. And in the first scene when we see her, she's wearing a long sleeved suit, but she's wearing a broad brimmed hat. My outfit is inspired by the many evening gowns which Polly wears. Particularly her first night as a passenger on the ship. It is a pink lacy dress, the full skirt like this, mesh at the top. And she has simple but fancy accent jewelry and a fancy hairstyle for the occasion. I think the term family film has come to take on kind of an odd meaning. So when we say a family film, often times we mean a film that is specifically geared toward children, or a cartoon, or a fairytale, something like that. But I think a lot of the movies made under the code really exemplify what a family film really should be. It means it's mature enough that adults will enjoy it, but then it also has a prominently featured young character like Jane Powell's. It's bright and colorful and a lot of fun. It's not too long. It always keeps your interest. And also this film is actually about family. It shows this they have their rough spots but this really loving relationship between this man and his daughter. To see a character like that without a mother. She has a very unique and special connection to her father because of that. And then how Laura kind of becomes part of the family. See, they're going to get married, so Polly's going to have a mother again. So I think this really exemplifies what we should consider a family film. Yes, it does. You can find some of the best family films ever made from the golden era of Hollywood. And it's always enjoyable to watch the bright technicolor musicals of the late 1940s during this period of peace after we'd won one war and there was prosperity in America, so it was a great time for music and travel and movies like Luxury Liner. This film isn't available for streaming at this time, except on the online Russian streaming platform OK.ru but you can buy it in many clear copies on DVD as it's been remastered by Warner Archives and you can find these DVDs on Amazon, at Barnes & Noble and from Walmart. There are some stories which seem to inspire countless adaptations. In such cases, three seems to be the magic number when it comes to film versions. Such is the case with our next topic. Beginning as a European play, it inspired three films and a Broadway musical. Join us next time as we talk about the film that started it all. Thank you for watching! Goodbye!