"A Song is Born" (1948)

A Song is Born (1948) is a remake of Ball of Fire (1941), and both were directed by Howard Hawks!  Or, rather, they're both based on the story "From A to Z" by Billy Wilder and Thomas Monroe.  They both have the same basic plot but, while Ball of Fire is a screwball comedy, A Song is Born is a musical comedy.  Although I enjoy the former more than most screwballs, I really do prefer the latter in nearly every way.  We'll get to that.

Like the earlier film, this is basically a retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, only it's about a nightclub singer on the run who seeks refuge with seven professors, plus an eighth professor who turns out to be a handsome prince, sort of.

The Totten Foundation is a group of eight musical academics who have been working on a comprehensive encyclopedia of world music.  Whenever their sponsor, Miss Totten (Mary Field, who played the same role in Ball of Fire!!!), threatens to cut off their funding if they don't finish their work soon, the older academics throw Professor Hobart Frisbee (Danny Kaye) in her path.  Miss Totten has a crush on Hobart and is always easily convinced to continue supporting their project if he's the one talking to her.

After spending nine years locked away in an old New York mansion, the professors tell Miss Totten they're nearly finished cataloging, describing, and providing musical examples for every single form of music from Baroque to barbaric.  But then, two window washers (played by the popular duo Buck and Bubbles, aka Ford L. "Buck" Washington and John W. "Bubbles" Sublett) introduce them to jazz music, and the academics have a crisis of conscience.  How can they say their work is finished when they know absolutely nothing about jazz and have not included it in their encyclopedia?

Hobart Frisbee sets out to learn about jazz, swing, Dixie, jive, blues, and everything else jazz-influenced.  He does this by visiting nightclubs all over New York City and listening to a dazzling array of actual musicians and bands, including Louis Armstrong and Tommy Dorsey (but not Benny Goodman because he is playing one of the other professors, the one up there wielding licorice stick).  While he's conducting all this research, Hobart eventually meets a girl.

Like so many Hawks films,  A Song is Born features a female character who has strength, style, determination, and a hidden sweetness that eventually shines through her tough exterior.  Here, it's a nightclub warbler called Honey Swanson (Virginia Mayo) who starts out an opportunistic conniver and winds up a softhearted sweetheart.  Honey's gangster boyfriend Tony Crow (Steve Cochran) is on the lam, avoiding a murder rap, and he tells Honey to find someplace to hide until he can quick marry her so she can't be forced to testify that his alibi for that murder is a phony.

Oh, and her outfit is super-duper similar to what Barbara Stanwyck wears in Ball of Fire too!  I love that touch.  They both have this weird shimmery skirt that's actually just strips of sequined fabric.  Both versions are pretty daring, if you ask me.

Hobart had invited Honey to visit the Totten Foundation to discuss jazz music, and she decides that is the perfect place to hide out.  She plants herself in the midst of all those professors in the middle of the night and refuses to leave until she's been able to educate them.  Musically, of course.

Honey is not the only performer Hobart invited over, she's just the first to arrive.  The next day, a whole lot of the musicians he visited (including Louis Armstrong and Tommy Dorsey) show up, and they play a perfectly delightful array of musical numbers, including the titular ditty "A Song is Born."  If you enjoy jazz, swing, or '40s music at all, you will be delighted by that whole segment.

Naturally, Hobart is dazzled by the glamorous, worldly Honey.  Naturally, she doesn't take him seriously at all.  But Hobart IS serious about her, and proposes.  Meanwhile, Honey's gangster boyfriend wants her to find a way out of the city that won't be spotted by the cops.  She's supposed to meet up with him out in the country for a quickie wedding.  

SPOILERS in the next two paragraphs!!!

Honey tricks Hobart and the other professors into taking her out to a gangster hideout, where she breaks Hobart's heart and Tony Crow smacks him around a bit for good measure.

Somehow, everyone ends up back at the Totten Foundation, including Tony Crow and his henchmen with a very deaf justice of the peace in tow to perform the wedding.  Honey realizes she's in love with Hobart and tries to get out of marrying Crow, but he threatens to have all the professors shot if she doesn't go through with the wedding.  However!  Love and music conquer all -- literally.  The professors use their knowledge of musical vibrations to overcome the gunmen and stop the wedding, and everything ends up happily.

END OF SPOILERS

I mentioned that I don't entirely prefer A Song is Born to Ball of Fire, and that really is only concerning the gangster boyfriend.  Steve Cochran as Tony Crow in this movie is pretty boring and rarely menacing.  He's annoying, and I feel very happy to see him get what he deserves.  But Dana Andrews as Joe Lilac in Ball of Fire is quietly, calmly dangerous, but also handsome and charming, which makes him much more formidable.  But, then, I'm a Dana Andrews fan, so I guess it's not shocking I prefer him.

Is this movie family friendly?  I think so!  There's the mildest of mild suggestiveness in a "mating song" performed toward the beginning, and Honey's nightclub outfit shows a goodly bit of skin.  She also shows off her legs to the professors to dazzle them.  One of the other professors is a widower and tries to give Hobart some marital advice that is very innocent and naïve.  There are a couple of kisses and the threat of violence.  No bad language.  I intend to show it to my kids one of these days.

This has been my contribution to the Danny Kaye Blogathon hosted by Poppity Talks Classic Film :-)