So This Is Love

Director: Gordon Douglas Gordon Douglas

Overview

This tuneful biography of operatic soprano Grace Moore begins as she prepares to perform on opening night. While awaiting her entrance cue, she reflects upon her life and the sequence of events that led her from a humble childhood in Tennessee to becoming one of the brightest stars in the opera world. Songs include "The Kiss Waltz," "Remember," "I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate" and "La Boheme."

Product Details

Release Date:	03/23/2009
UPC:	0883316127186
Original Release:	1953
Rating:	NR
Source:	Warner Archives
Presentation:	[Full Frame]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:40:00
Sales rank:	42,762

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Kathryn Grayson	Grace Moore
Merv Griffin	Buddy Nash
Joan Weldon	Ruth Obre
Walter Abel	Col. Moore
Rosemary DeCamp	Aunt Laura Stokley
Jeff Donnell	Henrietta Van Dyke
Douglas Dick	Bryan Curtis
Ann Doran	Mrs. Moore
Margaret Field	Edna Wallace
Mabel Albertson	Mary Garden
Fortunio Bonanova	Dr. Marafioti
Marie Windsor	Marilyn Montgomery
Noreen Corcoran	Grace Moore at 8
Lillian Bronson	Mrs. Wilson Green
Ray Kellogg	John McCormack
Roy Gordon	Otto Kahn
Moroni Olsen	Arnold Reuben
Mario Siletti	Gatti Casazza
Charles Meredith	Arthur Bodansky
Bill Boyett	George Gershwin

Technical Credits

Henry Blanke	Producer
Gordon Douglas	Director

Editorial Reviews

So This Is Love may be about love, but it's not about Grace Moore, its putative subject. Like 99% of the Hollywood biopics from cinema's "golden era," Love plays fast and loose with the truth -- and like almost all of those biopics, the story that it comes up with is terribly mundane and much less interesting than the truth. Since this is standard practice, one must therefore depend upon some extra special something to make Love stand out, to make it have been worth making in the first place -- presumably, a dazzling star turn. Unfortunately, what Love gets with Kathryn Grayson is merely a well-sung but far from commanding performance. Grayson is playing Grayson, pure and simple, and while she has a number of appealing qualities -- an appropriate voice and vocal range, good looks, some very nice musical phrasing -- she simply isn't Grace Moore. Grayson acquits herself very well with her range of operatic numbers, but she doesn't perform them in a manner that helps us to understand the legend that was Moore. And she can't switch gears as easily with the "pop" numbers, the way Moore did. It's perhaps unfair to expect Grayson to be able to do this; but on the other hand, why bother with a film like this if the star can't either approximate the original or add something truly new and fresh?

All Movie Guide - Craig Butler