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so this is love, biographical film, biography, review, biopic

So This Is Love (1953) 

Grace Moore may be credited with helping to popularize opera through her films but her first two projects with MGM, A Lady’s Morals and New Moon, both failed at the box office. It wasn't until she returned to Hollywood a few years later that Columbia Studios found the ideal project for her. One Night of Love not only scored Moore an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, but also spawned a mad search by the studios for photogenic sopranos who could star in their slate of planned operettas.

Not that any of this is covered in So This Is Love starring Kathryn Grayson. Framed by Moore’s debut at the Metropolitan Opera, the film traces her determination to be a famous opera singer (in that order). After running away from home to further her studies, Moore eventually becomes a nightclub singer after winning a contest and a beau on the same night. Yet his demands that Moore abandon her dreams and marry him coincides with her suffering from a chronic case of laryngitis. Unfortunately her tutor’s orders to rest her voice for three months doesn’t extend to silencing Grayson’s endless voiceover narration.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s an extraordinary voice, one that is put to good use in her rendition of Mimi's Aria from La Bohème. Yet the selection and staging of the film’s more popular songs, including 'Memories' and 'Remember', are instantly forgettable. The one exception is 'I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate', but that has more to do with Walter Abel’s amusing performance as Moore’ father. The pedestrian nature of the enterprise extends to the treatment of Moore’s fictitious romances where, having dispensed with a merely serviceable Merv Griffin, the film executes a rinse and repeat on Moore’s second romance.

Though she paved the way for cinema sopranos, including RKO’s Lily Pons and Paramount’s Gladys Swarthout and Mary Ellis, Moore’s film career ended when the operetta craze petered out in the late 1930’s. Only Jeanette MacDonald, who replaced Moore at MGM when she proved unavailable for The Merry Widow and Rose Marie, is remembered by most cinephiles today.

Kathryn Grayson, Grace Moore, Mabel Albertson, Mary Garden
fact check, factcheck, fact vs fiction, inaccuracies, true story

Grace Moore’s stage debut was not interrupted by the Armistice being signed. According to her autobiography You’re Only Human Once, she was in a restaurant with her school friends.

The character of Marilyn Montgomery is based on actress Julia Sanderson.

Ray Kellogg, John McCormackWilliam Boyett, George Gershwin
biopic

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