The young Benny Goodman is taught clarinet by a Chicago music professor. He is advised by bandleader Kid Ory to play whichever kind of music he likes best, but to make a living, Benny begins by joining the Ben Pollack traveling band.
David Marshall Williams is sent to a prison farm where he works in the tool shop and eventually develops the precursor of the famous M-1 Carbine automatic rifle used in World War II.
Charles 'Slim' Lindbergh struggles to finance and design an airplane that will make his New York to Paris flight the first solo transatlantic crossing.
Director:
Billy Wilder
Stars:
James Stewart,
Murray Hamilton,
Patricia Smith
Indecisive heiress Dee Dee Dillwood is pushed into marrying her sixth fiancée, but unable to face the wedding night, she flees into the adjacent hotel room of commercial pilot Marvin Payne,... See full summary »
The unemployed trombone player Glenn Miller is always broken, chasing his sound to form his band and hocking his instrument in the pawn house to survive. When his friend Chummy MacGregor is hired to play in the band of Ben Pollack, the band-leader listens to one Glenn's composition and invites him to join his band. While traveling to New York, Glenn visits his former girlfriend Helen Berger, in Boulder, Colorado, and asks her to wait for him. Two years later he quits the band and proposes Helen that moves to New York to marry him. After the success of "Moonlight Serenade", Glenn Miller's band becomes worldwide known and Glenn and Helen and their two children have a very comfortable life. Duting the World War II, Glenn enlists in the army and travels to Europe to increase the moral of the allied troops. In the Christmas of 1944, he travels from London to Paris for a concert to be broadcast; however his plane is never found in the tragic flight.Written by
Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Decca's ten-inch, eight-track soundtrack LP, ascending to #1 on the "Billboard" album chart in March 1954, omitted the teaming of Frances Langford (in her last film) with The Modernaires (in their last picture) on the classic train song, "Chattanooga Choo Choo" (music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Mack Gordon). The audio has been restored on an import CD of the soundtrack, courtesy of the Pid label. In connection with the film's release, Coral Records, a Decca subsidiary, had The Modernaires record two medleys of Glenn Miller hits, released on both sides of a 45-rpm single, which charted up to #29 in "Billboard" during 1954. The quintet's Miller tribute can be enjoyed on a 1998 Modernaires CD from Varese Sarabande called "Singin' and Swingin'." In 1956 the Decca soundtrack album was expanded into a 12-inch LP, adding two studio cuts by Louis Armstrong and The All Stars, "Basin Street Blues" (music and lyrics by Spencer Williams) and "Otchi-Tchor-Ni-Ya" (music by Florian Herrmanns, improvised lyrics by Louis Armstrong). The second Armstrong ditty had not been performed by him in the movie. Towards the end of 1958 Decca reissued the soundtrack LP in true stereo. See more »
Goofs
At a performance at a British airfield, engine nacelles housing the B-29's Wright R-3350 Duplex Cyclone engines can be seen in the hangar behind a B-17. No aircraft using these engines were in the Eastern Theater of Operations in WWII. See more »
James Stewart in one of his best roles of the 1950s playing the late bandleader in the embellished story of his life; June Allyson plays his wife one of her best roles and I believe one of her personal favourites.
Watching the real Miller in Orchestra Wives' and then watching this, Stewart is really a revelation in this role. All the hits of the band are represented Moonlight Serenade, In The Mood, Tuxedo Junction, Chattanooga Choo-Choo, Pennsylvania 65000. Some artistic licence has been taken but the whole is funny, celebratory, and at the end fairly touching. One of the best Hollywood biopics, right in the middle of a glut of them (Love Me or Leave Me, With a Song In My Heart, The Eddy Duchin Story, Night and Day, Words and Music, Three Little Words ).
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James Stewart in one of his best roles of the 1950s playing the late bandleader in the embellished story of his life; June Allyson plays his wife one of her best roles and I believe one of her personal favourites.
Watching the real Miller in Orchestra Wives' and then watching this, Stewart is really a revelation in this role. All the hits of the band are represented Moonlight Serenade, In The Mood, Tuxedo Junction, Chattanooga Choo-Choo, Pennsylvania 65000. Some artistic licence has been taken but the whole is funny, celebratory, and at the end fairly touching. One of the best Hollywood biopics, right in the middle of a glut of them (Love Me or Leave Me, With a Song In My Heart, The Eddy Duchin Story, Night and Day, Words and Music, Three Little Words ).