I’ll Be Your Sweetheart *** (1945, Margaret Lockwood, Michael Rennie, Vic Oliver, Peter Graves, Moore Marriott) – Classic Movie Review 11,977

I’ll Be Your Sweetheart (1945).

Writer-director Val Guest’s British 1945 Gainsborough Pictures black and white historical musical film I’ll Be Your Sweetheart stars Margaret Lockwood, Michael Rennie, Vic Oliver, Peter Graves, and Moore Marriott. Music piracy proves an odd but intriguing and useful idea as a peg to hang a musical on. Guest and Valentine’s original story and screenplay tell of the sheet music piracy crisis in the early 20th century, with large parts of their dialogue taken from the raids, court cases and arguments of 1900-1905.

I’ll Be Your Sweetheart is a delightful, enjoyable British homegrown equivalent to those nostalgic 1840s American 20th Century Fox musicals, set in the cut-throat popular music business circa 1900. Commissioned by the British Ministry of Information, it is the first and only musical film produced by Gainsborough Studios.

Margaret Lockwood stars in a most appealing performance as a leading music-hall songbird, Edie Story, while Vic Oliver, Moore Marriott and Jonathan Field are excellent as songwriters Kann, Le Brunn and Kelly, whose income is hit by people who publish their songs without permission or paying royalties.

Also scoring strongly are Michael Rennie and Peter Graves as Bob Fielding and Jim Knight, who, though business and romantic rivals (for the hand of Lockwood), link up to destroy the music pirates.

It’s sweet and done with heart, with a good, pungent flavour of the music business of the long-ago era. The old songs trilled (or at least mimed) by Lockwood include ‘I’ll Be Your Sweetheart’ by Harry Dacre, ‘The Honeysuckle and the Bee’ by W H Penn and A H Fitz, ‘Oh, Mr Porter!’ by Thomas Le Brunn and George Le Brunn, ‘I Wouldn’t Leave My Little Wooden Hut’ by Tom Mellor and Charlies Collins, and ‘Liza Johnson’ by George Le Brunn and Edgar Bateman. Maudie Edwards plays Mrs Jones and provides Lockwood’s singing voice.

Also in the film, the songs ‘I’m Banking Everything On You’, ‘Sooner or Later’ and ‘Mary Anna’ are written by Manning Sherwin and Val Guest.

Moore Marriott is one of the stars of the 1937 film gem Oh, Mr Porter!

Val Guest was a former songwriter and familiar with the real-life copyright battles of Abbott and Preston in the early 1900s.

The film performed well at the British box office in 1945 and was one of the year’s UK hits. But Gainsborough were not tempted into making any more musicals.

British film executive Maurice Ostrer (1896–1975) is best known for overseeing the Gainsborough melodramas as head of production at Gainsborough Studios from 1943 to 1946. Seven of the ten films Maurice Ostrer was directly responsible for executive producer were big box-office successes, and this is one of them.

Maurice Ostrer’s films as executive producer: Love Story (1944), Madonna of the Seven Moons (1944), A Place of One’s Own (1944), They Were Sisters (1945), I’ll Be Your Sweetheart (1945), The Wicked Lady (1945), The Magic Bow (1946), Caravan (1946), The Root of All Evil (1947), and Idol of Paris (1948).

The cast are Margaret Lockwood as Edie Story, Vic Oliver as Sam Kahn, Michael Rennie as Bob Fielding, Peter Graves as Jim Knight, Moore Marriott as George Le Brunn, Frederick Burtwell as Pacey, Garry Marsh as Wallace, George Merritt as T.P. O’Connor, Muriel George as Mrs. Le Brunn, Ella Retford as Dresser, Joss Ambler as Dugan, Eliot Makeham as John Friar, Maudie Edwards as Mrs. Jones, Jonathan Field as Kelly, Deryck Guyler as Politician, Gordon McLeod as Prime Minister, Arthur Young as Judge, Dave Crowley as 1st. Henchman, Alf Goddard as 2nd. Henchman, Jack Vyvian as 3rd Henchman, Ella Retford, and Arthur Mullard.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 11,977

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