Interrupted Melody **** (1955, Glenn Ford, Eleanor Parker, Roger Moore, Cecil Kellaway) – Classic Movie Review 495

Oscar nominated Eleanor Parker gives a most touching performance in one of the highpoints of her career as real-life Australian opera diva Marjorie Lawrence who, after her debut at the Paris Opera and at the Met in New York, establishes a reputation as one of the great singers of her time.

But then disaster strikes as she contracts polio and hits the depths of despair facing a life of confinement to a wheelchair. But she manages through the devotion of her husband Dr Thomas King (Glenn Ford) to forge a successful comeback in a new career singing to servicemen also confined to wheelchairs. Roger Moore plays Cyril Lawrence and Cecil Kellaway plays Bill Lawrence.

Thanks to the sleek performances and the painstaking, craftsmanlike, devoted work all round, director Curtis Bernhardt’s 1955 biographical film for MGM studios is still an extremely enjoyable old-style heart-lifter and spirit-raiser. It is Parker’s show all the way but Glenn Ford is on top form too as the husband.

William Ludwig and Sonya Levien won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay (based on the life story by Marjorie Lawrence). Eileen Farrell performs Parker’s vocals in eight beautiful arias – from Verdi, Puccini, Richard Wagner and Bizet’s Carmen. Amusingly, Farrell plays a singing student of Mme Gilly (Ann Codee) who cannot seem to hit the right notes.

Ford agreed to a star support role only on condition he got top billing, which really belonged to Parker, who said he repeatedly tried to upstage her by walking away from her, forcing her to turn her back to the camera to interact with him. MGM queen Greer Garson was to play the role, but the film was postponed till after she left MGM and one month later Parker was cast.

Also in the cast are Stephen Bekassy, Peter Leeds, Evelyn Ellis, Walter Baldwin, Doris Lloyd and Leopold Sachse as himself.

Eleanor Parker, best remembered for playing the Baroness Elsa Schraeder, the rich woman who loses the love of Captain Von Trapp to Maria in The Sound of Music, died on 9 December 2013, aged 91.

Parker won three Oscar nominations in six years, as a naive 19-year-old who transforms into a hardened convict in Caged (1950), as Kirk Douglas’s wife with a secret in William Wyler’s film noir Detective Story (1951) and here in Interrupted Melody.

Roger Moore ((1927–2017).

RIP beloved Roger Moore.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 494

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com