The Unsinkable Molly Brown *** (1964, Debbie Reynolds, Harve Presnell, Ed Begley, Jack Kruschen, Hermione Baddeley, Martita Hunt) – Classic Movie Review 10,467

‘Can a girl find happiness with $20,000,000? YOU BET!’

Director Charles Walters’s 1964 Broadway show transfer The Unsinkable Molly Brown boasts Debbie Reynolds full of beans as the real-life mining-camp tomboy Molly Brown, who climbs the social ladder to become a millionairess and is a heroine of the HMS Titanic disaster in 1912.

Harve Presnell re-creates his stage role as her husband in this pleasant latter-day MGM musical with a typical big-budget production and brightish, though not classic, show tune songs by Meredith Willson (‘I Ain’t Down Yet’, ‘Belly Up to the Bar, Boys’).

The Unsinkable Molly Brown also boasts carefree performances, with welcome support players you would not necessarily expect to find here: Ed Begley, Jack Kruschen, Hermione Baddeley, Martita Hunt, Audrey Christie and Harvey Lembeck.

Helen Deutsch’s screenplay provides a fictionalized biopic of course.

The film’s big US success was not repeated elsewhere. It was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Actress, but there were no wins. Presnell won a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer – Male.

It runs 128 minutes, or 135 minutes in the version with Overture and Exit Music that shows on TCM.

It is shot in Panavision and Metrocolor.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,467

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