UK music
1934
bw 90 min.
Director: Victor Saville
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           1 disc, catalog # CC1356L
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But for the recalcitrance of RKO, Evergreen could have been the
finest of Fred Astaire's movies. Instead, it was never an Astaire
film, but "merely" the best musical ever made in England, and the
finest film of the legendary Jessie Matthews (1907-81), the queen of
the London musical stage.
Matthews' was a true Cinderella story. One
of 13 children of a Soho fruit vendor, she suffered a childhood marred
by dire poverty. She started dancing soon after learning to walk, and
her formal education ended at age 12 when she began working in
vaudeville. In 1923, she appeared in the Music Box Revue, during which
she so charmed Irving Berlin that he gave her "I Want to Go Back to
Michigan" as a featured number.
Matthews' association with Richard
Rodgers and Lorenz Hart began with One Damn Thing After
Another, a 1928 production of London impresario Charles
B. Cochran, for which the two wrote "My Heart Stood Still." In 1930,
Cochran began looking for a new vehicle to star both Matthews and her
soon-to-be-husband, Sonnie Hale, and Rodgers and Hart devised the
entire show. It was Hart who thought of the idea of a young woman
switching identities with her mother -- which evolved, with help from
author Benn Levy, into a story about the younger woman becoming a
singing star in Paris.
Rodgers and Hart turned in a bumper crop of
good songs for the show, entitled Ever Green, including
"Dancing on the Ceiling" (which had been dropped from an earlier
show), "Dear, Dear" (which the newly married Rodgers wrote for his
wife Dorothy), and "If I Give In to You." Ever Green was also
notable for its use of a rotating stage and a set designed as an
upside-down ceiling, complete with chandelier, for "Dancing on the
Ceiling."
Matthews' movie career took off in 1932 when she appeared
in the movie version of J. B. Priestley's The Good Companions,
directed by Victor Saville. Meeting Saville was fortuitous, for not
only did his coaching result in Matthews' best performance to date,
but he was a filmmaker with vision and ambition. Evergreen, as
the play was renamed or the screen, was their tour de force.
Nearly
a dozen Rodgers and Hart numbers were jettisoned for the film, partly
because of major changes in plot and setting, but the three key songs
remained, and a fourth, "In the Cool of the Evening," appeared in the
background score. Added were new numbers by Harry Woods (a composer
best known for "I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover") including "When
You've Got a Little Springtime in Your Heart" and "Tinkle! Tinkle!
Tinkle!" and Joseph Tabrar's 1892 music-hall hit, "Daddy wouldn't Buy
Me a Bow-Wow." Gaumont- British had hoped to get Fred Astaire -- who
was appearing in the London run of Cole Porter's The Gay
Divorceacute -- to star with Matthews, but RKO refused to loan him
out. The lead went to singer/actor Barry Mackay, while Sonnie Hale
portrayed Leslie Benn, the cynical, half-mad director.
British film
musicals were thought of as dull, creaky, and sluggish, with none of
the spirit of their American counterparts. Victor Saville changed all
of that in Evergreen, with assistance from screenwriter Emlyn
Williams and original stage choreographer Buddy Bradley.
Evergreen displays the snappy pace and humor found in such
American films as 42nd Street (Leslie Benn to a chorus girl:
"Don't you get any sleep?" Her response, with a knowing look: "What do
you think?"). The choreography shows extraordinary vigor, and is a
superb showcase for the work of Buddy Bradley, a little-known African
American dancer from New York who devised numbers for Fred Astaire and
Ruby Keeler, among others, before Cochran brought him to London. The
art deco sets by Alfred Junge remain eye-catching 60 years later,
especially in the "Hourglass Dance" and "Dancing on the Ceiling"
sequences.
Evergreen was the first British musical at Radio
City Music Hall. Its success was an introduction to America for Victor
Saville, who came here as a producer and was later responsible for the
production of several Mickey Spillane novels, including Kiss Me
Deadly. Jessie Matthews was considered for Fred Astaire's partner
in A Damsel in Distress, and was approached by MGM, but chose
to remain in England. After retiring from films, she became a radio
star and wrote an autobiography, Over My Shoulder.
-- Bruce
Eder
CREDITS
Director: Victor Saville
Producer: Michael Balcon
Screenplay:
Marjorie Gaffney, Emlyn Williams, adapted from the Charles B. Cochran
musical production Ever Green, written by Benn W. Levy, Richard
Roders, and Lorenz Hart
Cinematography: Glen MacWilliams
Art
Director: Alfred Junge
Choreography: Buddy Bradley
Editor: Ian
Dalrymple
Music Director: Louis Levy
SONGS
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart: "Dancing on the Ceiling," "If I Give
In to You," "Dear, Dear"
Joseph Tabrar: "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a
Bow-Wow"
Harry M. Woods: "When You've Got a Little Springtime in
Your Heart," "Tinkle! Tinkle! Tinkle!" "Over My Shoulder"
Charles
Collins and Tom Mellor: "I Wouldn't Leave My Little Wooden Hut for
You"