Themes: Musician's Life, Rags To Riches, Ladder to the Top
Main Cast: Kathryn Grayson, Merv Griffin, Joan Weldon, Walter Abel, Rosemary de Camp
Release Year: 1953
Country: US
Run Time: 101 minutes
Plot
This tuneful biography of operatic soprano Grace Moore begins as she prepares to perform on opening night. While awaiting her entrance cue, she reflects upon her life and the sequence of events that led her from a humble childhood in Tennessee to becoming one of the brightest stars in the opera world. Songs include "The Kiss Waltz," "Remember," "I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate" and "La Boheme." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Review
So This Is Love may be about love, but it's not about Grace Moore, its putative subject. Like 99% of the Hollywood biopics from cinema's "golden era," Love plays fast and loose with the truth -- and like almost all of those biopics, the story that it comes up with is terribly mundane and much less interesting than the truth. Since this is standard practice, one must therefore depend upon some extra special something to make Love stand out, to make it have been worth making in the first place -- presumably, a dazzling star turn. Unfortunately, what Love gets with Kathryn Grayson is merely a well-sung but far from commanding performance. Grayson is playing Grayson, pure and simple, and while she has a number of appealing qualities -- an appropriate voice and vocal range, good looks, some very nice musical phrasing -- she simply isn't Grace Moore. Grayson acquits herself very well with her range of operatic numbers, but she doesn't perform them in a manner that helps us to understand the legend that was Moore. And she can't switch gears as easily with the "pop" numbers, the way Moore did. It's perhaps unfair to expect Grayson to be able to do this; but on the other hand, why bother with a film like this if the star can't either approximate the original or add something truly new and fresh? ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
