Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)

This film starts out like gangbusters with a colorful dramatic opening in technicolor with great musical numbers from Show Boat, whose musical numbers were written by Jerome Kern - the subject of the film . The first 20 minutes are lovely.The film gradually starts to slow down into a rather bore. The acting is excellent from everybody including the now forgotten Robert Walker, the always capable Van Heflin, and many others including the great Tony Martin, Angela Lansbury, Cyd Charisse, Lena Horne and Lucille Bremer. Judy Garland is almost unrecognizable and excellent.Perhaps the greatest actress in the movie is the young Joan Wells, who is absolutely startling and for some reason had a very short film career. I can't find out anything about her online.The movie also misses greatness by its failure to connect the central conflict in the movie in a logical way.The ending is magnificent with a classic MGM song and dance sequence choreographed by the out-of-this-world Busby Berkeley. A young Frank Sinatra brings the house down at the end.Berkeley's arrangements alone almost turn this into a great movie but for me, this is a just-miss classic but one that is worth seeing.

Robert Walker stars as composer Jerome Kern in this biopic Till the Clouds Roll By, sadly released the year after Kern's death. We learn of his early compositions, his collaboration and lifelong friendship with James Hessler, played by Van Heflin, and his romance and marriage to Eva, played by Dorothy Patrick. The biographical portion is really only half the film—or less—with the remainder of the two hour fifteen minute running time filled in with performances of Kern's songs.Usually, I wouldn't balk at the idea of an all-star singing extravaganza, but this film isn't nearly as fun to watch as That's Entertainment. I actually turned this movie off the first time I tried to get through it. It's terribly boring, and even though Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Kathryn Grayson, Van Johnson, June Allyson, Angela Lansbury, and Dinah Shore lend their talents, the songs are hardly entertaining.The first part of the movie is basically a taped version of the stage musical Show Boat. Of the five songs are showcased, two are sung too fast and two are sung without any feeling at all. Even though Kathryn Grayson was in the film remake of Show Boat five years later, in this movie she gives an entirely different interpretation to the songs, and not for the better. Her costar in the songs, Tony Martin, wears a dead pan expression on his face the entire time. Where was Howard Keel? As if the filmmakers knew to save one of only well sung songs for the end, Frank Sinatra sings a repeat of "Old Man River", hoping to distract the audience from the previously torturous two hours.

Despite the lavish sets and candy-box colors, this grand production tries to do too much, and comes across instead as an unwieldy package of story and song. Composer Kern had only been dead for a year (1945), so his name and popular compositions were still fresh in the public's mind. I expect that's one reason why Metro tried to leave nothing out of the production. So we get abbreviated songs, even of his best: "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "Make Believe", et al., plus a whole lot of now obscure ditties. This is a good chance, however, to catch a number of vocal performers at their youthful peak: Horne, Sinatra, Martin, Grayson, et al. Too bad none gets enough time to really shine. Story-wise Kern's adult life is reprised through personal up's and down's as could be expected. However, the musical interludes are not well blended into the storyline, resulting in a number of awkward segues that do neither any good. The boyish Walker is a good actor, but is not called upon to do much except fill a slot. All in all, the movie remains a lavish musical production with some entertaining bits, but is otherwise spotty at best.

Even though Jerome Kern died just about 5 weeks before I was born in 1945, he and I have an indelible connection. When I was in graduate school back in the 1960s I managed to work myself into a student musical which ran for 28 performances over 4 weeks. The musical was "Leave it to Jane", an early and popular Jerome Kern musical which had an early long run off-Broadway. I never knew much about Kern over the following 46 years but now, with this movie, most of the gaps were filled in.Robert Walker plays the role of Jerome Kern, starting in the early 20th century when Kern was in this 20s and trying to become recognized as a Broadway composer. In that time American theater seemed to be enamored with British musicals, so Kern traveled to London to hone his craft. There he met his eventual wife. When he finally became recognized then his career took off and he became one of the most prolific and recognized composers of songs we love.This movie used Kern's songs, and scenes from many of his musicals, including one from "Leave it to Jane" about a football rivalry. And most of the songs are performed by some of the best-known performers of the 1940s, including such artists as Frank Sinatra, June Allyson, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Van Johnson, Dinah Shore, and a very young Angela Lansbury , just to name a few.For me, a thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable movie. Here's to the memory of Jerome Kern. On DVD from my public library, the picture and sound are very good for such an old movie.