That Midnight Kiss (1949)

I vote 8 out of 10 just for the amazingly beautiful singing of Mario Lanza. How sad that he never achieved the great opera career his talent deserved! His acting is only passable, but his personal charisma is quite impressive.It drives me crazy that squeaky-voiced sopranina, Kathryn Grayson, who in real life could not even dream of a job as a chorus soprano in an actual functioning opera company, is presented as a plausible leading lady (Lucia di Lammermoor or Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto)! Her voice might be cute in a small room singing folk songs (if you could forgive her hideously spread vowels), but there is no way in Hell that such a tiny sound would ever in a million years carry over an orchestra.(Was there really no soprano with a real voice who could have co-starred with Mario Lanza back in the early 50's? Alas, there probably was, but she probably wasn't a tiny skinny Barbie doll like Kathryn Grayson.)

I tend to agree with the critics of the time: If Mario Lanza was in the movie it was worth seeing. Even though this musical contained a wonderfully talented cast Mario Lanza still shines out and that is saying something. Any musical that was fortunate enough to have Jose Iturbi and his sister Amparo Iturbi who were concert pianists of great magnitude plus Kathryn Grayson who was no slouch in the singing department herself. Throw in Ethel Barrymore of the First Family of Actors and it is a lucky movie musical indeed. But in my opinion even with all of that Mario Lanza is the reason to see this movie. What a voice! Who cares if he could act or not. His acting was more than adequate. No one expected him to be an Oscar winner. Of course the plot to the musical was thin, most of those MGM musical plots were. But any musical that has Mario Lanza in it is worth seeing again and again.

1948 Mario Lanza's first movie and what a voice! I fell in love with it and have been singing Be My Love all these years; The impact of this first movie was a big change in operatic movies because it was nothing like the McDonald and Eddy movies, which were rather sweet and unrealistic. I have seen all ten of Lanza's movies and without listing all of them, the best one of course was The Great Caruso which I would rate 10/10. MGM made his life miserable by sending him to weight reducing farms and his death in 1959 at one of farms in Italy was a very sad story, and suspicous because of Lanza refusing to star in a television production by the Mafia.

When "That Midnight Kiss" was filmed, star Kathryn Grayson, a coloratura soprano, was already a veteran with 11 movies on her resume'. Even though they are about the same age, this was Mario Lanza's first featured role, and he performed it well. The musical production numbers are good-looking and great-sounding, with perhaps the two premiere singers of that era, the late 40s.Born Alfredo Cocozza, with an adopted stage name of Mario Lanza, in this movie he plays Johnny Donnetti, an ex-GI born in Philadelphia and with perhaps the greatest tenor voice of all time. It is almost a Mario Lanza biography. In this movie he is "discovered", ends up replacing a temperamental Italian tenor in the operatic production, falls in love with Grayson's character, and the movie ends with their very first kiss.I rated this movie 7 of 10. It is a nice little piece of fluff, nothing new or particularly interesting in the story. Typical MGM fare for that era. But if you love music and great singing, and want a chance to see and hear Mario Lanza, the whole hour and a half is totally enjoyable.