Poverty Row cult director Edgar G. Ulmer goes "high brow" with CARNEGIE HALL, an entertaining series of classical music acts pegged to a soapy story about a single mother's love for her musician son.
New York City, circa 1909, Nora (Marsha Hunt), an Irish-American scrubwoman, falls for Tony, the dashing lead pianist in Carnegie Hall, the hallowed theater where she works. Nora and Tony court and marry. Soon, they have a baby boy, Tony Jr. But one night Tony's temperamental ways get him fired
from his job, an incident which leads to a quarrel with Nora and Tony's accidental death.
Nora carries on through the years, caring for her young son, and eventually assumes an important administrative job at the Hall, helping to groom rising artists. During Tony Jr.'s formative adolescence, Nora helps him become a talented pianist by allowing him to see and hear the greatest musicians
and singers in the world. Yet, as an adult, Tony (William Prince) develops a fondness for jazz and popular music, genres which Nora despises. A rift results between mother and son, particularly after Tony joins the Vaughan Monroe Orchestra on a traveling tour in order to be near a sexy young
singer, Ruth.
Tony leaves home, marries Ruth, and, as the years pass, becomes a famous jazz pianist. Nora, meanwhile, grows increasingly bitter and lonely, although she stays in her job at Carnegie Hall, nurturing young talent. One day, in a secret scheme to reunite mother and son, Ruth visits Nora for the
first time, and convinces Nora to attend a concert at the Hall. There, Nora sees Tony performing a jazz rhapsody to the delight of the crowd.
As a 134-minute musical with big stars, CARNEGIE HALL seems like an anomaly in the career of Edgar G. Ulmer, who is most often associated with low-budget melodramas. But in fact, CARNEGIE HALL was shot inexpensively (on-location in New York), and looks as visually dark as his better-known noir
gems (DETOUR, 1945, RUTHLESS, 1948). (Also, it should be noted that Ulmer often directed in different genres, including science fiction, the western, and the musical.) Finally, if nothing else, CARNEGIE HALL fits in squarely with the post-WWII public fascination with High Art culture in general.
To its everlasting credit, this tribute to the New York music institution features some of the greatest--or at least the most famous--classical music and opera stars of the day, showcasing them with the reverence and respect of a major studio release. The highlights include pieces from Artur
Rubinstein (Chopin's Polonaise in A Flat, De Falla's "Ritual Fire Dance"), Jascha Heifetz (Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto), and Leopold Stokowski (the second movement of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony). The singers, apart from Lily Pons ("The Bell Song" from Delibes' "Lakme"), come off less
well--Ezio Pinza ("The Champagne Song" from Mozart's "Don Giovanni"), Jan Peerce ("O Sole Mio" and "La Danza"), and Rise Stevens ("My Heart At Thy Sweet Voice" from Saint-Saens' "Samson and Delila" and the "Seguidilla" from Bizet's "Carmen"). Vaughan Monroe contributes the musical nadir, hardly
the best representative of popular music.
With his limited budget and restrictions in location filming, Ulmer shoots these set-pieces with few angles (mostly long and medium shots) and almost no camera movement. But the former German Expressionist art director stages some vivid tableaux, notably in Piatigorsky's version of Saint-Saens'
"The Swan," in which the cellist is surrounded by the looming shadows of harps. Ulmer doesn't cut to music as effectively as George Sidney, the MGM musical director, but he allows the stars to do their thing, which results in a "live" performance feeling, particularly during the Artur Rubinstein
and Jascha Heifetz solos.
The plot, a variation on the TO EACH HIS OWN (1946) mother-love saga, makes a serviceable excuse for the music, and though the acting is adequate at best, there are a few poignant moments thanks to Marsha Hunt's sturdy, noble lead performance and Ulmer's heartfelt devotion to the Dreiser-esque
working-class characters. Ulmer might have done something more both aesthetically and thematically with the High vs. Low Art conflict at the root of the story, but then he had neither George Sidney's studio resources nor Sidney's postmodern sensibility (see THOUSANDS CHEER, 1943). The
"Fifty-Seventh Street Rhapsody" finale is a bore, with Harry James looking just as awkward and bewildered as Leopold Stokowski (who introduces James, but does not play with him). Still, CARNEGIE HALL provides a valuable time-capsule of talent, Edgar G. Ulmer's being one of the bunch. leave a comment
