Swanee River

Ameche had already played the man who gave us the telephone and now he was to have an even more difficult task as one of America's premier songwriters, Stephen Foster. The problem was that Foster was a drunk, treated his wife and child badly, never provided for his family, and died at a young age (37) in the charity ward at Bellevue Hospital in New York. He'd earned a good deal of royalty money from 1849 through 1860 but drank it all away and died a pauper. The last song he wrote is not in this film. It was "Beautiful Dreamer" and was composed a few days before his death. The screenwriters considered the true story, then threw most of it away in order to fashion a ...