Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The acting in this movie is really good.

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.

I avoided this film for all these years (I am 64 now), and only watched it now because I had just watched the Marilyn Miller biopic ("Look For The Silver Lining"), and so many mentioned Judy Garland's portrayal of Miller here as so much better than June Haver's in "Look For...". Well, let's get a couple of things straight. Judy Garland didn't look anything at all like Marilyn Miller, nor did she sound anything at all like Marilyn Miller. So this nonsense about how wonderful Garland's portrayal of Marilyn Miller in this film is just hogwash. I don't even think she sang "Look For The Silver Lining" very well here; she did a wonderful rendition of "Who" here, however. But for those of you who think she was so exquisite here, I guess you base your opinion on the one thing they had in common. Know what it was??? But now, back to this film. To be honest, the film was an excuse for MGM to develop another lavish musical...something that no other studio did so well. They came up with a darned good script, albeit another highly fictionalized biography of a famous entertainment figure. To be honest, I enjoyed the fictionalized story more than I did the production numbers...even though I admire Kern's work a great deal.Odd thing about the casting. I don't enjoy film performances by either Robert Walker or Van Heflin. Yet, in this film I thought they were both excellent! As to the negatives of casting -- Lucille Bremer's performance late in the film was very unconvincing.Now, the big controversy in the film was the concluding production number -- Frank Sinatra singing "Old Man River". If you're having a problem with that White guy singing a Black song...get over it. It was written by a White guy (the film is about that White composer). It was written for Broadway of that era...so it was mostly written for White audiences. But MOST importantly, music knows no race. Nat King Cole can interpret "Dance Ballerina, Dance", just as Frank Sinatra can interpret "Old Man River". A jazz musician can interpret a pop classic. Music belongs to everyone. And, incidentally, the best rendition of "Old Man River" I ever heard was Sinatra's interpretation on his Reprise album "The Concert Sinatra" from 1962. But even here, in 1946, Sinatra's performance of the number is strong and flawless (unless you obsess about a pigmentation problem). And just for the record, I generally disdain Sinatra recordings from before the mid-1950s.While not at the top of my list of MGM movie musicals and biopics, this is a good one. Recommended.

This film has a star studded cast including Robert Walker as Jerome Kern who wrote the music for Show Boat and many other famous popular songs. However, all the numbers from Show Boat including "Old Man River" sang by Frank Sinatra are poor renditions compared to those in the film "Show Boat". As a matter of fact I was tempted to advance the movie quite a few times....it was absolutely tedious, and this is a senior talking - I usually thrive on songs from Broadway musicals. Yet Robert Walker and Van Heflin gave good performances. The first time I saw it I simply forgot about it….thus I ended up watching it again, it deserves to be seen again.