Spring Is Here

Plot synopsis:
As the film begins, we find Bernice Claire in love with Lawrence Gray. Claire's father, played by Ford Sterling, disapproves of Lawrence but approves another suitor, played by Alexander Gray. Alexander is shy and clumsy while Lawrence is outgoing and romantic. When Bernice returns one night at 5 a.m. with Lawrence, her father orders him to stay away from his daughter. Alexander, being discouraged at being rejected by Bernice, is offered help by Inez Courtney, Bernice's younger sister. Alexander follows her advice and attempts to make Bernice jealous to get her attention. He makes love to several women, including Bernice's mother. The trick works and soon Bernice thinks she is deeply in love with Alexander. Sterling gets into an argument with Lawrence and tells him to leave his house for good. Lawrence returns in the middle of the night to elope with Bernice but Alexander shows up and carries her off for himself. In the morning they are found together in Bernice's room, to the shock of the family, and they eventually reveal to everyone that they have eloped.

Tags: romantic

Review:
Not bad early musical based on a flop Broadway show by Rodgers and Hart.Willful Betty (Bernice Claire) thinks she loves flashy Steve (Lawrence Gray) because Terry (Alexander Gray) is boring and because her father wants her to marry him.
But with a little coaching from her dizzy mom (Louise Fazenda), Terry turns into a lover and wins the day.Set among the "Long Island set," this breezy little film is full of smart retorts and good songs.
It also features a funny performance by Ford Sterling as the frantic father and good work by Inez Courtney (from the Broadway show) and Frank Albertson as the younger set.Claire has a pleasing soprano and the Grays (not related) also sing well.
Best known song here is "With a Song in My Heart." The Brox Sisters show up at the party and sing the hit "Cryin' for the Carolines." Also noted in the cast are Natalie Moorhead as the vamp, Bess Flowers as a guest, Gretchen Thomas as Maude, and Wilbur Mack as the vicar.While Lawrence Gray gets top billing here, it's Bernice Claire and Alexander Gray who are really the stars.
This early sound preservation (sort of) of one of Rodgers & Hart's minor Broadway successes (104 performances at the Alvin Theatre at the end of the roaring 20's - March 11-June 8, 1929) was released July 20, 1930, just as the country started its slide into the Great Depression, but bears no actual responsibility therefore.In truth, the film isn't exciting structurally, despite retaining several R&H standards from the stage - the title song, "Yours Sincerely" and "With A Song In My heart".
Hollywood at the time was shameless in gutting successful stage properties of the very things which had made them successful in the first place and, in pre-Crash 1929, 100+ performances put SPRING IS HERE in the "hit" column, but it remains a pleasant entertainment and solid reminder of good light 1920's entertainment.Possibly the most interesting aspect of the film however, is the one Broadway cast holdover - Inez Courtney as Mary Jane.
Ms. Courtnay repeats a couple of her songs from Broadway and began a decade long career in Hollywood that would culminate as the unforgettable "Ilona' in Lubitsch's LITTLE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER which in turn helped inspire the later Broadway musical SHE LOVES ME.While not a great musical or movie, the remains of Rodgers and Hart's score is a fine one - so fine in fact, that three years later the Vitaphone Corp.
SPRING IS HERE (First National Pictures, 1930), produced and directed by John Francis Dillon, is a surprisingly entertaining early sound musical comedy taken from the story by Owen Davis Jr., and stage musical by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, who also composed the songs.
Though headed by two Gray actors, Lawrence and Alexander (no relation), the plot very well belongs to the third billed Bernice Claire, a talented young singer in her day with few film credits to her name.
Most noted for her screen pairing with Alexander Gray, a baritone singer, in both feature-length (1929-30) and later 20-minute musical short subjects (1934), SPRING IS HERE, their second collaboration, is believed to be their only surviving musical feature film.Opening title: "The Peter Bealey Home on Long Island's fashionable North Shore - a morning in June." The domestic comedy set to song interludes revolves around Betty Bealey (Bernice Claire), a free-spirited young lady whose father, Peter (Ford Sterling), disapproves of her being out all night and sleeping in all day.
Aside from coping with his younger daughter, Mary Jane (Inez Courtney), and her courtship with Stacey Hayden (Frank Albertson), along with his ditsy but squeaky speaking wife, Emily (Louise Fazenda), Peter disapproves of Betty's latest beau, Steve Alden (Lawrence Gray), whom she's only known a short time.
Hoping she'd settle down and get married, Peter tries his best to encourage Betty into marrying Terry Clayton (Alexander Gray), a clumsy but shy young man with some sense, unaware that Steve who comes from a wealthy family.Through its brief 68 minutes, SPRING IS HERE contains enough songs for a 90 minute feature, including that of: "Spring is Here" (sung by Frank Albertson and Inez Courtney); "Yours Sincerely" (sung by Alexander Gray and Bernice Claire); "Bad Baby" (sung by Inez Courtney); "Crying for the Carolines" (sung by The Brox Sisters during party sequence); "With a Song in My Heart" (sung by Lawrence Gray and Bernice Claire); "Having a Little Faith in Me" (sung by Alexander Gray); "How Shall I Tell?" (sung by Bernice Claire/ written by Sam Lewis, Joe Young and Harry Warren); "What's the Big Idea?" (sung by Inez Courtney and Frank Albertson); and "With a Song in My Heart" (sung by Gray and Claire).
Only "With a Song in My Heart" is the most familiar, considering how it's been immortalized in the musical biography, WITH A SONG IN MY HEART (20th Century-Fox, 1952) starring Susan Hayward as famed singer, Jane Froman.While the other Gray-Claire screen collaborations of NO, NO NANETTE (1929) and SONG OF THE FLAME (1930) have been lost to revivals, SPRING IS HERE, survived intact, giving film buffs some basic idea of their work and on-screen chemistry.
Claire also quotes one interesting line worth noting, "A woman is as strong as her weakest moment." As for Alexander Gray, it's worth mentioning how his talking manner and singing differ, from mildly speaking to rich baritone voice.
It's a wonder how much further the careers of Gray and Claire might have gone had musicals not fallen out of favor for public acceptance by the end of 1930.Aside from some surprisingly risqué dialog and funny nifty comebacks during moments of comedy, there's also some very amusing scenes provided by the frustrated Ford Sterling and scatterbrained Louise Fazenda, former comics of silent comedy shorts whose characters here seem to precede that of Archie and Edith Bunker from the classic "All in the Family" TV series of the seventies.
Other members of the cast include Natalie Moorehead as Rita Conway, and Gretchen Thomas as Maude, among others.SPRING IS HERE, while no masterpiece, gets by on both comedy and sometimes corny musical interludes.
This is one of the first movie musicals to have been a film version of a Broadway musical, an early semi-success for Richard Rodgers and Lorenzo Hart.
The most interesting thing to me is that while the songs are quite nice (though they are mostly indistinguishable love songs, with the notable exception of the outstanding classic "With a Song in My Heart"), the "book" (story) is the highpoint, thanks to lots of really funny wisecracks and some racy "adult" situations that are quintessential late 1920s/early 1930s Manhattan humor.Coquette Bernice Claire sneaks back home at 5 am, having abandoned both the party she attended and her longtime dullish boyfriend Alexander Gray after meeting the jazzier Lawrence Gray there.
Father Ford Sterling is outraged at this new "beau", a stranger who would keep his daughter out all night and tries to push her bland boyfriend into marrying her.
That night at the family's party, Alexander reluctantly follows this advice and kisses and flirts with practically every woman at the party (including, most outrageously, Bernice's bird-brained mom Louise Fazenda).
Most annoying is the movie is almost completely filmed as if it were a stage musical, with performers usually facing toward the camera rather than toward each other in love songs!!
Lawrence Gray gets top billing here apparently because he had the most film experience of the young leads (including the male lead in lone Duncan Sisters feature musical, IT'S A GREAT LIFE) but his part is decidedly secondary to Alexander Gray and Bernice Claire's and he is rather miscast as a "fascinating" stranger, if anything he's duller than Alexander.
Bernice Claire has a lovely voice but her character is kind of a brat which is a mistake for a romantic lead I don't think Rodgers & Hart ever repeated again.
Veteran comedienne Louise Fazenda spouts her lines with an affected ring perhaps to suggest simple-mindedness and it does get to be a bit much at time.The movie is stolen by silent comic sidekick Ford Sterling as the patriarch of this family of femmes, he's hilarious and much more appealing in the type of put-up middle-aged man that Edgar Kennedy would play in scores of movies.
SPRING IS HERE is no classic but absolutely worth checking out for fans of the art deco era, movie musicals, Rodgers & Hart, and silent-era comedians and holds up as entertainment a little better than most musicals from 1929-1931 despite it's imperfections..
This is seems to me to be a very true adaptation of a Broadway musical of the late 20s, filmed in quite a static way with the characters lined across the screen playing it exactly as if they were also across the stage bellowing lines into each other's faces so the back row could hear it.
SPRING IS HERE is quite funny, very stage bound and completely what we expect 80 years later: stodgy comedy, vaudeville mugging wonderful Rogers and Hart music all flattened into the technical aspects of the time.
The standout performance here is given by Louise Fazenda, a ubiquitous figure in these early sound musicals made at Warners.
On Long Island's fashionable North Shore, beautiful brunette Bernice Claire (as Betty Braley) surprises her parents by returning home at five o'clock in the morning.
Furious father Ford Sterling (as Peter Braley) asks ukulele player Lawrence Gray (as Steve Alden), "What do you mean by bringing my daughter home at five o'clock in the morning?" He replies, "Home is the best place for a young girl at that hour, isn't it?" A coloratura soprano, Ms. Claire has been dating handsome baritone Alexander Gray (as Terry Clayton).
If Alexander Gray doesn't change his tune before the end of the story, he may lose his Claire to Lawrence Gray..."Spring Is Here" is a somewhat creaky-looking, but wildly funny and extremely tuneful early movie musical.
The forward-thinking soundtrack, by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, complement characters and story in the best musical-play fashion.
The 1929 Broadway play sent "With a Song in My Heart" up the record and sheet-music sales charts, in several versions.
The film put more songs on the national hit parade, led by the superior "Have a Little Faith in Me" and the Brox Sisters' "Crying for the Carolines" (not from the original play).
Guy and Carmen Lombardo had a doubled-sided top ten hit with both songs...The cast is a well-balanced mixture of "silent" film stars and theater performers.
He may receive "star" billing on this recognition and for the fact that he sings the film's big hit "With a Song in My Heart" (very well).
The reason Lawrence got the song, and not Alexander, can be traced back to the original Broadway production.
His character was to sing the important song, but it was given to his romantic rival as Mr. Hunter was not a singer...The second leads are Claire's parents, flittering Louise Fazenda and stringent Ford Sterling (as Emily and Peter Braley).
Photographer Lee Garmes seems out of position once; but, more often, his camera is skillfully capturing background material.******** Spring Is Here (4/13/30) John Francis Dillon ~ Alexander Gray, Bernice Claire, Ford Sterling, Louise Fazenda.
Actually, the songs for this film; Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder (For Somebody Else), Bad Baby, Cryin' For The Carolines, Have A Little Faith In Me, How Shall I Tell?, What's The Big Idea?
It's one of those run-of-the-mill early sound-era musicals that soured the public on singing films until the exciting 42ND STREET and the early Busby Berkeley extravaganzas pumped juice back into the musical genre.Fazenda and her co-stars sing well in the operetta style that was still popular at this time, but their acting tends to be as stiff, stagy and clichéd as the story, dialog, and camera-work.It's interesting to see the kind of brainless and virtually heartless musical comedy that was current when SHOW BOAT debuted on Broadway and then on film, pointing the way toward more heartfelt, substantial musicals in the future.
The humor is really forced and lame.The story is an ancestor of the teen comedies that would be popular decades later: a young jazz baby can't decide between two suitors, while her cranky, "old-fashioned" father and clueless mother provide comic relief.Hit with a bunch of stagy, static movies like this one, no wonder the public at the time got sick of musicals.
It will interest specialists as an example of writing and performing styles of the 1920s, but it won't win any new converts to early sound-era musicals.
The songs are catchy and the plot is something we all can relate to, although in this day in age the way the women are treated is completely different than how they were treated in the '20s and '30s this movie seems extremely true to form for the time.
While musicals were quite popular in the early days of talking pictures, most of them were like "The Gold Diggers of Broadway" and "The Broadway Melody"--stage productions where groups of chorus girls danced about for audiences.
The musical style where folks were NOT on stage and just broke into song was a bit later invention.
Also odd is that the singers stand so still and they are usually filmed in closeups--most likely because the sound equipment was very primitive and wouldn't allow for more naturalistic shots (much like in early talkies where folks stand in one spot so the microphones will pick up the sound properly).Despite the primitive nature of the film, however, I found "Spring Is Here" to be very watchable--mostly because I liked the parents, Louise Fazenda and Ford Sterling.
Early musical about fickle Betty of the Long Island "fashionable set", the kind who seem to mostly go around with tennis rackets and ukuleles gripped in their hands.
Terry IS in love, so - given the push by Betty's little 16-year-old sister (who looked to me about 35), he decides to spark Betty's jealousy by flirting with other women.
And boy does he - including giving a passionate kiss to Betty's mom!This film is pretty silly, though has moments - such as the dad spouts a number of pretty good one-liners and there is a little bit of pre-code naughtiness too.
The whole film comes across as a little stiff and stage play like - it includes characters bursting into song here and there, most of which are fairly mediocre, though I thought a few of the numbers were kind of catchy.
The lead actors in this are not very memorable (though, at least, they sing well) - the most interesting characters are actually the girl's parents, quite amusingly portrayed by Ford Sterling and Louise Fazenda - the mom is depicted as very dizzy (reminded me of Gracie Allen).
This is the story of a controlling father who thrusts a bashful suitor Terry Clayton (Alexander Gray) onto his daughter Betty Braley (Bernice Clare) when she is interested in Steve Alden (Lawrence Gray).
John Frances directed this film and it was written by James Starr, which was based on a Broadway musical.
There are some good songs that are worth listening to; "Have a little faith in me," "Crying for the Carolines." "What's the biog idea," and "Bad baby?".
"Spring is Here" was a modest (not a flop) Rodgers and Hart Broadway musical of 1929 (109 performances) in which the song "With a Song in My Heart" became a standard but the film version of 1930 didn't even rate a Broadway opening - it had it's "gala" world premiere in Toledo, Ohio!!How could it fail?
It starred the gorgeous musical team of Bernice Claire and Alexander Gray who had been such a hit in the recent film musical "No, No, Nanette", another Gray, Lawrence, fresh from "Marianne" and "Sunny" had a pleasant tenor and comics Inez Courtney and Louise Fazenda, plus some very hummable early song hits.
While this movie had wonderful songs, the plot, in which Owen Davis (author of "Whoopee") adapted from his unsuccessful play "Shotgun Wedding" was just too frivolous for the now sombre tone of the depression.It starts with the blustering Peter Braley (Ford Sterling) berating his fun loving daughter Betty (Claire, wearing a very becoming hair style) for staying out till 5 in the morning with mysterious new boyfriend, Steve Alden (Lawrence Grey).
There has already been a snappy musical number with Inez Courtney and Frank Albertson bemoaning the fact that by the time Mary Jane is old enough for parties - they will be extinct!!
Light hearted the script may be but they still have time to discuss just how female embryos come into being as well as wondering when a "morning after" pill will come into existence!!When Terry, Betty's long suffering boyfriend comes on the scene, it's obvious why she prefers the lively Steve - Terry (Alexander Gray) is as dumb as they make them!!!
Mary Jane gives him more sensible advice via the song "Bad Baby" - romance another girl, preferably the vampish Miss Carewe (Natalie Moorehead) to make Betty jealous.
Before the night is over Betty and Steve have tunefully duetted to "With a Song In My Heart", Betty has posed the question to the stars "How Shall I Tell" and Terry has implored her with the plaintively earnest "Have a Little Faith in Me".
For all Lawrence Gray's top billing he goes missing from the last half with the focus definitely on Terry's quest to live life with a kick in it!!Steve returns in the morning with a minister but in a very pre-code scene, Betty greets her father at her bedroom door with a disheveled Terry - could they have spent the night together without the benefit of clergy!!
Stacy (Albertson) returns and he and Mary Jane perform the liveliest song in the film "What's the Big Idea" complete with an eccentric dance.
Inez Courtney reprised her role from the original Broadway production.A very fun movie with the plot just a framework to present some songs - but what songs they were!!