Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1954-02-18

In the film starring James S
sal international Pictures has d.
Anything less would have been a
rank injustice to one of the rare
and most highly priced person.
alitieS in modern show business.
However, thanks to series of
stunning performance and
sensible script, every one should
be delighted with this sweet echo
of the life of the sweet music
maker from Clorinda, Iowa.
Largest single segment of credit
for this cheerful news is that
which belongs to Stewart. He,
the boy from Indiana. Pa. is
pretty much the embodiment of
the same simple charm that
made Miller universally popular.
BY good fortune, he also happens
to be actor enough to put him
self easily and graciously in the
place of the character he plays.
Almost as felicitously. the pro-
ducers were able to get Miss Ally
son to play Helen Miller. the girl
who never had a chance (and
wouldn't have wanted one) to
escape the beautifully bumbling
courtship of the bandsman. Like
the Millers in life, Stewart and
Miss Allyson are perfectly
matched in the life story.
To put it on the level Of the
greatest musical biographies
Hollywood has produced, Univer-
sal sees to it that The Glenn
Miller Story" is the ideal blend
of the man and his music.
1t was Miller's distinction as
the most popular bandsman Of
the late '30s and early '40S that
no one else could have made his
music. It was something he
heard inside, the rhythm of In
land America with its sweep and
bounty and the response to it OF
a boy who knew how to listen.
1t was a private thing which,
when made public, caught on as
no competing style.
The Glenn Miller Story" is
based upon a script by Valentine
Davies and Oscar Brodney.
They pick up Miller's story
when he is a young tromboniSt
In Denver and by no means a
model of the stable American
boy. He is shown to be much
more concerned with listening to
the strange music inside him
than in keeping himself on an
even economic keel. The result
of this is that the trombone is
more useful to him as something
he can pawn than as something
he can play.
Whatever temporary discom-
fort it causes, however, it is
smart of Glenn to try to isolate
that rhythm he keeps hearing
even if he cannot put it on
paper. 1t is to be the eventual
key to both his fame and his for
tune and his pursuit Of 1t Is o
lively, humorous thing to watch.
To those who knew him later.
Stewart makes it clear that this
was the way it had to have been
with Miller on his way. He was
a shy type and a preoccupied
one. He was also SO in love with
the girl he married that he
could not conceive that she
needed to be told this, or that
a year without letter was I'M
usual. It is also a sincere part
of the Stewart portrait that Mil
Ter was not an obsessed music
maker. He liked living enough to
be diverted from his big goal
and he loved his girl enough to
be just a trombonist to make
living.
It is all there. the milestones
on the long road to success and
to wartime France where Miller
disappeared in action in Deem
Der, 1914. Warm it is, the story
of two modest and shy and
somehow dramatically private
people in spite of a ensationally
publicelife.
Universal has given it all Just
the right size treatment, in it's
selections of the hauntingly en-
during Miller music and the re-
cruitment for the picture of his
former big name associates. A
few of these latter include
Frances Langford, Gene Krupa,
Ben Pollock, Louis Armstrong. the
Modernaires and many others.
And so much of the so wisely
recalled, so nostalgia Miller
music. Chattanooga Choo-
Choo" which used to inspire
tired 9th Air Force pilots to ask
for extra missions, Moonlight
Serenade," Tuxedo Junction"
String of Pearls" The Little
Brown Jug" I'm the Mood" etc.
Director Anthony Mann has
blended it perfectly to show that
few men so deity captured the
rhythm of a period or so dra-
matically disappeared with the
periods end.
A deeply affecting story, Glenn
Miller's.