One Night of Love **** (1934, Grace Moore, Tullio Carminati, Lyle Talbot) – Classic Movie Review 7206

Director Victor Schertzinger’s 1934 Columbia Pictures studio’s Thirties hit classical musical One Night of Love stars opera star Grace Moore as opera star Mary Bennett, who is taken under the wing of famous operatic maestro Giulio Monteverdi (Tullio Carminati) but, after much working and arguing together, rebels against her strict teacher. It won two Oscars and a Technical Achievement Award.

Head of department Louis Silvers won an Oscar for Best Music, Score for the tuneful score (thematic music by Victor Schertzinger and Gus Kahn), and a second went to Best Sound, Recording (sound director John P Livadary), and there were four other nominations, including ones for Best Picture (Columbia Pictures), Best Actress (Moore), Best Film Editing (Gene Milford) and Best Director.

Moore’s captivating performance deservedly turned her into a star, Schertzinger’s work is highly imaginative, and the film still has the power to charm and delight. It includes opera extracts Un bel di from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Sempre Libera and Ah! fors’ è lui from Verdi’s La Traviata, the Overture to Bizet’s Carmen and Chi mi frena (The Sextet) from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Moore also sings ‘One Night of Love’ (music by Victor Schertzinger and lyrics by Gus Kahn).

There was also a Technical Achievement Award on Oscar night, marking its technical excellence ‘for their application of the vertical cut disc method (“hill and dale recording”) to actual studio production, with their recording of the sound.’

The screenplay by S K Lauren, James Gow and Edmund North is based on the story Don’t Fall in Love by Dorothy Speare and Charles Beahan.

Also in the cast are Lyle Talbot, Mona Barrie, Nydia Westman, Jessie Ralph, Luis Alberni, Jane Darwell, Andrès de Segurola, Rosemary Glosz, Henry Armetta, Herman Bing, Olaf Hytten, Edward Keane, Frederick Burton, Hans Joby, Reginald le Borg, Rafael Storm, Leo White, Frederick Vogeding, Wilfred Lucas, Marion Lessing, Joe Mack, Edmund Burns and Paul Ellia,

Kathryn Grayson plays Moore, the Tennessee Nightingale, in a biopic, So This is Love.

Grace Moore (1898–1947).

Moore’s other hits include Jenny Lind (1931), The King Steps Out (1936), I’ll Take Romance and When You’re in Love. She only made nine movies, starting in 1930 with A Lady’s Morals and ending in 1939 with Louise. She died in a plane crash on 26 January 1947, aged 48, in Copenhagen, Denmark.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7206

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