Sincerely Yours * (1955, Liberace, Joanne Dru, Dorothy Malone, Alex Nicol) – Classic Movie Review 11,433

After the 1955 flop Sincerely Yours, Warner Bros paid Liberace not to make a second movie.

Director Gordon Douglas’s 1955 Warner Color film romantic music comedy Sincerely Yours stars Liberace as Tony Warrin, a Manhattan concert pianist who copes with the distress of losing his hearing by developing lip-reading skills, thereby allowing him to enter into other people’s traumas and help them out without their knowing it.

With its pretty bad script, sentimental ideas and out-of-tune tone, this is an all-too-modest star vehicle for the outrageous showman Liberace, who fails to display any acting talents comparable with his musical ones, though there are plenty of built-in opportunities to hear him on the piano in a re-creation of his concert performances. This turned out to be his first and last leading role in a feature, and he didn’t feature again till The Loved One in 1965.

A competent set of co-stars and supporting actors look on in bewilderment.

It also stars Joanne Dru, Dorothy Malone, Alex Nicol, William Demarest, Lori Nelson, Lurene Tuttle, Richard Eyer, James Bell, Herbert Hayes, Edward Platt, Guy Williams, Ian Wolfe, Otto Waldis, and Barbara Brown.

Based on the 1914  play The Silent Voice by Jules Eckert Goodman, the film is a remake of the George Arliss and Bette Davis film of that title, the Warner Bros 1932 The Man who Played God, a remake of the 1922 film The Man Who Played God, also based on the play The Silent Voice and the 1912 story The Man Who Played God by Gouverneur Morris.

Liberace was at the height of his career but proved unable to translate his stage persona to movie leading man and the film was a commercial failure. Warner demoted his named on the publicity from star billing to below the title billing. It was meant to be the first film in a two-picture movie contract but the studio bought back the contract, paying Liberace not to make a second movie.

It is scored by Liberace’s brother George, who was a violinist.

Władziu Valentino Liberace (May 16, 1919 – February 4, 1987) was born in Wisconsin to an Italian father and Polish mother.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,433

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