Customer Reviews

Helen Morgan Story [VHS]

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Helen Morgan Story is a formula biopic with equal parts soap, song and gin. The thing that makes it stand out are three very good performances and a wonderful parade of vintage 1920's hits voiced for the star by Gogi Grant.
From the moment the film begins to unreel with its Broadway marquee titles you know you are in for a good old-fashioned tearstained campy drama. Loosely based on the life of Helen Morgan, who is most famous today for creating the role of Julie in the groundbreaking "Show Boat" in the 20's. The film centers on her rise and fall as well as her unrequited love for gangster Larry Maddux.
Playing the title role is Ann Blyth who does her best to give Helen all the pathos, drama and tragedy required in such a story. She does a fine job but one can't help but recall her best work as Veda in Mildred Pierce. Some years earlier.
The real stars of the show are comedian Alan King, TV star Cara Williams and a new guy to pictures by the name of Paul Newman. These three pros take a filmland formula and mix it until it explodes.
Alan King is quite a fine actor as well as a gifted comedian. He imbues the character of Benny Weaver, Larry's partner with life and humor. As Helen's best friend and Benny's moll Cara Williams shines.
But the best performance is given by a very young Paul Newman who shows us just what he could do with the good for nothing huckster role. He soars in the role and gives us a preview of some of the better roles he will fill out in the future from Fast Eddie to Hud.
The black and white cinematography by Ted D. McCord is stunning as are the sets and costumes. And the Warner Brothers orchestra makes the mono soundtrack burst its boundaries to near stereophonic sound. The dirction by Michael Curtiz who had been making films since 1912 is solid and dependable.
One hopes that there may be a DVD release of this film in the future.

(February 18, 2009) And now it is out on DVD in all it's Cinemascope glory. It looks great and the sound is full and gorgous. A must have for any Paul Newan fan as well as fan's of great old standard songs from the 20's.

The film explains the decline of Helen Morgan (Ann Blyth) into alcoholism as the result of unsuccessful romances, especially one with Larry Maddux (Newman), a two-bit bootlegger...

Larry is an almost one-dimensional and ultimately unbelievable character, but he does have qualities that are developed further in later Newman films: he is opportunistic, exploitative, smooth-talking, a man from the wrong side of the tracks who tries to better himself...

Like other Newman characters, he is an outlaw--a con man and gangster--and it is noteworthy that Curtiz had directed Cagney, Bogart and other tough guys in Warners' Golden Era... Larry is also the first of Newman's womanizers--detached, rough, abusive, but irresistibly charming and sexy... He manages to seduce Helen while remaining nasty and cynical, then abandons her, only to keep reappearing and ruining her life... At best he can say, "In my own way, Helen, I love you," although in the unconvincing ending, he reforms...

Ann Blyth stars as ill-fated torch singer Helen Morgan in the musical biography THE HELEN MORGAN STORY (1957). The movie follows the life of the tragic 1920s songbird from the heights of acclaim in the original Broadway production of "Show Boat" to her dramatic battles with depression and alcoholism.

Inspired by Polly Bergen's searing performance as Morgan in a "Playhouse 90" TV special which aired earlier that same year, producer Jack Warner geared THE HELEN MORGAN STORY as a showcase not for actress Ann Blyth, but rather the popular singer Gogi Grant, whom he employed to supply Blyth's voice for the musical numbers--if the truth be known, Blyth's own singing would have sufficed.

In the tradition of a backstage soap-opera, the more tawdry facts of Morgan's life were glossed over (the "Playhouse 90" screenplay reflected Morgan's life in a more accurate light, having Morgan's mother Lulu as a consultant). Paul Newman plays her stormy boyfriend; Blyth shines (especially in the recreations of the "Show Boat" stage production), and the soundtrack springs to life with such Morgan standards as "Why Was I Born?", "Bill", and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man".

The supporting cast includes Richard Carlson, Gene Evans, Alan King and Cara Williams. Directed by Michael Curtiz. Recommended.

I FIRST SAW THIS MOVIE AS "THE HELEN MORGAN STORY". I WAS SO INPRESSED I MUST HAVE VIEWED IT 500 TIMES. THE CAST WAS WONDERFUL & THE MOVIE SHOULD HAVE BEEN REVIEWED MUCH BETTER THAT IT WAS. AFTER 50 YEARS IT STILL LIVES WITH THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE SEEN IT.

THE BIG STAR OF THIS MOVIE IS THE WONDERFUL SOUNDTRACK FEATURING GOGI GRANT I ADORE HER AND ALL HER MUSIC AND WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO SEE HER IN CONCERT IN 2002. STILL BEAUTIFUL AND SINGING THOSE GREAT SONGS AT 78 IS A TRIBUTE TO THIS STAR. THIS MOVIE AND SOUNDTRACK HAVE ADDED MUCH JOY TO MY LIFE.

An excellent print of a movie that has been obscure for too many years. Newman (not always the brilliant actor many claimed he was) fills the bill superbly. And Blyth, carrying a difficult, cliché-ridden role, does a fine of making Morgan credible and sympathetic.
A major pleasure in this film is the soundtrack of Gogi Grant singing for Ann Blythe which I have always considered to be one of the finest "female vocal" albums of the 50's.

I FIRST VEIWED THE HELEN MORGAN STORY WHEN I WAS ABOUT 11 0R 12 SINCE THAN IT HAS BEEN MY FAVORITE MOVIE AND THATS WHEN I FELL IN LOVE WITH PAUL NEMAN. IT TOUCHED ALL EMOTIONS ..THE MUSIC WAS WONDERFUL.GOGI GRANT'S VOICE WAS GREAT. ANN BLYH WAS PERFECT FOR THAT BABY GRAND PIANO,SHE COULDN'T HAVE GIVEN A MORE BELIEVABLE PERFORMANCE AS THE TINY LITLLE GIRL WITH THE GREAT BIG VOICE..IT WAS FULL OF GLAMOUR AND GAYIETY. IT BROUGHT TEARS TO MY EYES .PAUL NEWMAN WAS A GREAT GOOD GUY BAD GUY,NOBODAY COULD HAVE PLAYED THE PART OF LARRY MADDUX BETTER CARA WILLIAMS AND ALAN KING ADDED A GREAT TOUCH OF ROARING 20'S HUMOUR ..IF ANYONE WANTS TO HAVE AN EVENING OF MUSIC,HUMOR AND ALOT OF TEARS, I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS MOVIE DONNA.

I happened to be in the video store and was looking through my favorite section (classical movies) when I decided this looked interesting. I had no idea I would be so pleased! Paul Newman gives a wonderful performance of a man set to achieve his ambitions by using the woman he loves, never realizing how his actions are working to destroy them both. The songs are great and Blyth is also wonderful. I will be buying my own VHS of the movie soon.

Helen Morgan was a torch singer from the 1920s and 30s. She was well-known for her sappy ballads, and went on to play Julie, the tragic mulatta in Show Boat. Her addiction to alcohol ruined her career, but she was a very big star in her day. This is a celebration of her life and musical career.

There are many problems. One, it completely ignores Morgan's film career. Next, although Ann Blyth has short dark hair and emotional eyes, she is much too beautiful to play Morgan, who got very fat toward the end of her career. Also, the film makers alternate between authentically portraying the 20s with costuming and vocabulary and completely disregarding the period and making everything look like the 50s. This is distracting. Finally, neither Morgan's voice or Blyth's is used for the musical numbers. Gogi Grant, a singer whose voice resembles Judy Garland's in maturity, dubs the songs, and she sounds nothing like Helen Morgan. Morgan's voice was more subdued and filled with a quiet passion. The dubbing was a bad choice and detracts a great deal from the tribute to Morgan.

That being said, this is still an entertaining movie. Blyth does a good job toggling between the emotional highs and lows of Morgan's life. She carries the movie well. Paul Newman is very good as her attractive loser boyfriend. His charisma makes him a likable character in spite of all the bad things he does. The music is outstanding, from the songs that Grant sings to the ones that are played in the background. This is really a film for music lovers, and it delivers.

3 1/2 Stars

The magnificent voice of Gogi Grant at the peak of her considerable powers may be the best thing about "The Helen Morgan Story." The story of her life as depicted here (based on a TV play that starred Polly Bergen, and wouldn't that be fun to see on DVD!) is largely fictionalized, with even some actual events (Helen was actually voted "Miss Mount Royal" when she was studying voice in Canada in the mid-'20s; here, the contest is a set-up somehow tied in with a bootlegging scheme!) turned into melodrama. On the plus side: stunning B&W widescreeen photography; snappy direction by Michael Curtiz; wonderful supporting turns from Cara Williams and Alan King and a fine performance from star Ann Blyth, who somehow manages to make it all believable. Then there is rising star Paul Newman, channeling Clark Gable in his lady-killer period, as the no-goodnik hood who bewitches and bedevils the fragile singing star. Newman mainly glowers his way through a part that he doesn't seem to care for, as was the case with many of his earlier roles (see - or better still don't see - "The Silver Chalice"), but his sex appeal is rampant.

Now for the good stuff: the music. Morgan introduced or performed many outstanding American songs from the golden age of 1926-1933 and many are represented here, recorded on the best sound-stage in Hollywood, with magnificent arrangements by Ray Heindorf and his staff, and featuring Gogi Grant, who receives full screen credit and was pictured on the cover of the best-selling soundtrack album (RCA were no fools: she had just been voted Most Popular Female Singer of 1956 and this was her first major release on their label). Ironically, Grant's voice bears little resemblance to that of Helen Morgan, whose voice was high and sweet but lacking in power, with a wide, expressive vibrato, although her sensitive reading of a lyric more than compensated for her rather limited range. It was Morgan's ACTING ability that helped make her a star and that gave theatergoers such indelible memories of her performances. Gogi's voice has tremendous power and range, and her version of "Why Was I Born" will simply blow you away, yet she sings with delicacy and nuance on songs like "April In Paris" and, of course, "Bill" (performed here in a nightclub sequence since MGM would not permit any scenes from "Showboat" to be used in a Warners' film, depriving us from seeing what was truly the high point of Morgan's career).

As I write this, a two-CD set of Gogi Grant's RCA recordings has just been released, and hopefully the availability of this film on DVD will prompt a new generation to explore the recorded work of this magnificent singer.

I first saw the Helen Morgan Story in 1969, on a saturday night with my babysitter - I was 11. I have since seen the movie 20 to 30 times and it ages like fine wine. The MOVIE is without a doubt one of the best tear-jerkers ever made. Paul Newman literally jumps off the screen and becomes a star of the highest order. His performance sticks with you AND EVERY FRAME of film is better than the one before. This is a film that will touch every nerve in your heart and soul.