Rating: NR
Genre:
Musical
Release Date: 06/01/2004
SubTitles: English/French/Espanol
Dubbed: English
Sound: DD1
Run Time: 128 Minutes
Flags: Suitable for Children
Distributor/Studio: Warner Home Video
Faced with the challenge of writing a screenplay based on the life of fabulously wealthy, fabulously successful composer
Cole Porter, one Hollywood wag came up with a potential story angle: "How does the S.O.B. make his second million dollars?" By the time the
Porter biopic Night and Day was released, the three-person scriptwriting team still hadn't come up with a compelling storyline, though the film had the decided advantages of star
Cary Grant and all that great
Porter music. Roughly covering the years 1912 to 1946, the story begins during
Porter's undergraduate days at Yale University, where he participated in amateur theatricals under the tutelage of waspish professor
Monty Woolley (who plays himself). Though
Porter's inherited wealth could have kept him out of WWI, he insists upon signing up as an ambulance driver. While serving in France, he meets nurse
Linda Lee (
Alexis Smith), who will later become his wife. Focusing his attentions on Broadway and the London stage in the postwar years,
Porter pens an unbroken string of hit songs, including
"Just One of Those Things," "You're the Top," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Begin the Beguine," and the title number. The composition of this last-named song is one of the film's giddy highlights, as
Porter, inspired by the "drip drip drip" of an outsized rainstorm, runs to the piano and cries "I think I've got it!" The film's dramatic conflict arises when
Porter is crippled for life in a polo accident. Refusing to have his legs amputated, he makes an inspiring comeback, even prompting a WWI amputee to remark upon his courage! Corny and unreliable as
biography,
Night and Day is redeemed by the guest appearances of musical luminaries
Mary Martin (doing a spirited if disappointingly demure version of her striptease number
"My Heart Belongs to Daddy") and
Ginny Simms, the latter cast as an ersatz
Ethel Merman named
Carole Hill.
Jane Wyman, seen as
Porter's pre-nuptial sweetheart
Gracie Harris, also gets to sing and dance, and quite well indeed. Beset with production problems, not least of which was the ongoing animosity between star
Grant and director
Michael Curtiz,
Night and Day managed to finish filming on schedule, and proved to be an audience favorite -- except for those "in the know" Broadwayites who were bemused over the fact that
Cole Porter's well-known homosexuality was necessarily weaned from the screenplay.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Average Review:
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A reviewer
from Fort Lauderdale, Florida
A Musical Biodrama.
Oscar-winning director, Michael Curtiz brings a biographical look at the career of the 20th Century's well-known composers. Cary Grant portrays Cole Porter (1891-1964), who got his start at Yale University and he went to writing a number of well-known songs including Night and Day, You're the Top, I Get a Kick Out of You, and Begin the Beguine. Also starring Alexis Smith, Monty Woolley, Ginny Simms, Jane Wyman, Eve Arden, Alan Hale, Mary Martin, Carlos Ramirez, Tom D'Andrea, Donald Woods, Victor Francen, Dorothy Malone, Sig Rumann, Richard Erdman, and Skelton Knaggs.
