MovieChat Forums > A Song to Remember (1945) Discussion > From the Miscasting Hall of Fame

From the Miscasting Hall of Fame

posted 16 years ago by otter
17 replies | jump to latest

Honestly, when you're trying to cast the role of a frail Polish man with terminal tuberculosis, the obvious thing is to hire a big, beefy, strapping, all-American type like Cornel Wilde, right? All the better if he's a wooden actor!

And the femmy little Oberon as George Sand isn't a lot more effective.

PS: For a GOOD movie about Sand and Chopin, see the 1990's comedy "Impromptu", starring Judy Davis, Hugh Grant, Julian Sand, Bernadette Peters, and Emma Thompson. It's very funny yet deeply romantic, and is just a fabulous movie.

[–] Piperson 16 years ago

I agree completely. And I think "femmy" is as fine a word as I've heard to describe Merle Oberon in this role.

I love "Impromptu" and want to second your recommendation.

[–] Wailmer1990 16 years ago

And yet, in spite of it all, Wilde was still nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for this film!

[–] macguffinlassie 16 years ago

Miscast or not (and I think Wilde was born in Hungary), it's still gorgeous to see and Miss Oberon is especially lovely in Technicolor (unlike George Sand, who was very unattractive no matter how viewed). I don't even care whether or not it's historically accurate--as eye candy, it's delicious.

[–] fcalderp 16 years ago

This was one of my mother's favourite movies. And it is beautiful to look at. Melre Oberon is George Sand as far as I am concern. The PROBLEM with this picture is Paul Muni. He was vary fanmous at the time, a BIG star. So he appears in most of the movie, playing what is in reality a very minor character. We end up looking at the life of Chopin through the eyes of Muni. We only see Wilde and Oberon when Muni goes to visit them. I was happy to learn that he was not going to the patriotic series of concertos, and very disssapointed when seeing him in the audience. Chopin even dies in his arms!!

Muni was a great actor (specially in "I'm a Fugitive from a Chain Gang" where he was not his usual "ham") but his participation in this picture is annoying. It destroyed what could have been a decent film. Wilde is find, although too athletic for the part. Years later, Hugh Grant was terrible in the same part.

[–] macguffinlassie 16 years ago

Oh, dear--Hugh Grant is, I think, an even worse choice for Chopin somehow.
I agree that Muni is a distraction in this film, although I, too, like him in general and think he was a fine actor. Have you seen The World Changes? His performance blew me away--one for the ages, I thought.

[–] fcalderp 16 years ago

Hugh Grant's wig in the Chopin film was horrible. You would never guess from that film that he was about to become a star. Neither would you know the same thing watching Robert DeNiro in Bloody Mamma, or Steve MCQueen in Somebody Up There's Likes Me, or Charles Bronson in House of Wax, or Donald Sutherland in The Dirty Dozen.
I've never seen the World Changes, but Muni was excellent in "I'm a Fugitive from a Chain Gang."

franklin

[–] KatieCruise 15 years ago

Speaking as an acting teacher, Paul Muni is outstanding in this movie!

[–] fcalderp 15 years ago

Not outstanding at all. What is he doing in almost every sequence of the film? That character is there simply because Paul Muni was still very famous at the time, too old and too short to play Chopin, and the studio was not sure about the star-power of Cornel Wilde (he bacame a very good actor later in his life, a marvelous Sebastian in "The Greates Shwo on Earth"). The studio needed Muni's name. I love Muni in I'ma Fugitive from a Chain Gang", "Scarface" (Pacino, one of my favorite actros, was dreadful in the remake) and "The Life of Emile zola". Too wooden in "Juarez" (that picture belongs entirely to Brian Aherne and Bette Davis). I wonder why Muni never played Beethoven. Perhaps Hollywood did not know what to do with his life. I want to agree with you about Muni's performance in A Song to Remember, but I cannot!! A Song to Remember was my mother's favorite film (also "Nightmare Alley"). She died when I was very young. For one of those strange ironies of life, "A Song to Remember" was the last film my father saw, almost 30 years after my mother's death. Maybe Muni was fine in that picture from an acting teacher's point of view. But not "cinematographically" (whatever that means).

[–] HarlowMGM 13 years ago

What is he doing in almost every sequence of the film? That character is there simply because Paul Muni was still very famous at the time, too old and too short to play Chopin, and the studio was not sure about the star-power of Cornel Wilde (he bacame a very good actor later in his life, a marvelous Sebastian in "The Greates Shwo on Earth"). The studio needed Muni's name.

Paul Muni had no box office pull in 1945. He hadn't had a hit film since 1939, in fact this was only his third film in the 1940's.

I'm sure the script was written long before Muni was signed for the part. The most probable reason why the music professor has such an absurdly large part is because without him the movie would have to focus more on the fact that Chopin and Sand were "living in sin" which probably couldn't be done under the production code of the era. He's there to give a suggestion of morality and disapproval of the Chopin/Sand relationship.

It is a hammy performance but it's written as such and could not be performed any other way.

[–] fcalderp 13 years ago

You're right. Muni was not in 1945 the star he was in 1939 and before. But he definitely ruined ASTR for me. He was very good in "I'm a Fugitive from a Chain Gang". Also in "Scarface" and "The Good Earth." By the way, Hugh Grant looks awful as Chopin in "Impromptus.' His wig is horrible. He had not yet developed a screen persona. The film about Liszt with Dick Bogarde is very good, without being great. Did you know that there is another version of that story, with Colette Marchand, who played the prostitute in Moulin Rouge, got an Academy Award nomination and dissapeared from the face of the Earth?

Harlow is the star of this month on TCM. This is just for your information in case you did not know. Everything she did was definitively pre-Code stuff.

[–] colagada 13 years ago

It wasn't that Muni had no box-office appeal. The shy, privacy-loving Muni never did like brash, anything-goes atmosphere of Hollywood. He chose to withdraw from the scene in or around 1940, and he concentrated on his first and true love, the theater, in the 1940's and 1950's. He certainly could act. He appeared in about two-dozen movies and got six Academy Award nominations and one Oscar. The part in "A Song to Remember" is overblown and hammed up, and it's supposed to be. The good professor was cast to be a buffoon. Contrast that with his sober performance of Eddie Kagle in "Angel On My Shoulder". Muni was very selective about what he undertook, and it's estimated that he probably turned down four times as many film roles as he accepted.

Muni also had health issues that had surfaced as early as the late 1930's. These got progressively worse. Roles and appearances got fewer and fewer, as much by his choice as by that of casters. He essentially retired after the run of "Inherit the Wind" (for which he received a Tony award), probably satisfied that he'd accomplished all he ever would.

Much of the source for this post comes from "Actor, The Life and Times of Paul Muni", which I highly recommend.

[–] judith-mcgee1025 14 years ago

This was one of my Mom's favorite movies, too. It was a huge hit in its time. It's great from a musical standpoint (lots of Chopin and a Miklos Rosza score) but there are many clunky lines in the script ("We could make miracles of music in Majorca" before Sand and Chopin kiss is a good example) by today's standards.

Merle Oberon is gorgeous and her costumes are terrific (perhaps this was her first color film?). Cornel Wilde was to become a better actor and more interesting person as he grew older (especially when he began to direct films). As for Paul Muni, I respect both he and his acting but not in this film. It is too self-indulgent.

There was another portrayal of Chopin some years ago; there was a British-made Masterpiece Theatre biography of George Sand: I believe Rosemary Harris played Sand, and George Chakhiris played Chopin. On the surface the latter's casting seems a bit odd, but I remember he did a respectible job.

[–] fcalderp 14 years ago

Hi Judith:

My previous post in this message board was placed more than a year ago! So you saw "A Song to Rememeber" last ngiht on TCM (I think it was last night). Merle Oberon looks pretty much the way Georges Sand should have looked!! She looks beautiful in her costumes.Too bad she and Chopin ended up being supporting players in their own movie!! I remember the first time my mother payed for me Chopin's Polonaise (The Heroic) (in one of those old black records). I had never heard anything more beautiful. I think José Iturbi played the piano in An A Song to Remember. There's a very beautiful film about Fran LIszt, with Dirk Bogart. Lots of piano playing (by Cuban born Jorge Bolet).

Chopin was also played in a British movie ("Impromptu") by Hugh Grant, but he looked awful with a very unbecoming wig. Judy Davis was George Sand.

I don't remember if Cornel Wilde does any fingerwork in A Song to Remember. The best fingerwork by an actor pretending to be playing the piano (in a movie) is Ricardo Montalabn playing Aaron Copland's "Salon Mexico" in "Fiesta". The real player is Andre Previn.

I don't know why this message board entry is called "From the miscasting Hall of Fame". Do you know? In any case, here are some of my nominees:

Richard Widmark as the Dauphin, in "Saint Joan" directed by Otto Preminger.
Bela Lugosi as the Frankenstein's Monster in "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man"
John Wayne as Gengis Kahn in "The Conqueror"
Tom Sellek as King Fernando de Castilla in "Christpher Columbus"
Lee J. Cobb as a Chinese war monger in "The Left hand of God"
Jack Lemmon as Marcellus in Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet".

By the way, I love Cornel Wilde in "The Greatest Show on Earth" ("I always forget...I forgot!").

[–] Piperson 13 years ago

I remember that series on PBS with Rosemary Harris. The passionate relationship of Chopin and Sand was emphasized. It was very vivid. I think I remember that George Sand's daughter kept Sand and Chopin from being reconciled at the end or tried to. It was sad. I'd like to see it again.

[–] HarlowMGM 13 years ago

Honestly, when you're trying to cast the role of a frail Polish man with terminal tuberculosis, the obvious thing is to hire a big, beefy, strapping, all-American type like Cornel Wilde, right? All the better if he's a wooden actor!

And the femmy little Oberon as George Sand isn't a lot more effective.

PS: For a GOOD movie about Sand and Chopin, see the 1990's comedy "Impromptu", starring Judy Davis, Hugh Grant, Julian Sand, Bernadette Peters, and Emma Thompson. It's very funny yet deeply romantic, and is just a fabulous movie.

Honestly, you gave yourself away with your concluding paragraph. This happens all the time on IMDb board, post on one film's board and bash it and just happen to mention another version of the story you are crazy about. The 1940 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE board would be half it's size if not for the tirades of Colin Firth fangurls.

A SONG TO REMEMBER isn't a documentary it's a romantic melodrama based on the affair of Chopin and Sand and it works for me, despite the absurd Paul Muni character, despite the historical inaccuracies. Cornel Wilde's musclarity is very much in check in the film, effectively hidden under that period wardrobe and his performance is low-key, not the strutting hero of his later films. Merle Oberon may be too lovely to be George Sand but I seriously doubt the real Sand was the homely, sexless creature of legend given her long string of conquests of decidely hetereosexual males. The few photos of George Sand are from her senior years when of course any beauty would have faded and they aren't particularly androgynous.

And for the record - you are right - IMPROMPTU is a fabulous picture, it is indeed better than ASTR and the leads are better actors and seem closer to the true personalities of Chopin and Sand, but don't think it's not heavily fictious as well. If anything, it may be too romantic. I see no reason why one can't enjoy this film as well though.

[–] nicoledesapio 9 years ago

HarlowMGM: I agree with you completely regarding Cornel Wilde. Okay, maybe he doesn't look wan enough, but he certainly does look Continental (he was Hungarian), and I think he was a fine actor. For me, Wilde is the least of the film's problems.

Not having seen IMPROMPTU, I think it would be wonderful someday to have a film that depicts Chopin's life more accurately than A SONG TO REMEMBER does.

[–] karnevilelp 9 years ago

I watched this today, largely because I love biopics about musicians. My main problem with it is not Paul Muni's performance but the fact that the movie focuses on his character instead of having more scenes with Chopin and Sand. I don't find Elser's problems to be interesting at all, they just drag the movie down for me.