In the movie, James and Sally Hessler, respectively musician and performer in their own right (according to the movie, at least) appear otherwise inexistent on the web. I have Googled them, but there is no other entry than this movie that pop up. Anyone has links to articles about them? Sally appears, again according to the movie, to have been the inspiration for the musicals Sally and Sunny.
shareThey were fictional characters added for more interest.
shareAs mandgg-jesus says, they never existed.
I know the "biography" parts of films like this should never be taken seriously. But this one is especially weird.
Other than the musical numbers, it is a loving paean to this imaginary man -- a story of a deep friendship. It's almost more about Hessler than it is about Kern! It even follows up with Kern's helping his troubled child to mature.
Kern's own romance and marriage are barely touched on, and you'd never know that he and his wife had a daughter, from this film.
It's just odd that someone (Bolton? Wells? Connoly? Holloway? All of them?) took so much trouble to write such a heartfelt ode to someone who didn't exist.
I have read that Hessler was based on someone named Paul Sadler, but found nothing about him.
I suppose it could just be that Kern's personal life was so dull that there was no other way to make a story, but you'd think there would be something they could have used.
Ah, well -- it's always good to see Van Heflin work.
I learned long ago not to believe what I see in movies that claim to be based on real life people or events. Some are better than others at representing what really happened, but most rely on dramatic license to make the story more interesting for viewers.
Knowing this, I was still surprised to learn that this movie was mostly fiction. As you pointed out, the characters who I thought had the most impact on the story; more, one could argue, than Kern himself, were completely made up. How disappointing! I thought the Sally character and her father really helped to show us who Kern was as a person but if they weren't real, we come away knowing nothing about him; other than what most of us already knew, he wrote a lot of songs.
Woman, man! That's the way it should be Tarzan. [Tarzan and his mate]
Yes, it's weird to have a made-up character be so important, even knowing the liberties that biopics take. Hessler is a fanciful amalgam of two orchestrators whom Kern worked with: Frank Saddler (who handled all the early shows) and Robert Russell Bennett (who took over in the mid 1920s). Bennett is the closer model for some of the personality traits, like the snobbery about "mere tunes" in contrast to the great symphonies, and the wish to travel and study in Europe.
The movie gives the impression that Kern studied arranging with him so that he could orchestrate his own shows; but he never did. Like almost all Broadway composers, Kern relied on the services of professional orchestrators, always.