MovieChat Forums > Till the Clouds Roll By (1947) Discussion > The Songs

The Songs

posted 16 years ago by countrygirltori
6 replies | jump to latest

"Old Man River" was understandably the most mentioned in this film, but what happened to "The Way You Look Tonight"? It's my favorite song from one of my favorite movies, "Swing Time." It also won an academy award for best song in 1936. So, why didn't they include it?

Maybe it wasn't going along with the plot, but i at least expected it to be in the final scenes when they played all of his hit songs. Then I thought, maybe because "Swing Time" was an RKO picture there were issues to the rights of the film, but "A Fine Romance" is sung in the final scene and it was in the same movie as "The Way you Look Tonight."

Anyone know why it wasn't featured?

[–] billk51 14 years ago

According to the Trivia section above, it was recorded for the film, sung by Lucille Bremer, but cut. Why? Maybe some anti-RKO sentiment. Maybe that the film was already too long at over 2 hours and they thought his great ballads were already well-represented by "Long Ago and Far Away" and "All The Things You Are."

[–] paleolith 14 years ago

The film shows little post-Show Boat, yet his best work was from Show Boat on. It's not really a good film, just a hodge-podge of songs with a mostly fictitious story line.

Edward

[–] hachmom-1 14 years ago

I just wrote a post on this but i will chime in here instead and then delete my post....I think they did underplay the RKO music, and The way you look tonight (which i think is the best song Kern ever wrote after Old Man River,and one of the best ever written for a movie, period) not only was used in a film at another studio, but it won the Oscar for Best Song...the film definitely gives the impression that Kern never saw Hollywood till he arrived at MGM.

It is not our abilities that show who we truly are...it is our choices

[–] dmnemaine 13 years ago

The song was so associated with Fred Astaire that anyone else singing it probably would have been seen by audiences as sceond rate. Also, if you notice, all of the songs used in the film match the screen personalities of the singers. It could be that they just didn't think they had a good "personality" match for that song.

[–] TooSlim 13 years ago

Well, they could have tried to get Fred Astaire for it....he was no longer at RKO by the time of this film. I agree, after Show Boat, "Just the Way you Look Tonight" is one of his best.

[–] Piperson 10 years ago

I love "The Way You Look Tonight" and didn't even realize that Jerome Kern wrote it.

I really love Tony Martin singing "All the Things You Are" in the showcase at the end. For me, he stops the show.