World-famous soprano Jenny Lind and her party arrive at a Swedish inn. Jenny wants a room with a piano, but the only one suitable has already been taken by Paul Brandt, a young composer. Jenny’s companion, Pauline, demands that Paul surrender the room to the world’s greatest singer, but he pretends he has never heard of Jenny Lind. Jenny finds her friend’s behaviour embarrassing. Paul and Jenny meet and, after being arrogant and flirtatious, Paul agrees to let her have the room. Jenny is intrigued by him.
Jenny Lind (Grace Moore)
At dinner, Paul presents Jenny with a song and asks her to sing it. She refuses, but then he makes it a condition of having his room. When Jenny sings [It Is Destiny], Paul constantly corrects her style. After the song, Paul kisses Jenny, who slaps him. He says he kissed her because he has always wanted someone to sing his song like that. He adds that he fell in love with her the moment he saw her and that they have not met by accident. Paul leaves, but he assures Jenny that they shall meet again.
In Malmo, Jenny performs in Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment [Rataplan]. During the performance, Jenny discovers that Paul is now a member of the chorus. She invites him to supper [Student’s Song]. Paul gets rid of Josephine, but Jenny says she cannot dine with him alone [Oh, Why?]. Paul reveals that, far from not knowing who she is, he has long carried her picture with him. He tells her again that he adores her, and Jenny admits she has been thinking about him since the inn. She says they must both be mad. She talks about marriage, but he says he could never be the husband of a great prima donna. Paul warns Jenny that one day the world will turn its affections elsewhere, but that he will always love her. She asks him to go.
Paul Brandt (Reginald Denny) and Jenny, falling in love
Much later, in Italy at the end of a long tour, Jenny is about to perform Norma. She hears Rosatti, a famous Italian prima donna, get a rapturous welcome as she takes her seat in the audience. The performance begins [Casta Diva], with Paul also in the audience. An encore is demanded, but Jenny says she is exhausted and her throat hurts; she does not want to go back on. She is persuaded to sing again [Casta Diva], but her voice goes. The curtain is brought down and Jenny collapses. The crowd calls for Rosatti. Paul defends Jenny and a fight breaks out. Paul is struck hard on the head and passes out. Backstage, Jenny hears Rosatti complete the performance.
Later, Paul brings his uncle, the maestro Garcia, to help Jenny recover her voice. Paul is walking unsteadily. After Paul has left, the maestro accidentally reveals that his nephew’s sight has been impaired since the fight in the theatre. Paul will not get the help he needs because all he can think about is helping Jenny.
Back in Sweden [Swedish Pastorale], Jenny is with Paul, whose eyes have been bandaged for two months, following treatment. When the doctor removes the bandages, Paul pretends that he can see for the sake of Jenny, but confesses the truth to the doctor, who says the blindness will be permanent. Before Paul can tell Jenny the truth, she reveals that her voice has returned [It Is Destiny]. Paul slips away, leaving a note telling Jenny that he loves her but must go.
Jenny and Paul, following the operation intended to restore his sight
Jenny makes her debut in the United States, where she is promoted by P T Barnum. Paul is also in America. He is blind, performing his music in a bar. Olaf, a fellow Swede and friend of Paul’s, breaks into Jenny’s dressing room. He has brought one of his blind friend’s songs, hoping that Jenny will buy it and sing it. Josephine takes the song and throws him out. Jenny sees Paul’s name on the manuscript and realizes that he is blind. Jenny tells Josephine to find Olaf.
While Jenny sings [Lovely Hour], Paul is in a huge crowd outside the theatre who are listening through the open windows. Later, Olaf tricks Paul into meeting Jenny. She gently admonishes Paul for not telling her about his blindness, and they embrace.
Jack Mintz (1895-1983) had a varied career in the film world that took him from Monty Banks in 1926 to Troy Donahue in 1963.
Mintz worked as an assistant director, including on MGM musicals Free and Easy and The Cuban Love Song. He was also a contributing writer on The Wizard of Oz and Presenting Lily Mars. He also worked from time to time as a dialogue coach and assistant to the producer.
Mintz was, for a period in the 1940s, in charge of purchasing for Poverty Row studio Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), which must have involved handing budgets of dozens of dollars.
Robert Joseph Anthony Golden (1897-1942) started out as an assistant director on Harold Lloyd pictures, including Dr Jack (1922) and Safety Last! (1923). He is also known to have worked as Lloyd’s double.
Golden’s subsequent work as AD, often uncredited, included seven MGM musicals, beginning with Hallelujah in 1929. This was followed by Dancing Lady, The Great Ziegfeld, A Day at the Races, The Girl of the Golden West, The Great Waltz and Ziegfeld Girl.
Golden directed one picture, a Polly Moran comedy called Honeymoon, in 1928.
Cullen Battle Tate (1886-1947) spent most of his twenty-five year career working as an assistant director, starting with Cecil B DeMille’s The Little American (1917). He went on to work with DeMille on a number of other pictures, including Madam Satan.
Cullen directed three features in 1924 and 1926, and is cited as having co-directed, without credit, My Heart Belongs to Daddy (1942), alongside credited director Robert Siodmak.
The father of LeRoy Jerome Prinz (1895-1983) owned a dance academy, which might be assumed to have contributed to his son’s career as a dance director. But Jack Cole, who might be considered to know, apparently asserted that Prinz “didn’t know a bloody thing about dancing”. Most of the dances Prinz directed for Madam Satan would seem to support that view, the exception being ‘Low Down’, which is performed by Lillian Roth and LeRoy’s brother Eddie, which it is possible to surmise was choreographed by Eddie himself.
Knowledge of terpsichore notwithstanding, LeRoy Prinz directed the dances for scores of pictures at Paramount and, later, Warner Bros. His approach was conservative and generally showed little interest in dance skills.
Prinz was known as a shameless self publicist, claiming that early in life he was a cabin boy, a test pilot (he did serve with distinction as a pilot in the First World War), a dancer in a bordello, an adviser to the Mexican government, and had a working relationship with gangsters including Al Capone.
The name of James Basevi (1890-1962) is probably less familiar today than that of Cedric Gibbons, but he was, like his erstwhile colleague, one of the most influential of all art directors during the classical Hollywood era. Basevi was to 20th Century-Fox, what Gibbons was to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
James Badevi was British, but emigrated to Canada, then the USA, after serving in the First World War. He gave up his profession as an architect to design films, joining MGM at its formation in 1924. One of his earliest successes was The Big Parade (1925), where he designed battle sequences that drew on his own wartime experiences.
In the 1930s, he was put in charge of MGM’s special effects work, and in this capacity contributed to two musicals: Madam Satan and, most significantly, San Francisco, for which he designed “one of the truly great cinematic illusions”, the earthquake sequence.
After moving to Fox, Basevi soon established one of the great partnerships between a designer and a director, when he worked with John Ford on The Hurricane (1937). He was the art director on a further seven Ford pictures, including some of his greatest westerns: My Darling Clementine (1946), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Wagon Master (1950) and (his final film) The Searchers (1956).
Basevi also made remarkable contributions to two Alfred Hitchcock films of the 1940s, Lifeboat (1944) and Spellbound (1945).
