With A Song In My Heart

With A Song In My Heart is like an evening spent around the piano after someone has asked for some of the old songs. Starring Susan Hayward as Jane Froman, the picture boasts twenty-six standard hits sung by Miss Froman herself.

The Jolson Story ignited the sound formula of giving the audience old favorites sung by the still excellent voice of a star whose popularity has faded with time. With A Song In My Heart has great success in following this pattern. The show has only one large-scale production number. For most of the other songs, Miss Hayward is alone on the scene, lending her own brand of vivacious charm to Miss Froman's exciting voice.

The plot furnishes enough action to keep the picture from becoming just a Hayward-Froman recital. It quickly goes over Miss Froman's meteoric rise to fame, the dis-integration of her first marriage to Don Ross, the plane crash that left her a virtual cripple, and concentrates on her comeback, during which she entertained troops in Europe. The story's weakest point is its lack of motivation for Miss Froman's love affair with John Burn, the co-pilot of the plane. Burn, played insipidly by Rory Calhoun, does not appear long enough on the screen to get across much character. It is not very clear why Miss Froman preferred Burn to Ross, played with charm by David Wayne.

The strong points of this entertaining picture are Miss Froman's voice, Miss Hayward's beauty, the quantity and the quality of the songs. From the title song through many such familiar ones as Blue Moon, I'm Through With Love, Manhattan, and Embraceable You, everyone will find at least one favorite.