NR | 1h 57m | Musical | 1952
Susan Hayward was a child in the 1920s when a vehicle struck her while she was crossing the street, breaking her legs and fracturing her hip. After years of painful recovery, she set her eyes on walking, dancing, singing, and acting her way into showbiz.
Hayward ended up doing all of it. Little did she know then that, decades later, she’d star as a real-life showbiz woman, Missouri-born singer Jane Froman, who gutsily wheeled, limped, and shuffled her way back into showbiz. Like Hayward, Froman suffered injuries; she survived a plane crash in the 1940s. She resumed singing just eight months after the accident. The two ladies were born only 10 years apart; they died even closer, just five years apart.
Director Walter Lang’s film draws on the heroism and courage of Froman, who overcame dozens of excruciating surgeries and the enforced use of crutches, to pull off an astounding comeback.
The film opens with the host of the annual ball for newspapermen in New York. He announces that among those being honored that night is “a wonderful singer ... a great lady … the most courageous entertainer of the year!” As the thunderous standing ovation settles, and Froman (Susan Hayward) sings offscreen, the camera zooms in on admiring listeners.
The narrator commends the courage and persistence of a great vocalist. To explain, the story goes back a few years, to Cincinnati, where newbie Froman rushes to a radio station hoping for her first recording gig.
Over an arresting nine-minute segment, Lang introduces Froman as a special singing talent. He explains how she got her first break and how she bonds with the man she’ll later marry, vaudeville artist Don Ross (David Wayne, doubling as narrator for the first half). Once her foot is in the door, Froman breezes through her routines, recording ad jingles in the morning and ballads at night. Ross doubles as her manager. Soon, she’s headlining the Broadway circuit, signing up with NBC, CBS and, yes, Hollywood.
Froman marries Ross more out of obligation than love. She presses ahead with a punishing schedule until a flight she’s on, taking her to cheer wounded American World War II troops in Europe, crashes over a river in Portugal. Only 15 of the 39 passengers survive; the accident leaves Froman with broken ribs and multiple fractures.
Bent but Not Broken
Hayward secured a Best Actress Oscar nomination and Alfred Newman won an Oscar for Best Score. Froman served as technical advisor on the film and it’s her voice on all the tracks that Hayward performs on screen. Hayward excels. She times her intake of breath with Froman’s, matches every gesture with the beat and rhythm of each song, and voices lyrics so convincingly that Lang can afford to go in for repeated close ups.Ritter is superb as the empathetic Clancy. As narrator, she explains, over Lang’s painful visual montage, how Froman beats everything that medical doctors throw at her: X-rays, bone grafts, and painkillers. She endures tumors, abscesses, nervous exhaustion, endless hours with psychiatrists, and a 35-pound cast on her leg. She’s carried on and off stage 22 times a performance, and holds the lingering fear that that long-postponed amputation might finally prove inevitable.
It’s Clancy who movingly reads out the thank you card from troops because Froman can barely hold back her tears reading the words scrawled on it: “A great soldier who, though wounded herself, didn’t forget us wounded.”
For those who know of the injuries and setbacks that the two showbiz women shared, it’s quite a sight. The audience watches Hayward as Froman, singing from a wheelchair or propped up on crutches, smiling and winking. She eyebrows her way through the chirpiest numbers and shuffles this way and that as she serenades troops recovering from similarly horrific war-induced injuries and setbacks.
The songs Froman selects sensitively and soothingly remind the men of home: “Wonderful Home Sweet Home,” “America the Beautiful,” and “Chicago.” She touches their home states: “California, Here I Come,” “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,” “Indiana,” “Alabamy Bound,” and “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” Watch out for a dashing Robert Wagner as a young American soldier.
