One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937)

Despite its Larry Flynt-friendly title, Deanna Durbin is typically wholesome in the lavishly produced musical One Hundred Men and a Girl, which finds its heroine saving a fledgling orchestra led by financially challenged father Adolph Menjou, along with help from Leopold Stokowski. Not surprisingly, music is literally center stage for much of this delightful film; highlights include Stoki's batonless conducting of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony and Deanna's winsome trilling of Mozart's "Alleluia." The resulting package earned its star a special 1938 Academy Award (for her "spirit and personification of youth") and took home an Oscar of its own for Charles Previn's score. --Steven Smith Amazon.com

Daughter to the Rescue

I decided to watch this movie because I saw it won an Oscar for Best Writing (or something like that). It is a Depression Era movie that tells of an unemployed trombone player (supposedly unemployed for 2 years!). Anyway, circumstances lead his teenage daughter to approach an eccentric socialite woman about sponsoring a band of unemployed musicians (father was not alone in the musical unemployment lines). Through a bunch of mildly amusing twists, things gradually develop.

This movie features a conductor by the name of Stokowski (it kept sounding like Tschaichovsky). I assumed that he, too, was a fictional character. However, I saw him listed on the credits as himself so he must have been somebody back then. I thought the movie was OK but nothing too special. I note from other reviews that Deanna Durbin was a popular figure. She sang in an operatic style. I got a kick out of the conductor asking what she wanted to sing and the orchestra breaking into an unprepared, unrehearsed "La Traviata". Adolphe Menjou gave his usual mediocre preformance but the hit of the movie, for me, was Eugene Pallette (he of the basso profundo voice). In fact there was a constant game of practical jokes between he and one of his rich cohorts that worked into the plot quite well. After watching the movie (which I had taped a week before), I realized that it was just the right movie for me to have watched on April Fool's Day. April 3, 2006

Okey Dokey, Stokie!

The "One Hundred Men and a Girl" of the title are, respectively, the unemployed musicians who form a symphony orchestra in the hope of finding a sponsor and the plucky flibbertigibbet who, through her guileless charm and moxie, brings them together with Leopold Stokowski. It's all incredibly far-fetched and corny, but it's an extremely likeable picture. It is notable for the respect it pays to classical music: in "One Hundred Men and a Girl," music actually matters; the out-of-work musicians are heroic figures who retain their nobility despite the holes in their shoes, the shine on their suits and the stains on their hats; the audiences who attend classical music concerts in this picture listen with rapt attention and respond enthusiastically at the end; when broadcasting plutocrat Eugene Pallette falls asleep at a concert (he's the only character in the entire movie who does), the joke is on him, rather than on the music: it is comic evidence of his vulgarity. As the intrepid "Patsy" Cardwell, Deanna Durbin sparkles more than is absolutely necessary, but she's a competent little actress, and she is surrounded by a fine supporting cast that includes Adolph Menjou, Eugene Pallette, Alice Brady, Mischa Auer and, of course, Leopold Stokowski. Stokowski is the real surprise here: he turns in a first rate performance that is both witty and subtle and, finally, quite moving. The picture loses steam only when Miss Durbin is invited to sing, which happens no less than thrice; each time she performs, she does so before an increasingly august and admiring public. Even Stokie confesses that her voice is "remarkable." (It would be interesting to know how much Universal Studios paid him to tell such an outrageous fib.) Her voice twitters without ever becoming air-borne. Coloratura passages turn to mush in her throat. The entire movie is so cheerfully diverting that watching it feels rather like spending a pleasant afternoon at an ant-free, cloudless picnic over which Miss Durbin occasionally casts her vocal wet blanket. February 21, 2006

Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark

A consortium of business types gathers in a Manhattan penthouse and sneers at the little people, a slightly overdrawn look at capitalism. These guys are so awful they make the capitalists in a Lars Von Trier film like MANDERLAY or DOGVILLE look like Albert Schweitzers. The fattest cat is John R. Frost, played by Eugene Pallette in an extremely broad mode, almost as though he were Tony Soprano as a hillbilly. He makes an unlikely financier!

Deanna Durbin has a tough part here, she's always in center stage but most of the time she just has to bug Stokowski until he finally relents, and you can sympathize with him, for she takes what we now call "stalking" to new lows. The two of them are equally good at acting, and Stokowski in particular is a surprise. He could have been a major screen actor on the model of, say, Claude Rains. His huge mop of white hair alone commands attention, and he speaks beautifully, losing dignity only (strangely enough) when he's conducting! As my pal Mac McGinnes points out, "When Oscar Levant was asked what great moment in musical history he wished he had witnessed he said, 'The day Leopold Stokowski discovered he had beautiful hands.'"

Durbin will wring tears from a stone when she is forced to retreat home without getting her way from the great conductor. She sits on her magnificent bed (looks very grand for a poor street urchin, with great golden rods forming a unique bedstead) and cries her heart out, insisting that Adolphe Menjou her dad deserves a job, he deserves "a fur collar on his coat, and, and, turkey on his birthday--instead of BEANS," she sobs, her pretty face contorting in what looks like real anguish. She is an rivetting performer. February 21, 2006

Another Hit For Durbin

100 Men and a Girl is the story of a group of musicians who are out of work. They seem to be led by one man (Adolph Menjou) whose energetic daughter Patsy (Deanna Durbin) will stop at nothing to see her father and their friends find work. She decides to bother famed conductor Leopold Stokowski for help, but he only becomes annoyed. Instead, she finds a rich woman who promises nonchalantly to sponsor an orchestra if it existed. Patsy proceeds to gain hope and organizes the orchestra only to find that the woman has left for Europe. Patsy decides that her only choice is to berate the woman's husband and Stokowski for support, ensuing great comedy.

Deanna Durbin is still a little girl in this film, bright and cheerful. She has a great sense of comic timing and displays her usual charm. The songs she sings "It's Raining Sunbeams," "A Heart That's Free," "Hallelujah in F Major," and "Traviata" are operatic but well sung.

Mischa Auer plays Michael, one of the musicians, and a very funny one at that. He adds plenty of laughs to the film.

There are a few spots where a black box rims the film during montage sequences. This is a bit distracting, but otherwise, the camerawork is excellent. One notable scene is where the unemployed orchestra congregates on a staircase to play the "Second Hungarian Rhapsody," photographed artistically and beautifully. February 2, 2006

Great Music on Screen

100 Men and a Girl is Rank Sentimentality with a Great Sound Track. It deserves to be on DVD for the sound track alone. Durbin's rendition of the Mozart Alleluia sends chllls down the spine. June 28, 2005

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