Watch I Dream of Jeanie For Free

hyped garbage

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This is purportedly the story of Stephen Foster but bears no resemblance to his real life. It is more than 80% pure fiction and its only saving grace is a load of his music and some very good performances of it. Foster is portrayed as a wimp who is so besotted with a girl who is so obviously a self-centered brat that he swears that he will give up writing music if she will marry him (she doesn't). Many of the facts of Foster's life are portrayed here, his association with Christy, his lack of copyrights, his not being paid royalties, etc., but the basic story is pure Hollywood. Watch it for the good old music but beware, there is a long black face Minstrel show which will jolt many who grew up in recent years. Tacky by today's overly sensitive standards the minstrel show was still alive and well in the 1940s and into the 50s. Foster died, penniless and alone, at an early age but his music lives on and is well represented in this film.

Just picked up this film for a buck at National Wholesale Liquidators, and after watching it, I feel like I got ripped-off.I don't know that I've seen a worse film than this. Honestly. And I would never write a negative review of a film had I not such enormous respect for the subject matter, that is, Stephen Foster and his music.First, what is it? It's a musical biography? Yeah, lot's of tunes by Foster then interspersed here and there are these pseudo-Broadway-Jerome Kern-type numbers that reek more than the Mississippi delta. I mean, somebody got PAID to write this drivel? Secondly, the REAL story of Foster is a fascinating one. Why not even come CLOSE to it? Thirdly, what did they have on the great Ray Middleton to get him to do this film? Pictures of him with small boys?? With communists? What a waste of a great talent.So, friends of Foster, and the truth, and good entertainment, be afraid... be very, very, afraid.

On the surface, this is a poor man's SWANEE RIVER (1939) – the big-budget 20th Century Fox biopic of celebrated American songwriter Stephen Foster (played in that film by Don Ameche); actually, there had been an even earlier film version of the same events entitled HARMONY LANE (1935) and starring Douglass Montgomery! This Republic production is, nevertheless, a colorful diversion – with a third-rate cast scoring quite nicely with their enthusiastic performances, and especially Ray Middleton (as famous minstrel man, E. P. Christy – portrayed in SWANEE RIVER by Al Jolson, and whom Middleton appears to be mimicking throughout), Muriel Lawrence (as Foster's snobbish fiancée) and Eileen Christy (as her earthier younger sister, the Jeanie of the title). However, the actor who portrays Foster here – Bill Shirley – is rather weak and fails to do real justice to the troubled, short-lived composer! Rotund character actor Percy Helton has a nice supporting role as Foster's sarcastic employer during his day job as a book-keeper.The film starts off amiably enough, but the second half is mostly bogged down by an uninterrupted succession of musical numbers – although Middleton's forceful, slightly campy portrayal of the flamboyant Christy does a lot to enliven proceedings nevertheless. Prolific Hollywood veteran Dwan dabbled in practically every genre; this, in fact, wasn't his first musical – having earlier made the 1939 version of THE THREE MUSKETEERS (also known as THE SINGING MUSKETEER, and whose recently-released DVD edition I need to pick up, especially now that I've just acquired a number of his work via budget releases from VCI). For the record, three cast members from the film – Middleton, Shirley and Christy – were re-united with their director here for next year's SWEETHEARTS ON PARADE.

I also watched the DVD that resurrected this forgotten film. The minstrel show scene aside (and that was not considered particularly hateful by white society in 1952), the racism isn't any more offensive than anything you might see in "Gone with the Wind." Ray Middleton is fun to watch as an egotistical hambone of a showman, but he is not the hero of this story. This film's real crime is to make the film's subject, songwriter Stephen Foster, the most unappealing, weak-willed, limp dishrag of a person ever to have a film centered around him, and there was no compensating spark of personality, wit, or nobility to counterbalance that impression. There was a sense of romance about him, in a wan, hopeless, tear-in-the-eye Pierrot sort of way. But really – he was portrayed as such a sad sack human doormat that you couldn't even feel sorry for him. I found it altogether puzzling.