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Sigmund Romberg • Deep In My Heart  • Rhino MGM download • TT:
xx:x
• 24 tracks
Performed: MGM Soloists, Studio Orchestra & Chorus ,
Conductor/Music Supervisor: Adolph Deutsch
Arrangers: Alexander Courage, Hugo Friedhofer, Robert Tucker (vocals).
Deep In My Heart (1954) is one of the last big all-star musicals from MGM,
and also the last of their (in)famous musical biographies, in this case one freely
adapted from the life of Sigmund Romberg. Like its predecessors (Words And
Music by Rodgers and Hart, Till the Clouds Roll By by Jerome Kern, etc.) it also
showcases a broad cross section of the composer’s hits and rarities performed
by most of the stars still glimmering in the MGM heavens. The real Romberg
was born in Europe and became one of the most successful American operetta
composers of the early Twentieth century. He moved uneasily into musical
comedy in the 1930s and 1940s, though many of his operetta favorites (such as
‘Lover, Come Back To Me’) had a contemporary edge which allowed them to
remain popular into the Big Band era. Like many film composer émigrés,
Romberg was able to fuse Old World lyricism and schmaltz with American
popular appeal. He had a long-standing connection with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Several of his operettas (The New Moon, Maytime) provided hit vehicles for
Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in the 1930s, and in the 1950s MGM
remade his most famous work, The Student Prince, in CinemaScope. Also like
many film composers, Romberg had a secondary career as a recording artist.
Thus RCA Victor released their own ‘Deep In My Heart’ album with Romberg’s
own recordings at the time of the MGM release.
Deep In My Heart, produced by MGM’s renaissance music man, Rodger Edens,
stars Jose Ferrer as Romberg, and ex-Wagnerian soprano, Helen Traubel, as his
platonic but supportative lady friend, Anna Mueller. There is also the obligatory
transfusion of romantic interest, but anything resembling a plot is subsidiary to
the on-going musical numbers that provide the substance of both the film and
this new ‘download only’ Rhino soundtrack. MGM Records originally released
Deep In My Heart as a deluxe boxed LP (a packaging format later followed by
their Ben Hur and Mutiny On The Bounty releases). But like most of the MGM
musical soundtracks of the era, numbers were cut and edited to fit the track
timing demands of the period. This new Rhino edition provides all the musical
numbers in complete versions, plus a few incidental cues and outtakes, and all
in true stereo.
The angular Ferrer comes off as just rather odd as Romberg, especially in a
virtuoso, if bizarre number in which he performs a one-man version of one of
his shows (‘Jazzadadadoo Medley’) to impress (?) his society sweetheart (Doe
Avedon). However, the still golden-voiced Trauble is appealing and versatile,
able to turn ‘Softly As In A Morning Sunrise’ - is there any other kind? – into a
moving art song at one moment, then launch into an obscure bit of ersatz
ragtime called ‘Leg of Mutton’ with equal conviction. All this still leaves lots of
room for a roll call of Romberg show excerpts performed by the likes of Howard
Keel, Jane Powell, Vic Damone, Rosemary Clooney, William Olvis, and Tony
Martin, right down to Gene Kelly and his brother, Fred.
Ann Miller has one of her best production numbers with the frantic ‘It,’ a
lesser-known Romberg excursion into the Jazz Age. Dancers Cyd Charisse and
James Mitchell perform a sensual ‘One Alone’ from the popular Desert Song.
While Charisse is voice-doubled by Carole Richards (who dubs Newman’s
‘Resurrection Song’ in The Robe), no vocals are necessary to get the erotic
charge emphatically across in this opulently staged and orchestrated
production number. But then a spacious stereo mix and composer Adolph
Deutsch’s conducting beautifully enhance all the lush orchestrations by
Alexander Courage and Hugo Friedhofer. While I miss the informative liner
notes that came with the Rhino CD releases, downloading seems like a
convenient and effective process and I hope more new MGM releases will be
forthcoming. And who knows, perhaps the entire catalog of MGM films
(including such less familiar titles as Deep In My Heart) may eventually be
available in this format as well. Into the future! RC
http://www.rhino.com/store/digital/detail.lasso?upc=081227843663