View From a Height

The Student Prince

For some reason, yesterday was Mario Lanza Day on TCM. Since it wasn't either his birthday or the anniversary of his demise, I can't explain it. Lanza's singing was always worth hearing, but he only made two movies worth watching - The Student Prince and The Great Caruso.

Although, of course, he didn't really make The Student Prince. He was slated to play the role, got into a fight with a director who didn't like his singing(!), and walked off the set. Of course, the studio owned all the cards, and got to use his voice while Edmund Purdom lip-synched the songs. When he wasn't singing, Purdom was impersonating Cary Grant, so he may not have had a voice of his own at all. Lanza, of course, went on to release an album of the songs.

The movie, shall we say, took a few liberties with the book. If you've ever seen the play, you'll know what I mean. The basic storyline is the same: boy gets girl he doesn't want, boy gets girl he does want, boy gets yanked back to reality to marry girl #1 and live out his life on memories. (The part where boy loses throne to Bismarckian unification is saved for later.)

It tells the same story, only differently. In the play, Karl and Kathie essentially fall in love at first sight, and the first act is all about them, the second act about Karl trying to relive his youth. In the movie, Karl's a stiff, spoiled brat who has to grow up and earn Kathie, and the trip back to Heidelberg is for closure. The movie is much more his story, the play is more about them.

UPDATE: No, my memory wasn't playing tricks on me. The movie contains at least two songs not in the play, which radically alter the character. "Beloved," sort of a "Stella, Stella" moment for the Prince, and "I'll Walk With God," when his grandfather dies and he takes over the throne. The latter is clearly supposed to be a transitional song, where he grows. So the problem the filmmakers faced was clear - if he's matured enough to be King, and to understand what that means, then he's got no business taking a weekend bender back to school to visit his chums. No wonder the play reads more like fan-fiction than it does the original.