Mr. Van Maaster is a hotelier in Little Delft, Michigan. By family tradition, the oldest of his seven daughters must marry first, but Regina wants to move to New York to become an actress. The youngest, Billie, has the sweetest singing voice. All seven sisters are married in the same ceremony.[3]
Although sometimes tagged as a musical, all the songs in the film are diegetic, with no unheard accompaniment to the songs, and all with Billie as soloist. They include an English version ("There Is a Dreamboat on High") of a berceuse (Wiegenlied/lullaby), long attributed (and in the film) to Mozart, but it was in fact composed by Friedrich Fleischmann (Schlafe, mein Prinzchen, schlaf ein, 1799).[4]
A scene in which a pianist lodger plays a melody to lull the hotelier to sleep features "Rock-a-bye Baby", derived from English ballad "Lillibullero", itself derived from the quickstep section of a march by Henry Purcell. At a climactic moment in the tulip festival the aria "Je suis Titania" (from the French opera Mignon) is heard. Other songs written by the team of Walter Jurmann (music) and Paul Francis Webster (lyrics) featuring Kathryn Grayson as soloist include "You and the Waltz and I", "Little Tingle Tangle Toes" and "Tulip Time".
Reception
According to MGM records the film earned $638,000 in the U.S. and Canada and $1,048,000 elsewhere (a rarity for MGM, as most films earned more money domestically until after World War II),[5] returning a profit of $364,000.[1]
References
^ abcThe Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles: Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study.
^or Bernhard Flies. Goretzki, Elfriede; Krickenberg, Dieter (1988). "Das Wiegenlied 'von Mozart'". Mitteilungen der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum. 36 (1–4). Salzburg: 114–118.
^Kyle W. J. Tabbernor, "'Subbed-Titles': Hollywood, the Art House Market and the Best Foreign Language Film Category at the Oscars" (Ph.D. diss., University of Western Ontario, 2013), 16-17. See also Richard Shale, The Academy Awards Index: The Complete Categorical and Chronological Record (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), 277.
