Rated: NR

The Glenn Miller Story (Universal - 1954)

There were as many real original members of the Glenn Miller band in The Glenn Miller Story as there had been fellow team members of Monty Stratton's White Sox in The Stratton Story—one. And that was the least of the points of similarity between the two biographical pictures.

The Glenn Miller Story traces the trombonist's progress from scuffling for jobs in California, though his two-steps-forward-one-step-backward attempts to form his own orchestra, to his worldwide fame as the crafter of such popular tunes as Little Brown Jug and Moonlight Serenade. The central personal relationship is with his practical-minded wife, Helen (June Allyson), and the only tragic note is delayed until the end for his never-explained disappearance in an Army plane over the English Channel in December 1944.

The Glenn Miller Story was filmed with the bandleader's widow on hand for most of the shooting (Chummy McGregor, Miller's pianist and friend, played in the movie by Harry Morgan), also served as a technical consultant). Helen Miller had in fact rejected earlier offers by other studios to do the picture because of her contention that the scripts had not given sufficient acknowledgment to her husband's serious musicianship, supposedly viewing him merely as a successful record seller. Although the Universal production satisfied her demands on that score, it laid even more emphasis on Miller the Responsible: From an early scene in which Stewart tells Allyson that "I know exactly where I'm going, what I'm going to do," there is little danger that the middle-brow audiences targeted by the picture will be exposed to the musician as nomadic artist. As with The Stratton Story, potentially agonizing scenes are also left outside camera range, most notably in having a military officer pick up the telephone tn inform Helen of her husband's disappearance, then having the picture skip forward a couple of days.

Stewart's work was of a piece with the gingerly handled material—in the description of the New York Herald Tribune, a "discrete" performance. But behind the scenes he was as fixated as ever about mastering the technical details of a role. As Paul Tanner, the only actual Miller band alumnus to get screen time, recalls:

"He learned the slide positions of every single note he was supposed to play, even though Dick Nash, Joe Yuki, or I did the actual playing in the movie. He'd also stuff up the mouthpiece to get the inflated cheek effect. He was incredibly conscientious. Friendly on a need-to-know basis, but kept watching me like a hawk. He was an awfully quick learner."

Mann left little doubt that he considered the project "fraught with sentimentality and banality." With Helen Miller hovering around, he showed little taste for a battle over the agreed-upon script, rather, he took refuge in technical solutions. One was minimizing the number of reaction shots, so that the characters weren't always looking thankful for having been treated to a bromide. Another was in unusually flashy (for him) dissolve effects for introducing songs. Stewart was particularly impressed with the presentation of Moonlight Serenade:

"I was at a piano. I'd hit a note, write it down, hit another. In the background, so faint at first you could hardly hear it, were the chords. Then I'd write, then you'd hear the beat, and then we slowly fade into an enormous dance hall, where the whole orchestra is playing Moonlight Serenade, the first song that really had the Glenn Miller sound."

Despite such moments, however, The Glenn Miller Story remained the kind of Eisenhower Era movie where elderly characters always seemed to be covering their mouths to conceal smiles. It also turned out to be Hollywood's third-biggest money earner of the year, trailing only White Christmas and The Caine Mutiny.