The Eddy Duchin Story (Columbia) continues the succession of reverent film biographies of U.S. musicmakers without varying the dependable formula of Boy seeks Fame, Boy gets Fame, Boy realizes Fame isn't everything.
As told in the movie, Pianist Eddy Duchin's way in the world was singularly easy. He arrived breathless in Manhattan, and, within minutes, had a job in Leo Reisman's band at the old Central Park Casino, and was launched on a successful career that continued without impediment. With equal speed, he met, wooed and wed socially prominent Marjorie Oelrichs, and was instantly accepted by her friends and relatives.
In fact, the only tragedy in Duchin's life was death, a subject that Hollywood ordinarily does not like to contemplate with seriousness. Duchin's bride died in childbirth, and Eddy had scarcely recovered from the shock when he learned that he was afflicted with leukemia. The film suggests that he had no consolations, either of religion or philosophy, to help him face imminent extinction. Except for some murmured complaints about how unfair "They" are in arranging man's fate, the problem was resolved entirely in terms of how and when Eddy should tell his son and prospective second wife about his condition.
Tyrone Power plays Eddy with unflagging boyishness, and Kim Novak acts the doomed Marjorie Oelrichs with spectral intimations ("Hold me, Eddy; I'm afraid of the wind . . ."). This blowy motif runs throughout the film: death's advent is always heralded by wind-driven snow, rain or autumn leaves. A stately newcomer, Australia's Victoria Shaw, is introduced as Duchin's second wife, and a pair of clipped-accented moppets (Mickey Maga and Rex Thompson) perform as the Duchin child at different ages. Moviegoers may enjoy the rippling piano notes (actually played by Carmen Cavallaro) that made Duchin a society favorite during the '30s, and there is one pleasant scene in which Power plays a duet with a small Chinese boy during his wartime tour of duty as operations officer of a destroyer flotilla.
That Certain Feeling (Paramount) is a movie adaptation of the 1954 Broadway hit, King of Hearts, by Jean Kerr and Eleanor Brooke, a comedy that screened its thin plot behind an electrical display of wisecracks. Hollywood has added twice as many writers (Norman Panama, Melvin Frank, I.A.L. Diamond, William Altman) and got a corresponding increase in plot and even a few more jokes.
As a Bob Hope vehicle, the film has its points. Bob is pictured as a ne'er-do-well cartoonist and psychopathic coward who has turned to an analyst for help because Bromo Seltzer has failed him. Reduced to painting nudes on ties and landscapes on the backs of turtles, Hope is visited in his garret by a dazzling blonde (Eva Marie Saint) who used to be his wife and is now engaged to George Sanders, a moneyed comic-strip artist whose ego contains more hot air than a Turkish bath.