A Song Is Born

Infobox Film
name = A Song Is Born


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director = Howard Hawks
producer = Samuel Goldwyn
writer = Billy Wilder (story)
Thomas Monroe (story)
Harry Tugend (uncredited)
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starring = Danny Kaye
Virginia Mayo
Steve Cochran
Benny Goodman
Louis Armstrong
music =
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editing =
distributor = RKO Radio Pictures
released = 19 October 1948
runtime = 113 minutes
country = USA
language = English
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imdb_id = 0040820

"A Song Is Born" (1948) is a musical film remake, starring Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo, of "Ball of Fire". It was directed by Howard Hawks from an original story by Billy Wilder, produced by Samuel Goldwyn and released by RKO Radio Pictures.

Filmed in lavish Technicolor, it featured a stellar supporting cast of musical legends, including Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, and Benny Carter. Other notable musicians playing themselves in the cast include Charlie Barnet, Mel Powell, Harry Babasin, Louis Bellson, Al Hendrickson, and The Golden Gate Quartet. Other actors include Steve Cochran and Hugh Herbert.

Plot summary

Mild-mannered Professor Hobart Frisbee (Danny Kaye) and his fellow academics, among them Professor Magenbruch (Benny Goodman), are writing a musical encyclopedia. When they discover that there is some new popular music that is called jazz, swing, boogie woogie or rebop they become entangled in the problems of night club singer Honey Swanson (Virginia Mayo). She needs a place to hide out from the police, who want to question her about her gangster boyfriend Tony Crow (Steve Cochran). She invites herself into their sheltered household, over Frisbee's objections.

While there, she introduces them to the latest in jazz, with which they are unfamiliar, giving the film an excuse to feature many of the best musicians of the era. The songs they play include "A Song Is Born", "Daddy-O", "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You", "Flying Home", and "Redskin Rumba".

Eventually, Tony comes by to collect Honey, but by that time, she and Hobart have fallen in love. And the finale, of course, is not decided by guns but by music, its resonance and reverberation.

External links

*imdb title|id=0040820|title=A Song Is Born