Seven Sweethearts is a 1942 musical film directed by Frank Borzage and starring Kathryn Grayson, Marsha Hunt and Van Heflin.

Seven Sweethearts
Van Heflin and Kathryn Grayson
Directed by	Frank Borzage
Written by	Ferenc Herczeg play
Screenplay by	Walter Reisch Leo Townsend
Based on	Seven Sisters
Produced by	Frank Borzage Joe Pasternak
Starring	Kathryn Grayson Marsha Hunt Cecilia Parker Van Heflin
Cinematography	George J. Folsey Leonard Smith (uncredited)
Edited by	Blanche Sewell
Music by	Franz Waxman
Production company	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Distributed by	Loew's Inc.
Release date	November 13, 1942 (1942-11-13)
Running time	98 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$752,000[1]
Box office	$1,686,000[1]

Seven Sweethearts generated legal trouble seven years later. In 1949, Hungarian playwright Ferenc Herczeg sued MGM, producer Joe Pasternak and screenwriters Walter Reisch and Leo Townsend for $200,000, claiming they had plagiarized his play Seven Sisters, which he had written in 1903 and which Paramount Pictures had adapted into The Seven Sisters a 1915 movie starring Madge Evans.[2]

Kathryn Grayson's real-life sister, Frances Raeburn, played "Cornelius."

Plot summary

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (November 2013)

Mr. Van Maaster (S.Z. Sakall) is a hotelier in Little Delft, Michigan. By family tradition, the oldest of his seven daughters must marry first. But Regina (Marsha Hunt) wants to go to New York, to become an actress. The youngest, Billie (Kathryn Grayson), has the sweetest singing voice, and she ends up marrying Henry Taggart (Van Heflin) while the other sisters including Regina also get married at the same time, so all sisters marry in the same ceremony.[3] Although sometimes tagged as a musical, all the songs in the film are diegetic, i.e. there is no unheard accompaniment to the songs, and all with Billie as soloist. They include an English-lyric ("There is a Dreamboat on High") version of a berceuse (Wiegenlied/lullaby), long attributed (and in the film) to Mozart but in fact composed by Friedrich Fleischmann (Schlafe, mein Prinzchen, schlaf ein, 1799)[4] Interestingly, a scene where a pianist-lodger plays a melody intended to lull the father/hotelier to sleep features Rock-a-bye Baby, derived from the often-retexted English ballad Lillibullero, itself derived from the quickstep section of a march by Henry Purcell. At a climactic moment in the tulip festival, she sings the beginning of the aria, "Je suis Titania" (polonaise, from Act II, Scene 2 of the French opera Mignon by Ambroise Thomas, lyrics by Jules Barbier). Other songs featuring Kathryn Grayson as soloist, by the songwriting team of Walter Jurmann (music) and Paul Francis Webster (lyrics), include "You and the Waltz and I", "Little Tingle Tangle Toes", and "Tulip Time".

Cast

Reception

According to MGM records the film made $638,000 in the US and Canada and $1,048,000 elsewhere (a rarity for MGM, as most movies earned more money domestically until after WWII);[5] this gave the studio a profit of $364,000.[1]

References

External links

• Seven Sweethearts at IMDb
• Seven Sweethearts at AllMovie
• Seven Sweethearts at the TCM Movie Database
• Seven Sweethearts at the American Film Institute Catalog