Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Absolutely the worst movie.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

A Song is Born may be seventy (70) years old now but the song remains the same. This is a romance disguised as a mobster movie, The sexy nightclub singer Honey Swanson (Virginia Mayo) finds her very own Prince Charming in the form of Professor Hobart Frisbee (Danny Kaye) when she takes the Professor up on his offer to assist him in documenting the history of this new musical discovery from the United Sates called "jazz music". So Honey Swanson needs to find a place to lay low to avoid the federal investigators from subpoenaing her so she hides out at Professor Hobart Frisbee's academic school of music where the two lovebirds fall madly in love. The wicked witch is played by mobster Tony Crow (Steve Cochran) who sends for his dame Honey Swanson so that he can marry her so as his wife, she can't squeal to the Feds on a murder rap that they have targeted Tony Crow for committing.Virginia Mayo's beauty as Honey Swanson is not animated as in the Disney classic as she is a true beauty of the silver screen age. Danny Kaye who can't help but fall in love with Honey hears the music playing constantly in his head once he sets eyes first on Honey. The film has great jazz music, the comedy of Danny Kaye and his seven (7) stooges who are all his fellow music professors who have to find a way to save their princess Honey Swanson, and a barrage of cameo appearances by many of the great jazz legends of the time.This comedy/romance/musical is sure to rock your world! I give it a solid 9 out of 10 rating.

Gregg Toland, the great director of photography of CITIZEN KANE, WUTHERING HEIGHTS and THE GRAPES OF WRATH was said to be the highest paid D.P. in America, as well as perhaps the finest B&W lighting cameraman the major Hollywood studio system ever produced. Under long- term contract to producer Sam Goldwyn, he died at the early age of forty-four in 1948, the same year this film was made for his boss. A SONG IS BORN is one of his few Technicolor films. For a man of visual genius, the photography here is surprisingly routine—flatly lit and uninspired compared to the more adventurous color work being done about the same time by Harold Rosson and Joe Rutenberg at the MGM studios. Perhaps Toland was too ill at the time to pay much attention to this project, no more motivated to do his best than was the film's director, the usually brilliant Howard Hawks who had directed BALL OF FIRE, an earlier version of the same story. The film is also flawed by garish makeup for the gorgeous Virginia Mayo. On the plus side, jazz lovers get a few brief moments of pleasure: a rare chance to hear America's prime band leaders of the time—Armstrong, Dorsey, Goodman, Hampton, Louis Armstrong—jamming together with sidemen Mel Powell and Louie Bellson. (Fletcher Henderson probably did the band arrangements) There is absolutely no comparison between this insipidly silly remake and the charming earlier B&W version which starred the incomparable Barbara Stanwyck as the bad/good girl and Gary Cooper in the role Danny Kaye assays with only moderate success.

Someone said Danny Kaye was a bit subdued for this film, yes, I think Hawks reigned him in a bit. What is surprising is that Kaye does NOT do any of his regular vocal onslaughts: And this film basically a musical too- Well not really a musical, but having music in it. "Wonder Man" was also not a musical, but Kaye does his usual vocal debauchery in it. In this film, we just have his comedic talents, which are just as good to watch.This film is an almost frame by frame remake of "Ball of Fire" - And so, fans of "Ball of Fire" who compare the two will see how well this is done, even with the major thematic changes made. Some would call this a musical, but it is not really. It is just a film that happens to have music in it. And the music is good, because it it not your usual music written for musicals, with bellowing singers and 150 dancers on a stage set the size of a small aircraft carrier, it is actually something that you can envision happening in a small room in an institution which is pretty much what happens in this film... No big stage productions or fantasy sequences, just plain kick-arse JAZZ.Some of the really funny gags from the original are missing: Mostly the ones that are based on 1941 Slang. What was important to the story, was kept in, and surprisingly it still fit.What makes this one of the most interesting films ever made is the assemblage of Jazz Greats, including the incredible Louis Armstrong.The song "A Song is Born" is about the best song in any "musical" I have heard.

This is an incrediable movie full laughs and wit and humor that never stops!It's Danny Kaye at his best with some of the most incrediable musicians of our time alongside! A must see for the whole family!