Undescribable Perfection

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

In The Toast of New Orleans, Kathryn Grayson plays a beautiful opera singer with a beautiful soprano singing voice. As you can imagine, she pulls it off wonderfully; the problem with this movie has nothing to do with her performance. She's romantically involved with her manager, the classy, handsome, wealthy, supportive David Niven. So far so good. Enter Mario Lanzo, a poor, crude, ignorant fisherman who happens to have been blessed with a natural singing talent. Now, why would Kathryn-who has everything a woman could ask for in her career and relationship-be drawn to Mario? That, my friends, is the problem with The Toast of New Orleans. If they wanted us to sympathize with her conflict, they shouldn't have cast David Niven!To give her credit, when Mario first imposes himself, Kathryn wants nothing to do with him. He literally interrupts her singing with his own, topping her high notes and singing as loud as he can without bursting a lung. However, The Niv is intrigued by Mario's untrained talent and attempts to turn him into a genteel opera singer to match Kathryn. Some of the scenes are cute, but the basic story just doesn't make any sense because not only is The Niv a class act, but his character is written to have no flaws. If he's going to be as gorgeous in Technicolor as David Niven is, he should at least be written with flaws, as he was in Please Don't Eat the Daisies. The big song from The Toast of New Orleans is the lovely ballad "Be My Love", and while I'm not really a fan of Mario Lanzo's voice, the duet he sings with Kathryn is pretty cute. If that's one of your favorite songs, you might want to watch the movie that introduced it to the world. I've been overly harsh on this movie, but it really isn't as bad as I'm making it out to be. If you like Kathryn Grayson or operatic singing, you might like this cutesy musical.

It's easy to dismiss this as a silly movie - which it is - and say that all that's worth paying attention to is the music, which is not true in several ways.Yes, the plot is silly. But it shows how Lanza could be presented to show off his most attractive qualities. Though he is already verging on the portly in some of the scenes, and though he is more or less handsome depending on the angle from which he is photographed, the fact remains that he comes across as a generally handsome guy with a lot of very powerful virility. That's not something to be dismissed lightly.There are lots of examples of that in the movie, but perhaps the most obvious, if also, in certain respects, the most troubling one, is the last scene, the performance of the love duet that closes Act I of Madama Butterfly. You have to forget that, in the opera, Butterfly is only 15, otherwise this comes across as very uncomfortable to watch. Grayson certainly doesn't look 15, though, so what we have is a young naval officer who is clearly very "eager" (you know the word) to get his new "wife" into bed, and who quickly subdues any efforts on her part to delay the wedding night. Modern productions of the opera make Pinkerton more nuanced, and have to. Here, the officer knows what he wants, and he's not going to take no for an answer, or wait for Butterfly to come around by charming her. It's a very powerful performance. Not, perhaps, the most faithful to the libretto, but completely convincing. Lanza conveys an animal magnetism that is very powerful.The other aspect of Lanza that comes across very well is his singing of popular music. He really gets into it, and he can sing it in a very natural and appealing fashion. Nothing makes this clearer than the first time he sings "Be my love" with Grayson. She starts out, and she is NOT good. Yes, the notes are fine. But she c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y e-n-u-n-c-i-a-t-e-s every syllable, and it sounds completely unnatural, like an opera singer trying to sing pop but with no idea how to do so. Then Lanza joins her, and you hear the difference. He enunciates clearly, but the words sound completely natural. It's no wonder he was able to turn that into a major hit. What it shows is what MGM executives evidently did not understand: Lanza had a magic when doing popular music. Later efforts to get him to do 1920s American operettas, like the Student Prince, which were far more formal, took him out of what he could do very well.You see this in the several opera excerpts Lanza sings. He's formal and stilted in the Flower Song from Carmen, where he is clearly working on getting the French right, and he sings it all at one volume level, which makes it much less interesting than other tenors' performances. When he sings O Paradiso (in Italian) from L'Africaine et M'appari (again in Italian translation) from Marta he is much more at ease. And he is downright first-rate in the Butterfly duet (in the original Italian, of course), where it is very obvious that he knows just what every word means, and means them.I don't have anything to add about the rest of the movie. Grayson is no favorite of mine. She's alright in the canary fluff that was still done in those days - O luce di quest'anima, from Linda di Chamounix, Je suis Titania, from Mignon, Ombre légère, from Dinorah. She's much less right in the excerpt from Lucia, and not at all my cup of tea in Butterfly. She sounds as if she grew up listening to Lily Pons recordings, but she's not as good.MGM should have paid closer attention to what did and did not work in this movie, and given Lanza movies that played off his strengths and avoided what he did less well.

Mario Lanza's second film bursting with energy and musical talents with Kathryn Grayson in old New Orleans. Mario is discovered by David Niven and teamed up with Kathryn and they are the Toast of New Orleans. Mario is the scruffy seaman and his partner J. Carrol Nash, who provides the comedy. The music includes arias from Aida, Madame Butterfly, and La Boheme, etc. Mario does imitations of various people and this is a delight to all. The glorious voice of Lanza still lingers on!

David Niven discovers Mario Lanza, a Cajun fisherman who leaves the Bayou and falls in love with opera singer, Kathryn Grayson. Lushly photographed in the usual grand MGM manner of gaudy costumes and lots of background color, the simple storyline serves as an excuse to have Lanza belt out some ringing tenor numbers and blend his voice with Grayson for some tuneful arias. Opera fans will love it--others beware!The humor gets a bit overdone with J. Carrol Naish straining for laughs and there's only a glimpse of Rita Moreno in a dance number. But brimming over with arias from "Carmen", "La Traviata" and "Martha", music lovers should have no complaints. Lanza and Grayson are both in fine voice and one would never suspect that she soon tired of his boorish antics on the set and would later refuse to co-star with him when MGM wanted her to do one more film with Lanza.