It’s no secret that the Hollywood Comet loves musicals.
In 2010, I revealed I had seen 400 movie musicals over the course of eight years. Now that number is over 600. To celebrate and share this musical love, here is my weekly feature about musicals.
This week’s musical:
The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962) – Musical No. 654
Studio:
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Director:
Henry Levin, George Pal (the fairy tales)
Starring:
Laurence Harvey, Karlheinz Böhm (billed as Karl Boehm), Claire Bloom, Barbara Eden, Walter Slezak, Oskar Homolka, Martita Hunt, Ian Wolfe, Bryan Russell, Tammy Marihugh
Fairy tale characters: Russ Tamblyn, Yvette Mimieux, Jim Backus, Beulah Bondi, Clinton Sundberg, Sandra Bettin, Robert Foulk, Terry-Thomas, Buddy Hackett, Otto Kruger,
Plot:
A biographical film on brothers Jacob Grimm (Böhm) and Wilhelm Grimm (Harvey). Jacob and Wilhelm have been hired by the Duke (Homolka) to write a family history of his life. But the more serious Jacob frequently pulls the workload, while Wilhelm is more fanciful and finds more importance in documenting fairy tales.
Mixed into the biographical narrative are fairy tales that are acted out as one of the narrative characters tells them. These include:
– The Dancing Princess
– The Cobbler and the Elves
– The Singing Bone.