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:
Oh, You Beautiful Doll (1949) – Musical #798

Studio:
20th Century Fox

Director:
John M. Stahl

Starring:
Mark Stevens, June Haver, S.Z. Sakall, Charlotte Greenwood, Gale Robbins, Jay C. Flippen, Andrew Tombes, Eduad Franz, Robert Gist (uncredited), Ray Walker (uncredited), Victor Sen Yung (uncredited)

Plot:
A biographical film about composer Alfred Breitenbach (Sakall), who became known as Fred Fisher for his Tin Pan Alley songs. In the film, Alfred has ambitions of composing great music, such as an opera. However, he and his family — wife Anna (Greenwood) and daughter Doris (Fisher) — are very poor. Song plugger Larry Kelly (Stevens) meets Alfred by accident and hears some of his music. Larry jazzes up portions of Alfred’s opera and writes lyrics to it, making Alfred’s music a success with mainstream music, where he is credited as Fred Fisher. Alfred struggles with being known and becoming famous off music he doesn’t like, though he and his family are living more comfortably. Outside of this, Larry and Doris are also falling in love.

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