Serenade

Serenade (1956)

The Thrill of His Voice! Thrill of a Great Story!

A wealthy woman discovers a vineyard worker with a beautiful operatic singing voice. She helps make him a star but then breaks his heart. He flees in misery to Mexico where he meets a sweet farm girl.

Date of release
1956-03-23
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (22)
Runtime
2h 1m
Genres
Drama, Music, Romance
Director
Anthony Mann

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Serenade
  • Filmed in: Mexico

Serenade is a 1956 American musical drama film directed by Anthony Mann and starring tenor Mario Lanza, Joan Fontaine, Sara Montiel, and Vincent Price. Based on the 1937 novel Serenade by James M. Cain, the film was a Warner Bros. Pictures release, Lanza's fifth film, and his first on-screen appearance in four years.

Production

Film rights to the novel were bought in 1946 by the production company of Michael Curtiz.

Anthony Mann got involved in the project through his agents, MCA, who also represented Mario Lanza. "They introduced me to him. I got to know him and I really liked the guy, even though everyone was kicking him down, saying he’d never make another film. And I

guess it was really more out of a stupid sentimentality, but I felt sorry for the guy...I knew it was going to be a terrible, terrible problem, because he was a compulsive eater and a compulsive drinker, but he was a marvellous, warm-hearted guy and I don’t think all the horrible things they said about him were true."

Mann was admonished not to make a film with Lanza, due to the tenor's notorious reputation for being temperamental and very difficult to work with. "It was probably sentiment, but I decided I would. Terrible things happened, it was all very, very difficult, and the fact that I was able to finish it was a miracle. That’s the only miracle about it, because the film’s not good."

Mann liked some of the things about the movie. "I thought he did a couple of scenes quite well: his singing of Otello was very beautiful... It was one of those things for which I should never have approached, but I’m glad I did it in a way.... But we tried very hard to make something of it pictorially and went to some magnificent places in Mexico.... But its story was weak. How can you tell a story anyway when you’re singing arias all the time?"

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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