The Glenn Miller Story is a shiny but shallow and dull biopic about the famed band leader Glenn Miller. It is too safe and sentimental when director Anthony Mann should had been edgy.James Stewart certainly looks the part as the All American Miller who wanted other band leaders to accept his compositions, having money problems where he had to go to the pawnbroker and after other band leaders made horrendous arrangements of his tunes, he started his own band and then created a distinctive sound of his own which the record buying public loved.When World War Two broke out Miller joined the Army and revolutionised Army band music with his swinging sound. Miller was presumed dead when his flight to France failed to land in 1944.Aside from the music the film was overlong and at times tedious.

I saw this movie when it was issued in France and several times since, but I never enjoyed the sound of it so much. To my opinion, it's the best movie about jazz together with YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN, described in JAZZ MAGAZINE, 1957 About a decade ago, I learned the awful pretended story of Glenn Miller's death over the Channel. I discussed it with members of the band after a show in Paris; they dismissed it, of course, and I think it must me forgotten, leaving intact the souvenir felt yesterday all over the movie and its fantastic sound. I think I never watched the sequence with Louis Armstrong, Gene Krupa and Cozy Cole. Harry Carasso, Paris, France

The unemployed trombone player Glenn Miller (James Stewart) is always broken, chasing his sound to form his band and hocking his instrument in the pawn house to survive. When his friend Chummy MacGregor (Henry Morgan) is hired to play in the band of Ben Pollack, the band-leader listens to one Glenn's composition and invites him to join his band. While traveling to New York, Glenn visits his former girlfriend Helen Berger (June Allyson), in Boulder, Colorado, and asks her to wait for him. Two years later he quits the band and proposes Helen that moves to New York to marry him. After the success of "Moonlight Serenade", Glenn Miller's band becomes worldwide known and Glenn and Helen and their two children have a very comfortable life. Duting the World War II, Glenn enlists in the army and travels to Europe to increase the moral of the allied troops. In the Christmas of 1944, he travels from London to Paris for a concert to be broadcast; however his plane is never found in the tragic flight.Glenn Miller was the great idol of my father and I recall that in my childhood, he loved the albums (long-plays) of this American musician and usually commented his tragic end. I do not know how many times I listened to hits like "Moonlight Serenade", "String of Pearls", "Pennsylvania 6-5000", "Little Brown Jug", "In the Mood", "Chattanooga Choo Choo" and other Glenn Miller's musics when I was a kid. This is the first time that I watch "The Glenn Miller Story" and the awesome combination of the music of Glenn Miller and James Stewart. Further, the lovely June Allyson shows a wonderful chemistry with James Stewart and together with the stunning Louis Armstrong, Frances Langford, Ben Pollack, Gene Krupa, Barney Bigard, James Young, Marty Napoleon, Arvell Shaw, Cozy Cole, Babe Russin and others personalities, they make a great tribute to a magnificent American musician and composer. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Música e Lágrimas" ("Music and Tears")

This hews pretty strictly to the standard biopic formula when the subject is a performer and/or composer, lyricist; the formula is in three-parts comprising Early Struggles, Breakthrough, with the last third a celebration of the subject's Greatest Hits. The majority of biopics also reserve the right to 'tamper' with facts and chronology and this is no exception; long before the band is established - i.e. 1937/38, it finally 'made it' in 1939 - they are heard running down Over The Rainbow which was, of course, written in 1939 for The Wizard Of Oz and similarly they are heard playing - in 1939 - I Know Why, which was written, by Harry Warren, for their first film, Sun Valley Serenade, in 1941. There are other examples; the film clearly implies that Miller was a native of Colorado when in fact he was born in Iowa, moved as a child to Nebraska, and didn't reach Colorado until his teens, also he never saw his second adoptive child, a daughter, yet she is featured in a central scene when Helen brings her from the orphanage on their tenth anniversary.This leaves us with arguably the main event: the music and here it is not so easy to quibble; anyone who likes Miller's records will like the film; it's as easy as that. Jimmy Stewart was a stranger to bad performances and even June Allyson's saccharine quality is not too hard to take in this context. Even non-Miller buffs will probably enjoy it as a sentimental heart-warmer.