Is WITH A SONG IN MY HEART the corniest musical ever? I tend to think so. It's entertaining, I will give it that much, but some of the schmaltzy musical numbers are just outrageously over the top. Having them sing 'Home on the Range' just before the plane crashes was about the silliest thing I have ever seen in a movie of this type. I guess I will have to read one of the three biographies about Jane Froman to see if they really did sing where the deer and the antelope roam moments before the wing caught on a wave and they overturned. Though I strongly suspect they did not.And unlike others who may need their hearing checked, I did not feel Susan Hayward matched Froman's singing at all. There is a number where she is entertaining troops near the end of the movie. In the middle of the tune, she stops and tells a soldier she's never heard of Texas. In that moment, it's very obvious that Hayward's speaking voice is jarringly different from Froman's singing voice.A real musical star should have been used for this picture. Or else Hayward should have performed all the music herself (though I suspect it wouldn't have been too great). Even Froman, with a speech impediment, might have dubbed all of Hayward's lines. That would have brought more realism to the story anyway.

I saw this movie as a kid when it came out and there were so many memorable scenes even though I didn't get all the intricacies of the plot such as the love triangle. I was just a kid.First. I didn't know who Jane Froman was and still don't know her well.Second. I've always loved Susan Hayward, perfect for this film. Her lip syncing was flawless and if I didn't know, I'd think it was her.Third. I'm now watching it on TCM, shown there for the first with Robert Wagner as guest. They discussed how his 2 short scenes with little dialogue made him a star. I knew that when I saw it at about 7 years old and remember how moving those scenes were. Wagner was impossibly appealing and the director knew what he was doing.Fourth. It was so beautifully photographed. My grandparents had the original 10inch 78rpm record album with Susan on the cover in the brightest red dress I've ever seen. I played "I'll Walk Alone" many times. That song still gives me goosebumps.And, finally. Sure it looks dated but that's how things looked in the early 50s. It has people you really care about, especially Froman, who went on to entertain the troops despite her problems. You gotta love people like that.

Susan Hayward received her third Best Actress nomination for With A Song In My Heart, the musical biography of Jane Froman one of the best singers around in that era. In truth she should have shared that nomination with the voice of Jane for whom Hayward lip synchs the vocals. Together they're combination that can't be beat.The film is done with the technique of three of the people closest in her life reminiscing in thought Jane's story. Two of the three are her husbands, David Wayne and Rory Calhoun and the third is nurse Thelma Ritter who met her at the moment of her greatest crisis and kind of attached herself to Froman. Thelma Ritter got one of her nominations in the Best Supporting Actress category.Froman was a kid fresh from Missouri when at an audition at a radio station she meets David Wayne as Don Ross who is also a performer. But when he meets and marries Froman his career takes a distinct backseat to her's. That's the cause of a lot of friction which was building up until Pearl Harbor when everyone's problems get put on hold.While going to entertain troops via neutral Portugal, Froman's plane crashes in the Tagus River in Lisbon's harbor. Fifteen people out of thirty nine survive the crash including pilot Rory Calhoun who personally rescues her. With multiple injuries, it's a long road to recovery and those multiple injuries require multiple surgeries. That's where nurse Thelma Ritter comes in who uses every kind of psychological gambit to keep Froman going.The musical numbers are from a variety of sources and not all of them copyrighted by 20th Century Fox. I'm sure Darryl Zanuck laid out quite a bit of change for the music rights to perform here. Hayward runs the gamut of emotions playing Jane Froman at all stages of her career which did continue to roughly about 1960 when she retired. After the action of this film she married for a third time to an old friend from her small Missouri town and really went back to her roots. Who says you can't go home? The sale of the soundtrack album of this film revived Froman's career quite a bit. On a television show she hosted, she introduced the song I Believe which sold a lot of records from a variety of artist including Jane. I know we had the ten inch LP at my house and I believe I still have it. The scoring of the various musical sources for this film got With A Song In My Heart's only Oscar for Alfred Newman. The film was also nominated for Costume Design and Sound Recording.Getting his first real notice in the film was Robert Wagner in a small role as a shy paratrooper who Froman meets at a New York nightclub and later in hospital in post war Germany. No doubt that this man was going to have a career.With A Song In My Heart is a perfect musical film in every respect, staging, music, and acting. And it's a permanent memorial to the great careers of both Jane Froman and Susan Hayward.

Musicals aren't quite as impressive when one has the knowledge that the lead's singing has been dubbed, in this case Susan Hayward, by the singer she portrays, Jane Froman. Essentially though, that means Hayward may as well have received her Oscar nomination for excellent lip-syncing, since there isn't much to her character, a goody-two-shoes who suffered tragic injuries in a plane crash, and her supposedly remarkable imitation of Froman is lost in this day and age when not many people remember even Hayward, much less Froman.Thankfully, Thelma Ritter comes to the rescue once again, and she also receives an Oscar nomination for bringing her trademark brand of tough love to the story as Hayward's nurse. It is somewhat to Hayward's detriment though, since her more dramatic scenes involve her recuperation but Ritter almost always outshines her (or at least, out-talks her).Otherwise, this movie is pretty uninteresting, though it probably meant more to people back then who actually knew Jane Froman was or could appreciate a pretty standard overcoming-adversities story. Nice outfits though, and young Rory Calhoun was pretty hot.You should probably only watch this if you're a fan of Hayward or Ritter (or the even rarer Jane Froman fan).