Up in Central Park

As far as I know, this was the last time Deanna Durbin stood before the cameras (even though For The Love of Mary was released some months later, having been shelved for a while). She has gained a few extra pounds, but her voice has also gained weight: the one short operatic excerpt proves that she was becoming a proper soprano with rich, full, operatic voice. It's a pity she doesn't sing more in this film, and also a great pity she didn't pursue career in opera as she quit movies.

Why Universal didn't shoot this in full color and why they cast Dick Haynes, are beyond me. This shouldn't have been a project to save money with, but to spend spend spend! It's very well written and just plain interesting. The story runs smoothly and is quite multidimensional - you can understand most of the characters and their motives, and even the smooth villain becomes rather sympathetic once he explains his views on life to Deanna whom he really seems to cherish. But then again, Vincent Price is at his very best here, sexy and handsome as the Devil, and their scenes with Durbin are really sizzling, so one might turn a blind eye to his evil nature and be lulled into sleep by his silky voice and seductive manners. With Dick Haynes the things get to a halt - he's obviously miscast and seems rather uncomfortable. There's no electricity between him and Deanna.

This film would work well even as a straight picture. The musical numbers are only a few and even though not very memorable, they blend in well with the action. Not at all a bad pastime for Durbin / Price fans.

The dialogue and the overflowing production values of 'Up in Central Park' are two pleasurable surprises so many years afterwards to someone who is only just discovering the legacy of Deanna Durbin.

What never ceases to amaze me is the high standard of her films. They were, actually and in the flow of things, pretty run-of-the-mill, but the majority of them work incredibly well today, and 'Up in Central Park' is one of the most delightful. It has a magnificent script about a magnate, in actual fact a kind of dictator of New York City who whitewashes his money through Central Park, has the puppet mayor elected by bribing immigrants just off Ellis Island to vote in the names of dead constituents, and is just overall a very bad guy. He is played by Vincent Price, of course, soft-voiced, seductive and insinuating. An utter gentleman even at the end. "I wish more patriots like you would come to this country", he says, debonairly and hilariously. Deanna Durbin is the young Irish girl with dreams of becoming an opera star. She has just arrived in New York with her illiterate father who is given the position of superintendent of Central Park, because Vincent Price thinks his daughter overheard his evil plans for the city. Then enters young, ambitious reporter Dick Haynes with his lovely tenor voice, and he wants to bring the mighty down.

So we have young budding love, we have the older lecher, we have filial duty, and we have scathing political satire, believe me. "If you're strong enough to take something, it belongs to you", Vincent Price says, and the film takes him seriously as it well might, and the jokes aside Price's character is not too far off the mark.

The music is pleasant, the acting a sheer joy, and the pacing admirable.

This movie is a delight to see with a plot to give Deanna Durbin again a way to showcase her vocal talent as always. The only issue I had was that Deanna did not speak with an Irish brogue which kind of throws off where she originates from in the movie (Ireland). My guess is that she may have tried to do this prior to filming with her unlimited talent but may not have worked and the producers decided to scrap it. On the whole, however, it is definitely worth watching. (Who else but Vincent Price could portray the schemer Boss Tweed?)

Question: Who is the most famous/infamous political boss in U.S. History? I suspect that out of ten informed people, the name pops up is William M. Tweed, Tammany Hall Sachem from 1863 to 1874 (when circumstances forced him to resign). Tweed held many important posts in his years of ... public service. He was a city Commissioner, an alderman, a New York State Senator. He was even (for only one term in the middle 1850s) a Congressman in Washington. He was also a bank director and a corporation director. He is, of course, best remembered for supposedly looting the city of New York out of between forty and two hundred million dollars in fraudulent contracts and kickback schemes. Tweed was sent to prison in 1874, escaped in 1875, was recaptured in Spain in 1876 and returned to the U.S., and died in prison in 1878.

There have been dozens of political bosses in our nation's history. Senator Marcus Hanna, who helped make his friend William McKinley President, can be an example of a successful boss (although a relatively honest and honorable one). Matt Quay of Pennsylvania was another. But only historians remember Hanna or Quay or Frank Hague of New Jersey or Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island. Tweed stands out because of one man: the cartoonist Thomas Nast. Nast was a genius in political cartooning (even now his best work is still effective, 102 years after his death and 133 years after his Tweed cartoons got really underway). He took the fat, somewhat vulgar looking Tweed and made him look like the human image of greed (it helped that the name and the word rhymed). It immortalized cartoonist and subject no matter what. Tweed had three or four successors as head of Tammany Hall. At least two of them, Richard Croker and Charles Murphy, were more important and powerful than Tweed ever was. Nobody thinks of them when the term "TAMMANY HALL" comes up - they think of Tweed.

Is this image fair? Most historians follow Gustavus Myers account of the Tweed Rings rise and fall to this day (from Myers book on Tammany Hall). Only recently has a dent been put into this account. In 1977 TWEED'S NEW YORK was written by Leo Hershkovits, and he pointed out that Tweed was working for the interests of all the newly arriving immigrant groups struggling to get settled in the U.S. He was also backing civic improvements like the Brooklyn Bridge, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Prospect and Central Parks, the first attempt at a New York Subway system. His enemies suggested that his interest was in the boodling contracts he and his cohorts gave out, but those same enemies were quite hostile to immigrants (many were former Know Nothings)and most came from the rich part of society. Also many were Republicans, or ambitious Democrats with shady pasts they tried to hide (Samuel Tilden, the future Governor of New York and Presidential Candidate, had been a supporter of the southern Democratic views of slavery and states rights in the Civil War. Tilden and Tweed were enemies). Herkovits may overstate the case but he does reduce the legend a bit. The nature of political life in Tammany was to make profitable deals, and they depended on the immigrants for votes. However the evidence of the large scale thefts is simply not there. The worst example of it, the "Tweed" Courthouse behind City Hall in Manhattan, overran the original two million dollar cost estimate by thirteen million dollars more. It still suggests great corruption, but not the two hundred million losses Myers throws out. I might add that Tweed Courthouse more than has repaid it's original costs. If you watch LAW AND ORDER in one of its various guises, scenes in the courts are shot in that building.

Believe it or not there have only been two films dealing at all with Boss Tweed. More recently Jim Broadbent played Tweed in Scorsese's GANGS OF NEW YORK. He played him as in cahoots with powerful thug (and nativist!) Bill the Butcher Cutter (Daniel Day-Lewis). Bill the Butcher was based on a real thug and killer, Bill "the Butcher" Poole, who was killed by rival gangsters at the Stanwix Hall Saloon in 1857 (six years before the Civil War Draft Riots the film presents). Tweed would never have been allied with Poole, as Poole belonged to the American Party, not the Democrats. However, Broadbent's Tweed at least looked more like the genuine article physically than his one predecessor.

Tweed weighed over three hundred pounds (his death was hastened by diabitis). The actor playing Boss Tweed in UP IN CENTRAL PARK was Vincent Price, playing him like a handsome, powerful (and powerhungry) man. In his dressing gown, entertaining Deanna Durbin (an Irish immigrant lass with education, who learns that Tweed is out for his own good before anyone else), Price is smooth and cultured. No doubt Tweed was intelligent, but his taste in art and literature probably did not match Price's characterization. One wishes Price had tackled the role later in his career (say about the time he did Matthew Hopkins in THE CONQUEROR WORM), and possibly he could have fit the role properly. It is hard to say. He did not match the real Tweed. This is not to say that he is acting poorly. His performance gives the film some zest, and even honesty (when he falls he admits to Durbin that he was brought up to believe that you took what you want). And to be fair, Price's Tweed has enough guts to remain and face the consequences while his accomplices, Governor Motley (Thurston Hall) and Mayor Oakley run off. By the way, Tweed's allied Governor was Governor John T.Hoffman (the last New York City Mayor to rise to the state's Governorship) and the Mayor was Mayor Oakley Hall.

The Sigmund Romberg score for UP IN CENTRAL PARK is not one of his best, and parts of it have been deleted. There was a number about Central Park (where Durbin's father has a job through Tweed) called, "It's the Big Backyard of the City". Price also has a song, "Would You Like to See MY CURRIER & IVES" which is reduced to the song cue in the dialogue, before a scene ends. Durbin does her best, but it is not her best film. It is a mediocre movie, which is best seen to remind oneself of the story of Tweed and his fall, and how it still needs a master film maker to tell it properly.

Up In Central Park marked a successful return to Broadway for Sigmund Romberg as this musical about the Tammany Hall era of Boss William Marcy Tweed ran for 504 performances during the 1945-46 season on Broadway. Instead of the elegant Vincent Price as the powerful Boss of Tammany Hall Civil War and post Civil War, the part was played by Noah Beery, Sr. Now that certainly would have called for a different kind of Boss Tweed.

Musically what Universal Studios gave us is a half baked version of the Broadway Show. Dick Haymes and Deanna Durbin are in good voice for th Sigmund Romberg-Dorothy Fields numbers still left, but because the music is cut the emphasis of the film turns to Price.

Young Deanna Durbin and her father Albert Sharpe are freshly arrived from Ireland and immediately as was the tradition back in the day, welcomed to the shores by the Tammany political machine. Sharpe takes to the repeat voting the way that Brian Donlevy did in The Great McGinty, but his rise only consists of becoming the superintendent of Central Park which the Tweed Ring plans to 'improve' with many kickbacks for themselves.

In the meantime Durbin comes to the attention of Price, but she also comes to the attention of crusading reporter Dick Haymes. They make beautiful music together and apart in what little is left of the Romberg-Fields score.

If Up In Central Park had been done at MGM it surely would have gotten the production needed for this musical. Unforgivably the big hit song of the film Close As Pages In A Book was not performed and it's a duet which I'm sure Haymes and Durbin would have been great at. I'm betting it ended on the cutting room floor. Close As Pages In A Book is heard on the soundtrack as background music

There's another nice song called It Doesn't Cost You Anything To Dream that was also cut. But what I was most disappointed in was a number called The Fireman's Bride that was not included. It's a rollicking number that I have a recording of Jeanette MacDonald and Robert Merrill doing and I'm sure it must have been great on stage. When it wasn't in the film I was truly disappointed.

Casting Vincent Price as Tweed was a stroke of genius. I truly think that a young woman's virtue would have been far more in danger from him than from Noah Beery. Remembering the villains Beery played on screen, he would have to get really overbearing and physical which he must have on stage.

As a musical Up In Central Park is disappointing, but fans of Vincent Price will appreciate this actor displaying the fact he could do far more than horror films.