The Student Prince

United States

1954

107 Min

Color

2.55:1

English

Currently 2.8/5 Stars.
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DIR Richard Thorpe, Curtis Bernhardt

SCR Dorothy Donnelly, Sonya Levien, William Ludwig, Wilhelm Meyer-Förster

CAST Ann Blyth, Edmund Purdom, John Ericson, Louis Calhern, Edmund Gwenn, John Williams, Mario Lanza, S.Z. Sakall, Betta St. John, Evelyn Varden, John Hoyt, Richard Anderson, Roger Alan, Steve Rowland, Chris Warfield, Gilbert Legay

The Student Prince is loosely based on Sigmund Romberg’s operetta, with three new songs (Beloved, I’ll Walk With God and Summertime in Heidelberg) by Nicholas Brodszky replacing some of the more dated Romberg numbers. The film is a decided improvement on the creaky original and boasts a witty script, replete with memorable one-liners from the screen-writing duo of Sonya Levien and William Ludwig, scenarists for Lanza’s The Great Caruso. —IMDb

Director

Richard Thorpe

Richard Thorpe (February 24, 1896 – May 1, 1991) was an American film director. Born Rollo Smolt Thorpe in Hutchinson, Kansas, he began his entertainment career performing in vaudeville and onstage. In 1921 he began in motion pictures as an actor and directed his first silent film in 1923. He went on to direct more than one hundred and eighty films. The first full length motion picture he directed for MGM was Last of the Pagans (1935) starring Ray Mala. After directing The Last Challenge in 1967, he retired from the film industry. He died in Palm Springs, California in 1991. Thorpe is also known as the original director of The Wizard of Oz. He was fired after two weeks of shooting, because it was felt that his scenes did not have the right air of fantasy about them. Thorpe notoriously gave Judy Garland a blonde wig and cutesy “baby-doll” makeup that made her look like a girl in her late teens rather than an innocent Kansas farm girl of about thirteen. Both makeup and wig were discarded… read more

Curtis Bernhardt

If Curtis Bernhardt is a relative unknown, it’s because he didn’t direct his first Hollywood feature until 1940 at the age of 41. Bernhardt worked for years in Germany until his Jewish heritage made living there impossible by 1933, making a harrowing underground escape to France after being arrested by the Gestapo. With Europe plunging into WW2, he left for America in 1939. Despite his limited grasp of the English language, he was offered seven-year contracts at both Warner Brothers and MGM, largely on the strength of Carrefour (1936), that proved so enduring that it was ultimately remade as Dead Man’s Shoes (1938) in the UK, and as Crossroads (1942) by MGM. Most émigrés would have jumped at MGM’s offer, but Berhardt went with Warner’s, favoring the studio’s reputation for hard-boiled realism. His career in Hollywood began with a false start; after working on his first assignment he fell ill and was reassigned an Olivia de Havilland vehicle, My Love Came… read more

If Curtis Bernhardt is a relative unknown, it’s because he didn’t direct his first Hollywood feature until 1940 at the age of 41. Bernhardt worked for years in Germany until his Jewish heritage made living there impossible by 1933, making a harrowing underground escape to France after being arrested by the Gestapo. With Europe plunging into WW2, he left for America in 1939. Despite his limited grasp of the English language, he was offered seven-year contracts at both Warner Brothers and MGM, largely on the strength of Carrefour (1936), that proved so enduring that it was ultimately remade as Dead Man’s Shoes (1938) in the UK, and as Crossroads (1942) by MGM. Most émigrés would have jumped at MGM’s offer, but Berhardt went with Warner’s, favoring the studio’s reputation for hard-boiled realism. His career in Hollywood began with a false start; after working on his first assignment he fell ill and was reassigned an Olivia de Havilland vehicle, My Love Came Back (1940) that gained him good notices. Bernhardt rapidly achieved a reputation as a woman’s director with occasional forays into suspense with varied results. He directed one of Humphrey Bogart’s least popular films, Conflict (1945), burdened by ludicrous plot contrivances but soon snapped back with a winner with My Reputation (1946), a melodrama starring Barbara Stanwyck. He misfired with the critically panned Devotion (1946) and would end his contract with the studio after three more films in 1947 and moved to briefly to MGM. Ironically, he would later look back fondly upon Warner’s assembly line production methods when compared to MGM, where he felt compelled do bend to the whims of it’s stars and serve at the behest of Louis B. Mayer. But Berhardt managed to make two above-average films during his short stay at Metro: the suspenseful High Wall (1947) starring Robert Taylor in one of his best mid-career roles, and The Doctor and the Girl (1949), starring the likable Glenn Ford. He moved to RKO, which was entering it’s final chaotic decade, directing The Blue Veil (1951), a remake of a French film. He did a one-shot gig at Columbia, directing Bogie once again in the hopelessly set-bound Sirocco (1951) and rounded out the remainder of the 1950’s back at MGM, but ending his Hollywood career with the middling comedy, Kisses For My President (1964) at Warner’s. He retired from directing due to illness in the mid-1960’s. —IMDb