Second Fiddle (1939)

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Movie
Original title Second Fiddle (also: Irving Berlin's Second Fiddle)
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1939
length 87 minutes
Rod
Director Sidney Lanfield
script Harry virtue
production Darryl F. Zanuck for 20th Century Fox
music Irving Berlin
camera Leon Shamroy
cut Robert L. Simpson
occupation

Second Fiddle (also: Irving Berlin's Second Fiddle ) is an American ice revue film with Sonja Henie and Tyrone Power from 1939. Directed by Sidney Lanfield. All three had worked together at Thin Ice back in 1937 .

action

Trudi Hovland is a teacher in Minnesota and one day she is discovered by press agent Jimmy Sutton, who has been looking for the ideal female lead in the film adaptation of the bestseller The Girl From the North for years . Trudi is the 426th candidate and gets the role in the end. To make Trudi known in the press, Jimmy stages an alleged romance with Trudi's co-star and Hollywood idol Roger Maxwell. Trudi takes the game at face value and falls in love with Roger, which leads to some entanglements. In the end, however, Trudi realizes who she really loves and she marries Jimmy.

background

The Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie started a very successful career in film after the end of her unprecedented series of successes with three Olympic victories , ten world championship titles and six European championship titles . As the star of ice revue films specially tailored to her talent, such as Thin Ice , Henie had risen to one of the greatest female stars of the 20th Century Fox studio and received fees of 125,000 US dollars per film and the assurance of first billing, according to which her name was in front of everyone another actor would be announced.

The studio developed a very special form of the revue film for Henie with spectacular shows in the form of ice revues. For this, a special camera had to be developed in order to be able to record the extremely fast movements of the ice skaters without distortion. In addition, it was necessary to specially prepare the ice for the revue scenes. A top layer of milk-colored ice was applied to make the recordings easier. A wafer-thin film of water always had to be guaranteed, as this was the only way to prevent pieces of ice from being thrown around during braking maneuvers and fast turns and spoiling the recording.

Second Fiddle makes all sorts of allusions to America's long and intensive search for the ideal choice for the role of Scarlett O'Hara for the film adaptation of the sensational bestseller Gone with the Wind .

Before it was released, the film had several working titles including Cupid Goes to Press , Heart Interest , Love Is Tops, and When Winter Comes . Don Ameche was initially slated for the role of Jimmy Sutton, but filming of The Story of Alexander Graham Bell was delayed. In the end, Tyrone Power , then the studio's biggest male star, took over the part. He and Henie had worked together on Thin Ice back in 1937 . As a director, Walter Lang was to take over the realization before he switched with Sidney Lanfield , who instead took over Lang's work on the Shirley Temple film Susannah of the Mounties .

criticism

Most critics found the material amusing, but considered the idea of ​​Henie as a teacher with a heavy Norwegian accent to be implausible.

In the end, the New York Times was quite harsh with its vote and called the film "just OK" ( no better than a faint "fair" ).

Awards

Second Fiddle received at the Academy Awards 1940 nominated in the category:

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