In The Toast of New Orleans, Kathryn Grayson plays a beautiful opera singer with a beautiful soprano singing voice. As you can imagine, she pulls it off wonderfully; the problem with this movie has nothing to do with her performance. She's romantically involved with her manager, the classy, handsome, wealthy, supportive David Niven. So far so good. Enter Mario Lanzo, a poor, crude, ignorant fisherman who happens to have been blessed with a natural singing talent. Now, why would Kathryn-who has everything a woman could ask for in her career and relationship-be drawn to Mario? That, my friends, is the problem with The Toast of New Orleans. If they wanted us to sympathize with her conflict, they shouldn't have cast David Niven!
To give her credit, when Mario first imposes himself, Kathryn wants nothing to do with him. He literally interrupts her singing with his own, topping her high notes and singing as loud as he can without bursting a lung. However, The Niv is intrigued by Mario's untrained talent and attempts to turn him into a genteel opera singer to match Kathryn. Some of the scenes are cute, but the basic story just doesn't make any sense because not only is The Niv a class act, but his character is written to have no flaws. If he's going to be as gorgeous in Technicolor as David Niven is, he should at least be written with flaws, as he was in Please Don't Eat the Daisies.
The big song from The Toast of New Orleans is the lovely ballad "Be My Love", and while I'm not really a fan of Mario Lanzo's voice, the duet he sings with Kathryn is pretty cute. If that's one of your favorite songs, you might want to watch the movie that introduced it to the world. I've been overly harsh on this movie, but it really isn't as bad as I'm making it out to be. If you like Kathryn Grayson or operatic singing, you might like this cutesy musical.
To give her credit, when Mario first imposes himself, Kathryn wants nothing to do with him. He literally interrupts her singing with his own, topping her high notes and singing as loud as he can without bursting a lung. However, The Niv is intrigued by Mario's untrained talent and attempts to turn him into a genteel opera singer to match Kathryn. Some of the scenes are cute, but the basic story just doesn't make any sense because not only is The Niv a class act, but his character is written to have no flaws. If he's going to be as gorgeous in Technicolor as David Niven is, he should at least be written with flaws, as he was in Please Don't Eat the Daisies.
The big song from The Toast of New Orleans is the lovely ballad "Be My Love", and while I'm not really a fan of Mario Lanzo's voice, the duet he sings with Kathryn is pretty cute. If that's one of your favorite songs, you might want to watch the movie that introduced it to the world. I've been overly harsh on this movie, but it really isn't as bad as I'm making it out to be. If you like Kathryn Grayson or operatic singing, you might like this cutesy musical.