''Song o' My Heart'' is a 1930

Pre-Code Pre-Code Hollywood was an era in the Cinema of the United States, American film industry that occurred between the widespread adoption of sound in film in the late 1920s and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorship gui ...

American film directed by

Frank Borzage Frank Borzage ( né Borzaga; April 23, 1894 – June 19, 1962) was an American film director and actor. He was the first person to win the Academy Awards, Academy Award for Academy Award for Best Director, Best Director for his film ''7th Heaven ...

and starring John McCormack, Alice Joyce,

Maureen O'Sullivan Maureen Paula O'Sullivan (May 17, 1911 – June 23, 1998) was an Irish actress who played Jane in the ''Tarzan'' series of films during the era of Johnny Weissmuller. She starred in dozens of feature films across a span of more than half a ...

, Effie Ellsler and John Garrick. It was O'Sullivan's second film role. The film was double-shot in both conventional 35mm and the early

70 mm Grandeur film 70 mm Grandeur film, also called Fox Grandeur or Grandeur 70, is a 70 mm widescreen film format developed by William Fox through his Fox Film and Fox-Case corporations and used commercially on a small but successful scale in 1929–30. Hist ...

widescreen format. Very few theaters were equipped with the necessary projection equipment to show it in the latter and it was never released in that format.

Plot

Sean O'Carolon has retired as an Irish tenor to a village where an old love of his, Mary, resides with her children, Eileen and Tad. A once-famous opera singer, Sean has given up his career to live in his old Irish village, near Mary, who had been forced to marry someone else "for money, not love". Mary, now abandoned and with two children, struggles in poverty, and lives in the home of a horrid relation. Sean decides to resume his career as a concert singer, presumably (but not stated) to help Mary and perhaps resume their relationship. On tour in America, however, Sean learns that Mary has died. He decides to cut short his tour and return to Ireland to support Mary's children, and Eileen's marriage to her true love.

Production

Edwin Schneider, McCormack's real piano accompanist, plays the part of Sean's piano accompanist in the film. A lengthy segment of the movie is given over to an actual concert, purportedly in New York City but actually filmed on location in Philharmonic Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles, a massive auditorium of the old "Hippodrome" variety. The director,

, was the Academy Award winner for direction in 1927 ('' Seventh Heaven'').

References

External links

''Song o' My Heart''
at

IMDb IMDb, historically known as the Internet Movie Database, is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and biograp ...

1930 films 1930s American films 1930s English-language films 1930s romance films American black-and-white films American romance films English-language romance films Films directed by Frank Borzage Films produced by Frank Borzage Fox Film films {{1930s-romance-film-stub