Mad About Music 
                                             
Director: Norman Taurog
Year: 1938
Rating: 6.0
This is Deanna Durbin's third film and she was already a big star for Universal. She was America's singing sweetheart and as innocent as freshly cleaned sheets. But Universal was already concerned about her growing up and having to play adult roles. So they have her playing a 14-year old girl in this one, but when they match her up with a male student of the same class, it looks idiotic. She is already beginning to look like a woman and there is more chemistry between her and Herbert Marshall who pretends to be her father. Of course, a film from 1938 was not going down that road but there are moments when you think it might. Overall, this is a cute lollipop of a film with Durbin breaking into four songs (2 later reprised) with that astonishingly powerful voice of hers that could start an avalanche.

 

Her mother (Gail Patrick) is a famous actress who has tucked her daughter away in a school in Switzerland so that no one will know she has a 14-year old daughter. It would lessen her sex appeal. The father died years ago. Durbin isn't allowed to tell anyone who her mother is and so makes up a father who is a big game hunter in Africa. She piles lies on top of lies like a wedding cake and it comes to a head when she has to produce a real father. Which is where Herbert Marshall comes in. Initially confused, he begins to like the idea of being a big time hunter and regales the students with nutty tales. Eventually and predictably all three end up in Paris and it takes a sharp turn into melodrama and tears. Durbin is just a charm machine throwing out emotions right and left. Pleasant and mildly amusing.