Ordinarily I don't like to devote a post in this blog to anything — movie, music, book, TV show — I have written about before.
But I'm making an exception for "Hans Christian Andersen," which premiered in New York 65 years ago today.
It was one of my favorite movies as a child, and that was what inspired me to write about it seven years ago. But what I wrote on that occasion was different than what I want to say on this one. This time I want to talk more about the movie.
Although, on the other hand, I really should start with something that I mentioned indirectly in 2010.
Before I learned to read, my mother read all kinds of children's stories to me, and the Hans Christian Andersen stories were always my favorites. I liked 'em even better than I liked Dr. Seuss — probably because they were more applicable to life as I knew it.
And that led to my introduction to the movie that made its debut in 1952.
I wanted to share that movie with the stepdaughter of one of my oldest and closest friends. I'm not sure how old she was at the time — maybe 6 or 7 — but I felt she was just the right age for the movie (it seems to me that I was 6 or 7 when I first saw it) so I made a video tape of it and gave it to her.
And it turned out I was right. I may not be exactly right about the age thing, but she loved the movie. Her mother told me she would sing snippets of the many songs Danny Kaye sang in it.
Talk about making a joyful noise.
The movie was never intended to be a true biography so I wouldn't recommend it as a source to anyone who may be writing a paper on Andersen's life. Instead it was a fictional account of Andersen's life based on his famous fairy tales, among them "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Ugly Duckling," "The Little Mermaid" and "Thumbelina," among others — and there were songs written for each. In the movie Andersen told his stories to groups of children from his village and sang the songs for them.
It was enchanting — and, as I have said here on other occasions, I am not a fan of musicals. Elise found it enchanting, too, and I decided her Hans Christian Andersen experience was incomplete without the actual stories that she could read when she got old enough — so I gave her a collection of Andersen's writings.
The movie was in the works for more than 15 years. It was the brainchild of producer Samuel Goldwyn, who had several writers work on the screenplay over the years. There was even a time when it appeared Walt Disney might produce the movie, but that didn't work out.
My guess is that Disney regretted that. The movie received six Oscar nominations, and it was one of the top 10 moneymakers in 1952.
One never really outgrows the stories of Hans Christian Andersen. Sure, they are aimed at young people, but there are also valuable lessons for adults — and they are written to appeal to both groups.
The same is true of the movie.
