| Seven Sweethearts | |
| Director: | Frank Borzage |
| Producer: | Frank Borzage Joe Pasternak |
| Screenplay: | Walter Reisch Leo Townsend |
| Starring: | Kathryn Grayson Marsha Hunt Cecilia Parker Van Heflin |
| Music: | Franz Waxman |
| Cinematography: | George J. Folsey Leonard Smith (uncredited) |
| Editing: | Blanche Sewell |
| Studio: | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Distributor: | Loew's Inc. |
| Runtime: | 98 min. |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | $752,000[1] |
| Gross: | $1,686,000 |
Seven Sweethearts is a 1942 musical film directed by Frank Borzage and starring Kathryn Grayson, Marsha Hunt and Van Heflin.
In 1949, Hungarian playwright Ferenc Herczeg sued MGM, producer Joe Pasternak and screenwriters Walter Reisch and Leo Townsend for $200,000, alleging that they had plagiarized Herczeg's 1903 play Seven Sisters, which Paramount Pictures had adapted into the 1915 film The Seven Sisters, starring Madge Evans.[2]
Kathryn Grayson's real-life sister Frances Raeburn plays Cornelius.
Mr. Van Maaster is a hotelier in Little Delft, Michigan. By family tradition, the oldest of his seven daughters must marry first, but Regina wants to move to New York to become an actress. The youngest, Billie, has the sweetest singing voice. All seven sisters are married in the same ceremony.[3]
Although sometimes tagged as a musical, all the songs in the film are diegetic, with no unheard accompaniment to the songs, and all with Billie as soloist. They include an English version ("There Is a Dreamboat on High") of a berceuse (Wiegenlied/lullaby), long attributed (and in the film) to Mozart, but it was in fact composed by Friedrich Fleischmann (Schlafe, mein Prinzchen, schlaf ein, 1799).[4]
A scene in which a pianist lodger plays a melody to lull the hotelier to sleep features "Rock-a-bye Baby", derived from English ballad "Lillibullero", itself derived from the quickstep section of a march by Henry Purcell. At a climactic moment in the tulip festival the aria "Je suis Titania" (from the French opera Mignon) is heard. Other songs written by the team of Walter Jurmann (music) and Paul Francis Webster (lyrics) featuring Kathryn Grayson as soloist include "You and the Waltz and I", "Little Tingle Tangle Toes" and "Tulip Time".
According to MGM records the film earned $638,000 in the U.S. and Canada and $1,048,000 elsewhere (a rarity for MGM, as most films earned more money domestically until after World War II),[5] returning a profit of $364,000.[1]