The film Sweet Adeline (1934) is based on a stage musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein that debuted on Broadway September 3, 1929. The original leading lady in the theatrical version was Helen Morgan who had also starred previously on Broadway in the Kern & Hammerstein production of Show Boat. When it came time to cast the film adaptation of Sweet Adeline, another Kern/Hammerstein veteran was called in to take the lead role of Addie – Irene Dunne. The actress had also appeared in Show Boat on stage. In fact, she had been discovered by a Hollywood talent scout while playing Magnolia in a Chicago production of the show. For Dunne, being cast in Sweet Adeline was a return to her roots; the picture would steer her career back toward musical-comedy and away from the routine melodramas of her early film years.

Dunne had made her film debut in 1930 in a Rodgers and Hart musical-comedy called Leathernecking. But after that, she found herself cast mostly in dramatic roles such as Back Street (1932), based on a Fannie Hurst story, and The Age of Innocence (1934), an Edith Wharton romance. Sweet Adeline was Dunne's first chance after sixteen films to return to her musical origins.

She is joined in the film by Joseph Cawthorn, who plays her father, the owner of a beer garden. A career character actor, Cawthorn is likely best remembered for parts such as the missionary Dr. Bruner in White Zombie (1932) and plantation owner Cornelius Van Horn in Wheeler and Woolsey's Dixiana (1930). Dunne faces a choice between two love interests in Sweet Adeline. The first, a young composer named Sid, is played by Donald Woods. The second suitor, a war hero who is preferred by Addie's father, is played by Louis Calhern, who broke into films in the 1920s. He would achieve his greatest career success late in the 1950s, when he was Oscar® nominated for the role of Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Magnificent Yankee (1950). The decade would also find Calhern appearing as Buffalo Bill in Annie Get Your Gun (1950) and in the title role in the 1953 version of Julius Caesar starring Marlon Brando.

Wini Shaw also appears in the cast of Sweet Adeline in a role created especially for the film adaptation. Shaw plays the "villain" of the story, a Spanish-American spy. The entire spy storyline was added for the film; in the stage version, Addie's rival had been a burlesque queen. But the plot wasn't the only change made to Sweet Adeline in its journey to the screen. Kern and Hammerstein's libretto was also significantly changed for the film, and only two of the original songs, "Here Am I" and "Why Was I Born," were retained. The reviewer for Variety lamented the changes to Sweet Adeline, pointing out that "except for the fact that the girl leaves her father's Hoboken beer garden to go on the stage against parental objections, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, who wrote the original, wouldn't know their Addie anymore."

Thankfully, Dunne fared better in the role of Addie. The New York Times applauded Sweet Adeline for allowing "the amiable filmgoer to hear Irene Dunne adjusting her cool and pleasant soprano to [the] memorable romantic songs." And Variety noted her "fine voice" and called her "comely as Adeline." Dunne's return to the musical in Sweet Adeline was, in fact, so well received that she appeared in another one the following year -- Roberta (1935) alongside Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. And, in 1936, Dunne's career would come full circle – she was cast in the second screen version of Kern and Hammerstein's Show Boat.

Producer: Edward Chodorov
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Screenplay: Erwin S. Gelsey, Jerome Kern (play), Oscar Hammerstein (play)
Cinematography: Sol Polito
Film Editing: Ralph Dawson, Harold McLernon
Art Direction: Robert Haas
Music: Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein
Cast: Irene Dunne (Adeline Schmidt), Donald Woods (Sid Barnett), Hugh Herbert (Rupert Rockingham), Ned Sparks (Dan Herzig), Joseph Cawthorn (Oscar Schmidt), Wini Shaw (Elysia).
BW-87m.

by Stephanie Thames