Director Henry Koster (1905-1988) succeeded in film genres ranging from comedy (Harvey, 1950) to drama (No Highway in the Sky, 1951), literary romances (My Cousin Rachel, 1952), religious epics (The Robe, 1953) and historical biographies (The Virgin Queen, 1955). One of his specialties was musicals, and he handled top talent at several studios - Deanna Durbin at Universal, Betty Grable and Dan Dailey at Fox, Danny Kaye at Warner Bros. and June Allyson, Kathryn Grayson and Debbie Reynolds at MGM.

The half-dozen films Koster did with Durbin at Universal are credited with literally saving the studio from bankruptcy. On her first feature film, Three Smart Girls (1936), German-born Koster was credited with teaching 14-year-old Durbin to act even though he was not yet fluent in English. Her second film for him, One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937), was her first starring role and the huge moneymaker that put the studio into the black. In this one the talented young soprano plays a Little Miss Fix-It who convinces legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski to hire a rag-tag group of musicians that includes her father (Adolphe Menjou). Koster's other films with Durbin include Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939), First Love (1939), Spring Parade (1940) and It Started with Eve (1941).

Durbin's regular producer, Hungarian-born Joe Pasternak, had mentored Koster since their days in Europe. When Pasternak moved to MGM in 1941, Koster followed and continued in the vein of gentle, homespun musicals with wholesome young leading ladies. His first at MGM was Music for Millions (1944), starring June Allyson and Margaret O'Brien. He then teamed Allyson with Kathryn Grayson as Two Sisters from Boston (1946), a period musical set in New York with the "sisters" being frequently upstaged by Jimmy Durante.

At Warner Bros. Koster directed Danny Kaye in The Inspector General (1949), a loose adaptation of the Nikolai Gogol play about an illiterate man mistaken for a visiting official in a Russian village. The film is considered one of Kaye's strongest, providing him an excuse to romp through several hilarious specialty numbers co-created by his wife, Sylvia Fine, including a particular highlight, "The Gypsy Drinking Song."

Koster received his only Oscar® nomination as Best Director for the Samuel Goldwyn production The Bishop's Wife (1947), a charming fantasy about a guardian angel (Cary Grant) who pays a yuletide visit to a couple (David Niven and Loretta Young) who are hoping to raise money for a new cathedral.

By the early 1950s Koster had relocated again, this time to 20th Century Fox, where he directed Betty Grable in two of her most enjoyable vehicles, Wabash Avenue and My Blue Heaven (both 1950). The former film is a remake of Grable's own Coney Island (1943) and features some two dozen lively song-and-dance routines. The latter movie is a rarity among Grable's frequent teamings with Dan Dailey in that, in addition to the musical numbers, the stars share some dramatic scenes in this story of a married show-biz couple trying to adopt a child after the wife suffers a miscarriage. Also during his term at Fox in the early 1950s, Koster directed Stars and Stripes Forever (1952), a stirring musical biopic of "The March King," John Philip Sousa, starring Clifton Webb as the patriotic composer/bandleader. Critic Craig Butler called the movie "the nicest Fourth of July picnic in existence."

After devoting the remainder of the '50s to non-musical dramas (Desirée, 1954) and comedies (a remake of My Man Godfrey, 1957), Koster returned to the musical form with Universal's adaptation of the stage success Flower Drum Song (1961).

For his final film, Koster went back to MGM to put Debbie Reynolds through her paces as The Singing Nun (1966), a fictionalized treatment of the story of Soeur Sourire, the Belgian nun whose recordings and an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show turned her into a sensation. Reynolds sings several sentimental songs including the famous "Dominique," and is given sturdy support by Greer Garson and Agnes Moorehead as older and wiser nuns.

by Roger Fristoe