Entertaining Musical with Great Vincent Price Performance

Up in Central Park is an enjoyable film based on a popular stage musical. I had heard of Deanna Durbin and seen clips of her but never saw a movie of hers so was interested to see this. She plays Rosie, a young Irish immigrant girl freshly arrived in New York. The actor playing her father does an Irish brogue but Durbin does not attempt one. They soon fall under the spell of Boss Tweed, a corrupt politician. A handsome young reporter tries to warn Rosie. The question is, will she heed council before it is too late?

There is one glaring error. The story is set in the 1870s, probably the early 1870s at that, yet there is a scene of reading from The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which was not published until 1902. The author, Beatrix Potter, would have been about five years old when this story was taking place. Since this was based on a popular long-running stage production, if this was in the original, one would think someone would have noticed and corrected the reading to something actually available around 1871.

The music is not bad. The musical is not given the full technicolor treatment and although it works fine for most of the movie I feel the musical numbers suffer for it. Although there are certainly great musicals such as Yankee Doodle Dandy in black-and-white, it was just my impression that this lacked something.

Vincent Price, tall, graceful, and attractive, is great as the scheming Boss Tweed, smoothly attempting to put the moves on Rosie, who falls under his spell. This makes one really wonder how well the story would have worked had they cast someone who remotely resembled the real Boss Tweed who was fat and bald. This movie is fast moving and not too long. I found it entertaining.