They Shall Have Music

They Shall Have Music

1939. USA. Directed by Archie Mayo. With Jascha Heifetz, Joel McCrea, Andrea Leeds, Gene Reynolds, Walter Brennan. McCrea does little more than his mandated duty as a Samuel Goldwyn contract player in this curiosity, a souvenir of the days when high culture was considered a cure for all social ills. John Howard Lawson, the commissar of Hollywood’s Communist Party, cowrote the screenplay, in which a street urchin (Gene Reynolds) implores the famed violinist Jascha Heifetz to come to the aid of a Lower East Side music school operated by Walter Brennan (in a Stokowski wig). Other innovative plot elements include a wicked stepfather (Arthur Hohl), an evil capitalist (Porter Hall), an adorable mutt, a 10-year-old piano prodigy (the future Diana Lynn), a stolen Stradivarius, and the professor’s daughter (Andrea Leeds)—who is lovely enough to attract a sympathetic musical instrument salesman (McCrea). Yet Heifitz unflinchingly remains Heifitz, gamely providing five solos. 35mm; preserved by MoMA. 105 min.