DKosty123 I love schmaltz sentiment, but once this film starts reeling, the story makes absolutely no sense. Gloria Warren who turns 90 in 2016, and to my knowledge is still alive is the featured introduction actress and main role in the movie.The story has more holes in it than 10 pounds of swiss cheese. The ages of the kids makes no sense with the father spending 13 years in prison and having a daughter (Warren) who is much older than 13. As for Warren's singing, unfortunately they have her doing a more operatic squealing than singing.I do like the orchestra touches and a lot of the other music. The cast acting is solid, and get my sentiment as this script had to be laughable even when it was made. One of the few Broadway successes that totally missed as a film. Some of the orchestra music is great.Why the father does not anyone to know who he is is a little muddled here. The play must have been plotted better. An enjoyable mess but a mess just the same.

vincentlynch-moonoi If you want to see the magnificent Walter Huston at his best, try "Dodsworth". The problem with "Always In My Heart" is that it's a movie that can't quite decide which genre it fits. Had the producer and director gone with a straight drama, the result would have been better.What's good here? Well, Walter Huston is the real attraction here. What a gem of an actor he was! Here he is an ex-con at a time when that didn't have quite the stigma it has nowadays. I also enjoyed the slice of Americana displayed here.And, Kay Francis, a very fine, but often forgotten actress today, portrays Huston's wife who is about to get remarried, thinking Huston will never get out of prison. Sidney Blackmer, a very pleasant character actor, is the new husband-to-be. And, the almost perpetual maid -- Una O'Connor -- a hoot in any film is here. You also get to see John Hamilton who later was Perry White in the "Superman" television series. As an extra treat, there's an early performance of Borrah Minevitch and His Harmonica Rascals, which more viewers will recognize from their appearances on television in the 1950s after they morphed into being Johnny Puleo & The Harmonicats (with Puleo being remembered as a dwarf). The title song is a great ballad covered by many vocalists over the years. What's bad here? The operatic singing of the daughter (played by Gloria Warren). It's not bad, but so out of style today that you just wanna say, "SHUT UP!" And finally she did just that in her fairly short film career! The climax of the film seems a bit overdramtic, although it does work in the story. Maybe just overdone a tad. If there's a real problem with this film it's that it is, sometimes, a bit corny and sentimental. But, what's wrong with that. That's how life is sometimes.For Huston's performance alone I'd give this film a "7".

bkoganbing Always In My Heart was taken from the play Fly Away Home which ran for 204 performances in 1935. In the original Broadway cast, Thomas Mitchell was the star in the role that Walter Huston played on screen. And a 15 year old Montgomery Clift made his stage debut in the role of the son.During the interim before it reached the screen the film that became known as Always In My Heart was adapted for the wartime present. It also became a musical of sorts with one original song written for it, You're Always In My Heart and some classical and standard pop songs filling out the score. Because it was a musical the emphasis went away from the son and father to the daughter and father with Gloria Warren who Jack Warner was obviously building up to be his answer to Universal's Deanna Durbin. Warren sang pretty, but never quite made it as a second Durbin.Walter Huston is the father of Frankie Thomas and Gloria Warren who was in jail for about 15 years and was pardoned. During that time he divorced their mother Kay Francis at his insistence. He figured he was going to be in jail for life as that was the sentence meted out to him for a homicide of a business partner who doubledealed him. The kids were told he died and Francis is now ready to marry the stuffy, but rich Sidney Blackmer.Stopping by the house and not meeting Francis, Huston ingratiates himself with Warren when he tunes her piano and in that displays the musical knowledge and gift he's passed on to Warren. They develop a relationship of sorts as Huston decides to hang around see his kids for a few days before exiting their lives. Thomas is getting his hormones in an uproar over the sexy Amida on this California coast town, but she's only using him to make her boy friend Anthony Caruso jealous. He's in need of some fatherly advice even if he doesn't know it's his father. As for Warren she likes singing with the poor fisher folk living on the wharves with their harmonica band led by Borrah Minevitch. Blackmer does not approve of her associating with the lower classes.Towards the downside of her career, Kay Francis gradually transitioned into mother roles, if the film had been done at MGM, Greer Garson might have been cast. She and Huston do well together in their joint scenes.The title song for Always In My Heart received an Academy Award nomination as the Best Song, the only nomination the film received. But this was the year of White Christmas and no other song was going to win the Oscar that year.Certain things in the film tell me that the original play was a great deal more serious. The changes were made in keeping with wartime years as Gloria Warren the Harmonica Rascals led by Borrah Minevitch were aiming at both a USO show and a big radio contract. Of course Warren is also aiming to study seriously as well.The changes leave Always In My Heart quite a hybrid film, not quite drama and not quite comedy. Still it's a pleasant enough film with the cast doing very well by their roles.

sdiner82 Even 1942 audiences must have wondered what Walter Huston and Borrah Minevitch and His Harmonica Rascals were doing in the same movie!A dated, misguided mishmash of soapsuds (a paroled convict goes home incognito to meet his estranged wife and children who think he died), ghastly musical numbers (the theme song is indeed haunting, but after 15 renditions you'll wince), star-vehicle (Warners' ill-advised attempt to turn Gloria Warren into the next Deanna Durbin? Not!), and cornball melodramatics (the waterlogged ending is a corker).All of the above notwithstanding, the luminous performances by Walter Huston and Kay Francis provide fleeting moments of genuine emotion, and the supporting cast -- Sidney Blackmer, Una O'Connor, and the always likable Frankie Thomas -- is first-rate. A pity they weren't rewarded with a first-rate script.