rdfarnham This is purportedly the story of Stephen Foster but bears no resemblance to his real life. It is more than 80% pure fiction and its only saving grace is a load of his music and some very good performances of it. Foster is portrayed as a wimp who is so besotted with a girl who is so obviously a self-centered brat that he swears that he will give up writing music if she will marry him (she doesn't). Many of the facts of Foster's life are portrayed here, his association with Christy, his lack of copyrights, his not being paid royalties, etc., but the basic story is pure Hollywood. Watch it for the good old music but beware, there is a long black face Minstrel show which will jolt many who grew up in recent years. Tacky by today's overly sensitive standards the minstrel show was still alive and well in the 1940s and into the 50s. Foster died, penniless and alone, at an early age but his music lives on and is well represented in this film.

wes-connors This lightweight update of "Swanee River" (1939) is also in color, but lacks Al Jolson. "I Dream of Jeanie (with the Light Brown Hair)" is not only the title, but also introduces perky Eileen Christy (as Jeanie). She is the love interest of great American songwriter Stephen Foster (Bill Shirley), but he thinks he likes sister Muriel Lawrence (as Inez). Minstrel showman Ray Middleton (as Edwin P. Christy) is the man who helps turn Mr. Foster's songs into hits. Home studio Republic's Rex Allen joins in a partially embarrassing "black-face" sequence, by which time the movie has lost sight of its flimsy plot. It's tuneful, though.*** I Dream of Jeanie (6/4/52) Allan Dwan ~ Bill Shirley, Ray Middleton, Eileen Christy, Rex Allen

Bobs-9 I also watched the DVD that resurrected this forgotten film. The minstrel show scene aside (and that was not considered particularly hateful by white society in 1952), the racism isn't any more offensive than anything you might see in "Gone with the Wind." Ray Middleton is fun to watch as an egotistical hambone of a showman, but he is not the hero of this story. This film's real crime is to make the film's subject, songwriter Stephen Foster, the most unappealing, weak-willed, limp dishrag of a person ever to have a film centered around him, and there was no compensating spark of personality, wit, or nobility to counterbalance that impression. There was a sense of romance about him, in a wan, hopeless, tear-in-the-eye Pierrot sort of way. But really – he was portrayed as such a sad sack human doormat that you couldn't even feel sorry for him. I found it altogether puzzling.

Ralph Michael Stein Veteran director and producer Allan Dwan, whose huge string of films includes both the utterly forgettable and the recurrently shown (for example, John Wayne in "Sands of Iwo Jima") tried his hand at a big musical with "I Dream of Jeanie." Harnessing a lead cast of singers with little past film experience and, as it turned out, virtually no future, he spun a fictional and in no small part offensive story about the great American songwriter, Stephen Foster.Bill Shirley is the young, lovestruck Foster whose kindness to slaves includes giving the money saved for an engagement ring to pay the hospital cost for an injured little black boy. His intended is Inez McDowell (Muriel Lawrence) whose pesky younger sister, Jeanie (Eileen Christy), is slowly realizing she's in love with the nearly impecunious song-smith. Foster is in love with Inez who is revolted by the composer's Number 1 on the Levee Hit Parade Tune, "O Susannah." Enter minstrel Edwin P.Christy (Ray Middleton) to help launch the profit-making phase of Foster's career.This is, by the musical-film standards of the early Fifties, a big production. The sets are lavish in that special Hollywood way that portrayed fakes with all the trimmings. The singers aren't half bad and the Foster songs are almost impossible to ruin.But this is also a literal whitewash of the antebellum South. The biggest number features black-face for all on stage, an historical anomaly and a contemporary piece of unthinking racism. Were these portrayals of blacks anywhere near reality, the abolitionists would be rightly condemned for interfering with so beneficent an institution."I Dream of Jeanie" apparently sank into the studio's vault with barely a death whisper. Now revived by Alpha Video for a mere $4.99 it's a period piece with charming songs and repulsive sentimentalizing about the victims of America's great crime, slavery.This was what Hollywood was putting out two years before Brown v. Board of Education. Must have warmed the hearts of some moviegoers who wore their bed linen to the theater.