Just four years removed from The Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland was still struggling to transition from child actress to adult. That difficulty is perfectly mirrored in this 1943 tale of a naive small-town girl with visions of grown-up Broadway fame. Garland plays the title character, an Indiana native who puts a big-time producer in her sights when he briefly visits their shared hometown. John Thornway (Van Heflin) wants nothing to do with the delusional starlet, quickly returning to the big city comfort of his next upcoming musical and his relationship with the diva leading lady.
Buy Presenting Lily Mars from Movie ZyngWhen Lily follows John to New York, he eventually takes pity on her and gives her a small role in the musical, even as she continues to dream of leading lady stardom. Circumstances inevitably change with the diva, inspiring John to take a chance on casting Lily as his leading lady in both the musical and his love life.
The story is based on a novel by Booth Tarkington (On Moonlight Bay), but once the action moves to New York, it’s so similar to virtually every other musical that it practically writes itself. Tarkington was a master of small-town dynamics, and the opening Indiana scenes capture that authenticity, but his singular voice is completely drowned out by the deafening roar of the Big Apple. There’s just not enough to distinguish this “star is born” tale from any other run-of-the-mill musical of the era.
While Garland is charming as the coltish ingenue, with her character around her actual age of 21, her 14-year age gap with Heflin is so vast that their characters’ romantic relationship just reads as alarming. The successful, world-wise John isn’t predatory per se, consistently treating Lily as an annoyance until he finally falls under her spell. However, their ill-suited romance is a clear downfall of an otherwise breezy musical.
The black-and-white film is presented in 1.37:1 aspect ratio with DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono sound. Overall image quality is quite good, with crisp focus and well-defined contrast, however a smattering of specks remain. Sound is somewhat thin and lacking range, but hiss levels are minimal.
Buy Presenting Lily Mars from AmazonThe disc is stacked with bonus features, including a 22-minute Oscar-winning live-action short, a classic Tex Avery cartoon, and audio-only bonuses of an outtake song, a complete sequence of a song truncated in the film, and a Lux Radio Theater adaptation of the film performed by Heflin and June Allyson.
