Photoplay Sneak Previews: “Hans Christian Andersen”

Around Hollywood they’re saying that the new Goldwyn production. “Hans Christian Andersen,” is the last of the supercolossal productions, for it cost something like a colossal $4,000,000 to make. The fact is, “Hans” will probably point the way to the most successful motion pictures of the future, for it is just what the public’s been ordering in the way of entertainment. The picture has song, dance and spectacle, all woven into an appealing story. Not in any sense a screen biography, the movie is instead an attempt to catch on film the same delightful feeling listeners get in hearing Andersen’s fairy tales.

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Danny Kaye plays the title role, that of a cobbler run out of a small Danish town in 1830 for contributing to the delinquency of children by telling them fairy tales. Going to Copenhagen, the ex-cobbler meets a ballerina (Jeanmaire) who makes him famous by interpreting his tales on the stage. Hans falls in love with the ballerina, but when he learns she is happily married to her director (Farley Granger), he returns to his native town. But his fame has spread everywhere now, and he is welcomed back as a hero.

Danny Kaye has ten new songs in the film, songs especially written for him by Frank Loesser, composer of “Slow Boat to China” and “Bushel and a Peck.” It’s a very safe bet that at least three of the songs from “Hans” will be Hit Paraders.

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It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE JANUARY 1953