Blu-ray Release Date: April 14, 2015
Price: Blu-ray $29.95
Studio: Twilight Time
Twilight Time presents the long-awaited musical classic that produced one of Pat Boone’s signature songs – on Blu-Ray for the first time in its widescreen Cinemascope glory!
Pat Boone and Shirley Jones in April Love
The popular 1953 musical melodrama April Love stars the squeaky-clean duo of Boone and Shirley Jones as a repentant juvenile delinquent and the country girl who helps him to go straight—with a little assistance from a spirited trotting horse.
Shot in the lovely Kentucky Bluegrass country, the pretty family film is particularly noted for its Oscar-nominated title tune, a Sammy Fain-Paul Francis Webster classic.
As supplier Twilight Time prints up only 3,000 copies of each title, be prepared to preorder the title from distributor Screen Archives when it prebooks towards the end of March.
Great to see this in CinemaScope at last after an abysmal pan-and-scan release by Fox Archives (produced the same year that the restored print was shown in L.A. with Boone and Jones in attendance). It was a remake of HOME IN INDIANA, shot in Technicolor with Lon McAllister in 1944 by Fox. (A correction is needed above, the remake was made in 1957, not 1953. It was Shirley Jones’ 3rd movie after OKLAHOMA! and CAROUSEL. A pleasant family hit made popular by it’s big-selling title song, nonetheless it was a comedown from her first two Rodgers and Hammerstein film adaptations- both excellent, the latter giving her more range than either of the other two roles did).
A point of interest at the time was Pat Boone’s “non-kissing” clause in his contract due to his Baptist upbringing. Thus, he and Jones only come CLOSE to kissing on the Ferris wheel. Boone loosened up by 1962 as he sang shirtless with Ann Margret after a triste in a motel room. (The song- with the racy title of ‘Willing and Eager’- is unjustly forgotten despite being one of the better songs Richard Rodgers wrote on his own (Ie. music and lyrics) after Hammerstein’s death.) Boone’s film career peaked in 1959 with JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (In which all but one of his songs were deleted in the editing stage). Depending on your taste, Jones peaked in one of the following: CAROUSEL, ELMER GANTRY, THE MUSIC MAN or in THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY.
Here’s hoping Twlight Time also releases the restored version of THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE FREE and THE ADVENTURES OF HAAJI BABA, both restored by Fox but only released in (the unwatchable) pan-and-scan process. BEST THINGS has some great numbers and HAAJI has a score by Dimitri Tiomkin, zesty ‘matinee-style’ performances and sets nearly as stylized as those in THE SILVER CHALICE