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THE EMPEROR WALTZ – Victor Young
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In the late 1940s Billy Wilder was Paramount Pictures premier director, and Bing Crosby was the studio’s leading star. Wilder had always wanted to do a musical with Crosby, and found a story, which drew from an actual historical event, which eventually became this film: The Emperor Waltz. Valdemar Poulsen was a Danish inventor who demonstrated his magnetic recording device to Emperor Franz Joseph I of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in an audacious effort to secure financing for his invention. Charles Brackett was assigned production with a $3.8 million budget, Wilder would direct and Brackett and Wilder would write the screenplay. Bing Cosby would star as Virgil Smith, joined by Joan Fontaine as Countess Johanna Augusta Franziska, with Richard Haydn as Emperor Franz Josef, Roland Culver as Baron Holenia, and Sig Ruman as Dr. Zwieback. Read more…
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