Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Magnificent Doll Blu-ray Movie Review

'Magnificent' may be overstating it just a tad.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 21, 2014

Artists as diverse as Sam Cooke, Herman’s Hermits and Art Garfunkel have hit the top of the Billboard charts with versions of “(What a) Wonderful World”, a song (co-written by Herb Alpert and Lou Adler) that famously posits:

Don't know much about history
Don't know much biology
Don't know much about a science book
Don't know much about the French I took

But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me, too
What a wonderful world this would be.

Aside from the fact that the song was written more than a decade after Magnificent Doll was released in 1946, the first line of the lyric at least might have made an agreeable enough theme, for Magnificent Doll simply discards actual history, in this case the celebrated interrelationships between James Madison, Aaron Burr and Dolly Madison (the spelling of Dolly's first name is highly variable, with everything from Dollie and Dolley also showing up with fair regularity). Instead the film offers a pretty turgid and standard love triangle with just the hint of real history playing out in the background. If the drama were more compelling, that might not matter much, but Magnificent Doll rarely if ever lives up to its title, presenting a middling story at best.

There are a couple of ironic things about Magnificent Doll’s wholesale rejection of what is a rather fascinating tale in the annals of early American history. The screenplay is by Irving Stone, who is probably best known in his guise as a novelist specializing in historical biographies. Several of Stone’s bestselling works became celebrated films in their own right, including Lust for Life (about Vincent Van Gogh), The Agony and the Ecstasy (about Michelangelo), and a film with several correspondences to Magnificent Doll, 1953’s The President’s Lady, about Andrew Jackson and his wife. While Stone frequently took dramatic liberties with his books, he was almost an impeccably well researched author, justly lauded for his ability to make history come alive through his printed page. From a cursory review of online sources, this appears to be Stone’s only original screenplay for a feature film, and perhaps due to inexperience or pressure from the producers or director Frank Borzage, Stone has jettisoned much of the real history here in favor of a more traditional soap operatic treatment.

The other ironic thing is that Stone’s screenplay actually sticks to the facts (more or less, anyway) in the early going, introducing us via voiceover to Dolly Madison (Ginger Rogers) as First Lady, and then having Dolly travel back through the mists of memory to the aftermath of the Revolutionary War. Her father, Mr. Payne (Robert Barrat), arrives back at the family’s Virginia plantation a changed man, deciding to rejoin the Quaker faith he had abandoned some years previously and also deciding to emancipate his slaves. He has also promised Dolly to the son of a man who saved him in battle, a Philadelphia lawyer named John Todd (Stephen McNally, billed as Horace McNally). Already Stone is veering from the historical record, but the “arranged marriage” setup gives Dolly her first chance to show that she’s nobody’s pushover, and she resists any signs of affection from her husband since she feels she was given no choice in marrying him. Her reserve does start to crack after a while, and in one of the film’s silliest pieces of hyperbolic emotion, she finally breaks down and tells Todd that she loves him— about 30 seconds after he’s died from a Yellow Fever pandemic that sweeps Philadelphia.

That sets up the central triangle of the film, where the newly widowed Mrs. Todd opens up a boarding house with her mother and is literally immediately greeted by her first tenant, one Aaron Burr (David Niven). The suave if calculating Burr makes a play for Dolly, and she seems at least momentarily swept off her widowed feet, at least until the more down to earth, homely James Madison (Burgess Meredith) enters the picture. Since there’s obviously no real suspense here about what is going to happen, the film seems almost willfully talky at times, forestalling the inevitable with endless sidebars.

While Rogers and Meredith give perfectly fine “movie star” performances here (meaning they’re competent, if shallow), the real surprise of Magnificent Doll is Niven, who crafts a rather coldly compelling Burr. Burr’s actual place in history is debated to this day, but in Stone’s screenplay he’s a scheming megalomaniac who is nonetheless incredibly—maybe even dangerously—charming. Niven had a depth that was at least slightly masked by his cool patrician manner a lot of the time, but here he gives a flesh and blood performance that, while perhaps not historically accurate, is probably Magnificent Doll’s chief allure.

This particular era and these particular characters are sadly underrepresented in film, and someday some enterprising writer-director would do well to revisit these august personalities and try to craft a more reasonably accurate version of their lives and what was actually a fairly precarious time for the still new republic. Borzage, a director who was perhaps past his prime when he helmed Magnificent Doll, simply seems uninspired by the story, letting it meander through its overly dramatic plot points without much shaping or (no pun intended) direction. But it’s probably Stone who bears the biggest onus of Magnificent Doll’s shortcomings. The sad thing is, Stone obviously did know much about history, but failed to get that knowledge into a workable form in his screenplay.

Magnificent Doll Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Magnificent Doll is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. The elements utilized for this transfer have the typical amount of wear and tear, including quite a few noticeable scratches and other damage (see screenshot 19), including occasional emulsion issues. This is overall a generally soft looking presentation, though contrast is quite strong and both black levels and grayscale look very good almost all of the time. There's not a lot of depth to the image here aside from a couple of (probably second unit) outdoor shots. There are a couple of moments that seem to have been sourced from dupe elements, including a brief shot of Stephen McNally as John Todd with much poorer contrast and increased grain. As with all Olive Films catalog releases, there has been neither restoration nor digital tweaking done to this release, and the result is an occasionally slightly problematic but organic looking presentation.

Magnificent Doll Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Magnificent Doll's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix is always listenable, but it does have recurrent issues in the upper midrange which frequently manifest in slight crackling in some of Hans J. Salter's brass inflected underscore cues. Dialogue emerges largely unscathed, though, and there's nothing here that should cause undue concern for those used to the limitations of older soundtracks. Fidelity is fine if not overwhelmingly impressive.

Magnificent Doll Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplemental features on this Blu-ray disc.

Magnificent Doll Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As history, Magnificent Doll is a laugh (even if it's not a "campy" laugh, as Olive's liner notes allege). As soap opera, the film is a bit better, though it's rather lethargic quite a bit of the time. Rogers and Meredith are certainly fine (if not much more) in their roles, but Niven is something of a minor revelation as Aaron Burr. This Burr may not (like the film itself) have a lot of connection to actual history, but the character is the one element in Magnificent Doll that is undeniably compelling. Technical merits here are very good if approached with reasonable expectations.