by Tommy Hayfield

Created on: June 28, 2010   Last Updated: June 29, 2010

Tagline:  The Wonderful Musical of the Future

Plot:  Bartholomew Collins has only one enemy in the world-his Piano teacher Dr. T.

Running Time:  89 minutes

Producer:  Stanley Kramer

Director:  Roy Rowland

This movie which was based on a children's book by Dr. Theodore Seuss Geisel or just Dr. Seuss as we know him came to  the big screen in the summer of 1953.  He co-authored the script and wrote the lyrics for the charming songs which were hilarious mostly.  Hans Conried plays Dr. Terwilliker who is the piano teacher at the Terwilliker Institute where kids find themselves playing a huge piano where seemingly hundreds of kids play at once.  Conried would later that same year play the voice of Dr. Hook in perhaps a more famous movie:  Peter Pan. 

Tommy Rettig who plays Bartholomew Collins is the piano student who has just one enemy in the world and it is his contrary piano teacher Dr. T.   Mary Healy plays Bart's mom Mary Collins and she is the object of interest of Dr. T and the plumber August Zabladowski played by Peter Lind Hayes.  The plumber is there to install sinks in the Terwilliker Institute so all the kids can stay clean. 

The movie which is a musical/drama had all the big, outrageous, and color-filled looks of Dr. Seuss's books.  It would have been a good story to make into a cartoon since  his books contain comic book type figures. It works well as a movie, though, and  his songs  including the one by the character Bartholomew Collins 'Because We're Kids' is a song which you could imagine a kid thinking of while considering his responsibility to practice his piano dutifully. 

Many people consider this role Conried's best performance as he plays an very expressive Dr. Seuss character with the passion of a kid.  The movie received an Oscar nomination under the category:  Best Music, Scoring of  a Musical Picture.  It didn't win the Oscar.  The number of songs and the energy of them in this fast-moving movie is fantastic for kids.  This movie didn't earn a lot of acclaim at its first release but it has stayed in people's minds since the 1950's since it is a product of the famous Dr. Seuss. 

I watched this movie uncut on Turner Classic Movies.

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