The film is also known as I Dream of Jeanie (with the Light Brown Hair).[1]
Plot
In 1849, the song "Oh, Susannah" is a nationwide hit, but bookkeeper Stephen Foster has given his work to several music houses free of charge and without credit. His refined true love Inez McDowell, a classically trained singer, despises popular music, especially Stephen's songs. Foster's world changes when Edwin P. Christy educates him about the music business and launches his career as the author of the songs that the Christy Minstrels sing in their shows.
In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Oscar Godbout wrote:
[T]he music, with its universal appeal, was not enough for the creators of this bogus biography; the author of the script, Alan LeMay, with the director, Allan Dwan, succumbed to an urge to skewer the tunes with a vapid tale of the young musician being thwarted in love. They show him as a shallow, brainless bookkeeper who tinkered with tunes when he wasn't debasing himself before a supercilious Southern belle who would have him only if he stopped writing songs. That's the Stephen Foster Bill Shirley is forced to portray. ... But the songs are appealing and Mr. Middleton's portrayal of a famous minstrel compensates for much of the dullness.[2]