Did you see the The Eddy Duchin Story yet?

The Turner Classic Movies showcased The Eddy Duchin Story today. It is a 1956 biopic of band leader and pianist Eddy Duchin. The George Sidney-helmed film, written by Samuel A. Taylor, starred Tyrone Power and Kim Novak. The musical soundtrack recording, imitating Duchin’s style, was performed by pianist Carmen Cavallaro. Harry Stradling Sr. received an Academy Award nomination for his cinematography in the film. It had four nominations in total, but won nothing.

The Eddy Duchin Story is a fictionalized tearjerker, with Tyrone Power in the title role. The film did well in theaters, and was well enough known to be referenced in one of Columbia’s Three Stooges shorts: the Stooges’ spaceship is about to crash when Joe Besser yelps, “I don’t want to die! I can’t die! I haven’t seen The Eddy Duchin Story yet!”

It was one of the highest grossing films of 1956. Some of its box office success can be attributed to the appearance of Novak in ads for No-Cal diet soda. Novak became one of the first celebrities to be featured in advertisements for soft drinks, and each ad also featured a reminder to see Novak in The Eddy Duchin Story.

Eddy Duchin was an American popular pianist and bandleader of the 1930s and 1940s, famous for his engaging onstage personality, his elegant piano style, and his courageous fight against leukemia.

Duchin had no formal music training but he developed a style rooted in classical music that some believe the forerunner of Liberace’s ornate, gaudy approach. Still, there were understatements in Duchin’s music that were beyond Liberace’s self-conscious glitz. By no means was Duchin a perfect pianist, but he was easy to listen to without being rote or entirely predictable.

His son Peter Duchin was 14 years old when his father died, but the boy began a musical education with his father and eventually studied formally at Yale. In time, he became an orchestra-leading pianist in his own right, as well as the author of a series of mystery novels. In his 1996 memoir Ghost of a Chance, Peter Duchin wrote about the wholesale fictionalization in The Eddy Duchin Story.

Peter is an honorary member and former Vice-Chairman of the New York State Council on the Arts. He has served on the boards of American Ballet Theatre, Carnegie Hall, Spoleto Festival USA, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the board of Trustees for the Glimmerglass Opera of Cooperstown, New York, the Advisory Council for the American Russian Youth Orchestra, the National Jazz Service Organization, the World Policy Institute, and the Citizens Committee For New York City.

Having divorced, in 1985 Peter Duchin married Brooke Hayward. The couple maintain a loft in New York City and a house in Washington in Litchfield County, Connecticut.

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