None But The Lonely Heart (film)

None But The Lonely Heart (film)

None but the Lonely Heart is a 1944 film which tells the story of a Cockney lad who returns home with no ambitions but finds that his family needs him. Adapted by Clifford Odets from the novel by Richard Llewellyn and directed by Odets, the movie stars Cary Grant, Ethel Barrymore, Barry Fitzgerald, June Duprez, Jane Wyatt, George Coulouris, and Dan Duryea.

The title of the film is taken from one of Tchaikovsky's best-known songs, which is featured in the background music.

None but the Lonely Heart won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (Ethel Barrymore) and was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Cary Grant), Best Film Editing and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Hanns Eisler and Constantin Bakaleinikoff).

The screenplay was published in Best Film Plays—1945, eds. John Gassner and Dudley Nichols (New York: Crown, 1946).

Musical comedian and parodist Spike Jones recorded a three minute spoof of radio soap operas entitled None but the Lonely Heart (A Soaperetta) in the 1940s.

None but the Lonely Heart and Sylvia Scarlett (1935) were the only two films in which Cary Grant used a Cockney accent, though that was not his original accent, as he was from Bristol, which has a very different accent from London. The unique vocal intonations with which he spoke in every other film were the happy results of an unsuccessful attempt to go from an English to an American accent so that he wouldn't be limited to playing British roles in American movies.