I would guess most people are familiar with the idea of "chick flicks" but might not realize that it's not a new concept, even if the actual term wasn't used in the early days of Hollywood. But no matter what it was called, once movie-makers caught on to the fact that ladies had a big influence on how a family's entertainment dollars were spent, it followed that there would be a lot of films aimed their way.

I wasn't around in the early days of Hollywood, but I definitely remember being dragged to a few of those films when I was a kid in the post-war years. My folks were on a tight budget, but movies were always relatively cheap fun (and small kids got in free). I won't pretend that I can remember a lot of specific movies but at least one comes to mind. It was a not only a tear-jerker but a musical too, and even had a soundtrack album — unusual for those days.

Susan Hayward was a favorite of my Mom's, and when she made With A Song In My Heart (Susan — not my Mom) it was a sure bet we'd go. It was the story of real-life singer Jane Froman, who did the actual singing on the soundtrack, including the title tune.

Froman's story was certainly custom-made for a movie. At the time World War II broke out, she was already in her mid-thirties and had been working in show business for quite a while, mostly as a band singer and on Broadway, but had not really reached stardom. She'd had a couple of small parts in movies too, but her career took a sudden turn when the war started and she joined the USO.

She toured extensively in the early years of the war, but in 1943 her USO plane crashed in Portugal and most of the passengers died. Jane survived with severe injuries, and the co-pilot, John Curtis Burn, is credited with helping rescue her — even though he had a broken back. Jane had to resist doctors' advice to amputate a leg but it still marked the beginning of a long period of pain and recurring problems.