Marcia Van Dyke

Until I saw (last night) it for the first time since childhood (and the first time in color), I didn't realize that In The Good Old Summertime, the 1949 remake of Ernst Lubitsch's 1940 The Shop Around the Corner (both are based on a play about a perfume store written by Miklos Laszlo, which also seriously influenced Nora Ephron's 1998 You've Got Mail) was such a violin movie. Marcia Van Dyke, who plays a mean "Souvenir de Moscow" near the end of the movie, led a double life as Hollywood star and as a member of the San Francisco Symphony.

Louise Parkson, Marcia Van Dyke's character, is a violinist who is valued in the course of the film for her excellent playing rather than simply for her physical beauty.

You can read a brief article about her in the January 19, 1948 issue of Life