The Student Prince

The Student Prince is a 1954 CinemaScope and Ansco Color film musical featuring, as the credits read, "the singing voice of Mario Lanza". Lanza had become embroiled in a bitter dispute with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during production and the studio fired him. Under the terms of the settlement with Lanza, MGM retained the film rights to the soundtrack that Lanza had already recorded. The songs from this film (including "Beloved" – written specially for the movie – and the well-remembered "Serenade", from the original show) would become some of those most identified with Lanza, even though they were mouthed in the film by Edmund Purdom, who took over the role of Prince Karl. Ann Blyth starred as Kathie. Blyth had played opposite Lanza in the 1951 blockbuster The Great Caruso.

The film also featured John Ericson, Louis Calhern, Edmund Gwenn, S.Z. Sakall, Betta St. John, John Williams, Evelyn Varden and John Hoyt.[.....] The film was directed by Richard Thorpe (who replaced the original director, Curtis Bernhardt) and produced by Joe Pasternak. The screenplay was by Sonya Levien and William Ludwig and was based on the operetta The Student Prince by Sigmund Romberg and Dorothy Donnelly which was in turn based on the 1901 play Old Heidelberg by Wilhelm Meyer-Förster..... (read more at Wikipedia)

Links to Peel
Although in later life Peel was unable to share the enthusiasm of his mother and his wife Sheila for operatic voices, he mentioned on the show of 26 August 1976 that he had taken his first girlfriend to see this film, featuring the voice of Mario Lanza, who at the time was a major pop star. Later, a box set of albums by Lanza were found in the Peel record collection.

Joe Pasternak, the film's producer, was the father of Peel's Radio 1 colleague Emperor Rosko (real name Michael Joseph Pasternak).