(93 min) Released 1937-03-06
Director: Ray Enright
Stars: Ruby Keeler, Lee Dixon, Allen Jenkins, Wini Shaw, Jane Wyman.
Bobby Connolly ... musical numbers staged and directed by; Oscar nom'd for "Too Marvelous for Words"; Oscar 1938
Genres: Comedy | Musical | Romance
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029467/
I enjoyed Lee Dixon again, his 2nd of 4 musical features. Unfortunately #3, The Singing Marine ('37) is not on dvd and not online. I have #4, and it's in '37.
Jane Wyman has a substantial small role as the receptionist of a successful producer (sponsor?). She gets several lines, is very sassy/savvy, managing the flakes who want to see her boss. She has more than one scene. And she was actually in the SCREEN credits after the finale. BIG step up in her career.
The singing & dancing:
- First scene after credits: The World Is My Apple, sung & danced by LD without pants for a total of 1 min.
- Enter the tailor, and they can't pay. LD sings him There's a Little Old House, offering half the revenue as payment instead.
- 15:05: RK with 32 chorus girls singing and tapping Handy with Your Feet, in a nightclub aboard trans-Atlantic liner, London to NYC. At the time, a "Handy" was a game to symbolize a famous saying or idiom with the hands, sometimes as pantomime, others with homonyms.
- 26:30: LD plays a fast-paced reprise of There's a Little Old House on his dispossessed piano on the sidewalk while the movers tap dance.
- 28:05: LD plays a sweet reprise of same on (player!) accordion to his landlady, attempting the same deal as with the tailor.
- 46:00: RA's dubber sings, and RK and LD dance to Just a Quiet Evening at a party for the imported Jane Clark (RK) in NYC. Ginger Rogers would have rejected that dress.
- 1:11:15: The "real" Jane Clark (WS), sounding like Helen Morgan, sings Sentimental and Melancholy at rehearsal.
- 1:26:30: RW&A is first of 11+ film appearances of the Whiting/Mercer standard Too Marvelous for Words, sung by WS echo/enhancing RA's dictation, then by his dubber and chorus girls. Message received by RK, she starts typing a reply, and we get a giant typewriter where she and LD tap on keys and chorus girl legs strike the "paper." (Cute dance generates + on my rating, not a place on the 'worthwhile dancing' list. Oscar nom'd? Well, it didn't win.) Curtain.
This may be the last of RK's 9 movies in this quest. She only does 4 more, '38 straight drama at RKO, '41 musical at Columbia (I can rent/buy a copy online), one in '70, one in '89. Seems that she retired to marriage/family with 2nd/final husband.
This was the last of 17 credits for Ross Alexander. He was also in Flirtation Walk ('34) and Shipmates Forever ('35), but died in '37 (before the film was released), self-inflicted. Mini-bio makes it sound like guilt. He was a great presence here with a wonderful voice delivering rapid-fire dialog with authority, as one of the two songwriters trying to mount a show.
