(91 min) Released 1938-02-11
Directors: Mitchell Leisen, James P. Hogan (uncredited)
Stars: W.C. Fields, Martha Raye, Dorothy Lamour, Bob Hope, Shirley Ross, Ben Blue, and a lot of chorus girls uncredited
LeRoy Prinz ... dances staged by
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029912/
Origination of Hope's signature song, Thanks for the Memory, executed touchingly by Hope & Ross. Hope is billed 6th; it's his first feature!
We get Fields playing a bizarre round of golf, and later his 2 warped pool cues; he has a role large enough to justify top billing, but fortunately no children to play against here.
Martha Raye's song "Mama..." is the kind that sticks in your head when you don't want it to. And it really looks like she was the object being tossed around by the sailors, not a dummy or a double, and not a lot of cuts.
Ben Blue is a welcome member of the cast. He sort of dances a bit. Dorothy Lamour doesn't do enough to justify her billing; she gets a song, and is supposedly engaged to Hope, but falls for Leif Erickson.
We get a big production number (scene 16; not obvious from the menu!) aboard ship (almost all the film occurs there), The Waltz Lives On, with 2 other songs, so L.Prinz is justified in the credits. It's pretty and probably cost $, but it's not making my W.D. list.
The Broadcast of the title is from the ship (to where?), and provides the excuse for the specialties. At least one act was visual, so how it plays on radio is bizarre. (I haven't commented on tap dancers on radio, or ventriloquists, in prior films. It was used often enough that I'll bet they really did tap, and live broadcasts with audiences helped.) But here we get a woman who's going to play 3 parts, and says she'll do this for the villain, this for the girl and this for the hero, and she's miming; not different voices, just a visual signal for each.
Between Fields, Hope/Ross singing Memory, I guess I'll bump it to a +.
Paramount, dir. Leisen & Hogan; 6+
