1h 22min | Comedy, Musical | 26 April 1940
Director: David Butler
Stars: Bing Crosby, Gloria Jean, Charles Winninger
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032624/
Watched out of sequence because it was on a 1939 disc.
In the Tap! Appendix for Eddie Leonard (old vaudevillian playing himself).
Very pleasant story with plenty of songs. GJ (b. '26, 2 years older that Shirley Temple) is quite the soprano, almost as good as Deanna Durbin.
Director Butler also gets story and producer credit; he directed 4 ST movies, my ratings 6678. If the characters hadn't pointed it out, I may not have noticed that there was NO romantic interest whatsoever in the film. Even ST flicks often had a romantic subplot.
Instead, one of the 2 coworkers of the now-dead father is swindled into buying a failed restaurant, and since the great uncle (who's taking GJ, the words "adopt" or "custody" are never used) is a former vaudevillian, they decide to use those friends to entertain. The plot is much more complicated, but that's the "spoiler."
Again we have no child protective services, no legal proceedings to establish custody of the new orphan. I wonder what such things were really like in 1940.
Universal, dir. Butler; 6+
