Hello, Everybody!

During the 1930s-40s, Kate Smith was a mega-star on the radio and she sold bazillions of records. But Kate made very few movie appearances for the sad reason that she was no one's idea of 'Hollywood beautiful'. She was rotund and rather plain...and the with the voice of an angel. Despite her appearance, Paramount took a huge gamble when they starred her in "Hello, Everybody!" in 1933, as it was, according to IMDB, the most expensive musical made to date! Much of the money must have been to lure Smith to make a film and the studio didn't spare expenses otherwise...with nice supporting actors (including Randolph Scott and Sally Blane and Charley Grapewin) and a lovely location shoot. Sadly, this all came to naught and the film bombed at the box office....and Smith never starred in a feature film again.

The film is set on a farm where Kate lives with assorted relatives. However, their idyllic life is in jeopardy, as the power company wants to put in a dam and they'll need to have the local farmers sell them their land...and Kate doesn't want to sell. Soon a representative of the company, Hunt Blake (Randolph Scott) arrives to talk to Kate about selling out...and to romance Lily. But Hunt's sweetness towards Kate make her think perhaps he's sweet on her as well...setting up a very awkward love triangle.

The cruel fact is that the world wasn't ready for an extremely overweight leading lady. The same could probably be said today. This might easily explain the box office woes of this picture. Smith sings very nicely in the film and her performance isn't bad for a newbie. But the script is just awkward and the film tries hard...but ultimately failed to make her a film star.

Now I am NOT saying "Hello, Everybody!" is a good film. It not only is awkward but because Kate wasn't a movie star, the film relied too much on her singing and the story seemed secondary, at best. And, while most of the songs are pleasant, "Pickaninnies' Heaven", is just cringeworthy. I am not the most politically correct person, but my skin crawled when she sang this tune...with happy black children around the nation listening in as if to say the song was sweet and not deeply disturbing! Overall, a poor film that just wasn't a good fit for Smith and her talents. It's a film only for the curious and film historians.

On the basis on this, her only starring vehicle, it's easy to see why Kate Smith never made it as a film star and also why she was a tremendous star on radio. On film she makes minimal impact, seeming cheery but not being able to convey much other emotion. It doesn't help that the story surrounding her is hopelessly corny. However when she sings her warm beautifully inflected voice projects all the nuance that is missing in her acting performance.

One note: the inclusion of the song Pickaninny's Heaven is unfortunate but such were the times. It's a brief blip so easy to skip over.

An oddity but worth watching once for its curiosity value, and when Kate does sing the picture becomes much easier to take.

For those of us who have listened, learned about, and appreciated hearing the wonderful popular songs of the early-1930s, this movie is well worth experiencing. Kate Smith was a good performer and sang wonderfully. Many people seem to stereotype her as a woman with a major weight problem who just sang patriotic or sentimental songs; but in her early career she was a singer of popular songs. There are some of her recordings from the late-20s and early-30s reissued on CDs.

Like most musicals (and probably most films in general) the storyline is sappy; but especially from our perspective today, hearing & seeing the performance of the music is what counts. Most of the Paramount films of this period unfortunately are not being made available in any commercial form today. The film was shown on some TV stations several years ago and I obtained a VHS copy of a copy of a copy.

Probably no film studio had a closer relationship with the medium of radio than Paramount. With their Big Broadcast series that featured the radio stars of the day and the fact that one of the biggest of them all, Bing Crosby, was signed and their biggest moneymaking star, Adolph Zukor and those who succeeded him knew the value of that symbiotic relationship as a publicity outlet for their films. With that in mind they signed Kate Smith to appear in Hello Everybody which was her greeting to her radio audience for decades.

The two things that most people know about Kate Smith today was that she sang God Bless America and the fact that the woman was overweight. It was for that reason that she did not pursue a career in the theater even with one of the most beautiful voices ever given a human being. Radio coming along as it did made her career and made her a household name.

The film written for her was a Capra type populist story of a small town farm girl named Kate Smith who becomes an overnight radio sensation and uses her new found celebrity to help the folks back home. A power company is coming through to build a dam that will flood out a lot of people including Kate and her family.

Aiding and abetting Kate is Jimmy Stewart type hero, young Randolph Scott who woos and weds Kate's younger sister Sally Blane. Of course Kate kind of likes Randy too and she's brokenhearted to see his attention paid to Blane. It gives her an opportunity to sing Moon Song, a touching and sentimental torch ballad written for the film by Arthur Johnston and Sam Coslow who also wrote the scores for a few of Bing Crosby's early Paramount films.

They also wrote the god awful Pickaninny's Heaven for the film which is probably the reason it's not shown that often. What were they thinking back in the day? But to make up for it Paramount also interpolated the standard Dinah which they also did for Crosby in his feature film debut in The Big Broadcast a year earlier. Kate sings a souped of version of the song and Lord could that woman move even given her weight. And of course her radio theme When The Moon Comes Over The Mountain was also in the film, fans would have stoned Paramount Pictures if it wasn't.

When The Moon Comes Over The Mountain and God Bless America are the two songs identified with Kate Smith today. But God Bless America was several years in the future in 1933 and the most popular song in terms of record sales for Kate was Rose O'Day or sometimes known as the Fillagadusha song introduced in the early Forties.

Of course Kate did not do another film, casting her was a problem. I think Susan Boyle is finding some of the same career problems Kate Smith had in her day. Kate did do God Bless America for Warner Brothers later on, but her film appearances are few.

So if you want to see a good example of what Kate Smith as artist was all about, I recommend you see Hello Everybody despite its flaws.