The Phantom Broadcast

Ralph Forbes may have given his best screen performance in The Phantom Broadcast. Unfortunately it was for poverty row studio Monogram and I venture to say a lot of people even back in 1933 probably never got to appreciate it. If they did see The Phantom Broadcast they could not have missed the resemblance to Cyrano De Bergerac.

Forbes plays a brilliant pianist, singer, and teacher who unfortunately is a hunchback. In the quiet of the sound proof broadcast station he's hit upon a scheme where handsome Arnold Grey appears at the microphone and mouths the words to Forbes's voice.

But Grey as the Christian of the piece is not as noble a character as Christian. He's a womanizing playboy and his fooling around with gangster's moll Vivienne Osborne has not gone unnoticed by some bad people.

Eager young hopeful Gail Patrick enters the picture and she interests both Forbes and Grey in different ways, maybe the same way, but Cyrano Forbes won't say and he's also determined that Grey will not trod here.

The Phantom Broadcast is an interesting idea that should have been tried by one of the big studios. It's highly melodramatic and probably too old fashioned for today's tastes. Still Ralph Forbes is brilliant.

This is a hard to watch film because the subject manner is one which for todays audiences would be taboo. A popular radio singer, tall handsome, and a huge flirt has his own radio show, women adore him and he has tie ins with criminals. The only thing is the singer is not actually singing, his piano player is the actual singer, played by Ralph Forbes. Forbes is also a vocal teacher and has been told that he will never be a star because he has a deformity. His deformity causes several people in the film to call him derogatory terms. The film is not really a mystery either, as it is never a mystery as to what happens, which is best explained by watching the film. Gail Patrick, on loan from Paramount Studios plays the romantic lead in the film.

The film is in the public domain and can be found on VHS and DVD.

I LOVED this film (I saw it on a VHS from Sinister Cinema) and was particularly moved by Ralph Forbes' performance in the lead role of the "hunchback," who (in an eerie foreshadowing of the Milli Vanilli scandal) provides the actual voice for a handsome but non-singing radio star. Forbes achieves the pathos of Lon Chaney, Sr.'s performances in similar roles (he actually worked with Chaney on the 1926 MGM film "Mr. Wu") and it's a real pity Forbes spent most of his career playing silly-ass Englishmen in supporting roles. "Phantom Broadcast" is also noteworthy for its daringly amoral ending (the sort of thing Hollywood only could get away with in the so-called "pre-Code" period of the early 1930's) and as proof that Philip Rosen, who made some of the God-awfullest movies ever made for the later Monogram in the 1940's, had at least two genuinely great films in him (this one and 1934's "Dangerous Corner"). Also, the actual singing voice heard on the soundtrack sounds so much like Russ Columbo's I suspect it IS Columbo on demo records recorded for a music publisher — anyone out there know more about who the REAL phantom singer was?

Alpha Video which continues to serve serious movie lovers, especially those who want to explore the past through films that will never make it to TV, has an interesting item in 1933's "The Phantom Broadcast." The plot is simple: a much beleaguered by adoring female fans crooner is a first class fraud. Actually "his" voice is that of his crippled accompanist and manager, referred to as "the hunchback."

Singer and manager both pursue the beautiful, innocent girl. The singer is also beset with the affections of a discarded mistress who won't take "no" or "get lost" for a permanent disposition of a tired relationship. Exit singer through a bullet wound.

The sweet, decent gal is a suspect but the old hunchback tries to attract the law's heat to protect her. Such nobility.

Nothing novel about the plot but the acting is, largely, not bad.

For $4.99, which is what I paid, this was 73 minutes of entertainment. Now who do I palm the DVD off to?

The story moves very slowly, but that does not take away from the fun of watching this movie. The enjoyment is seeing the period of the early 1930's--in dress, hairstyles, furniture, automobiles, and the Art Deco design of the sets. Made in 1933, this movie is at about the height of the Art Deco movement, a movement that permeated the design of everything from architecture to kid's toys. Also notable is the slow speech. Since sound was fairly new in the movies and fast casual speech was often not caught by the infant equipment, the actors speak slower than by today's standards and with the clarity of trained stage actors. Since this is a Monogram Studio production, I suppose there were few multiple takes of the scenes and probably a low budget, but some of the performances are almost equal to those of better known film actors working for the high-priced studios of the day, and the sets are fairly elaborate for a low budget film. All in all, it's fun to watch this movie, in spite of the fact that the story leaves a lot to be desired and moves at a snail's pace.