George White's Scandals

The ineffable Alice Faye made her film debut in this rousing backstage extravaganza, an interesting assembly of Broadway revue, comic sketches, songs, and dancing, in which she played an aspiring singer Kitty Donnelly and her romance with Rudy Valle. Although the movie is loaded with big-scale Busby Berkeley-inspired production numbers, its chief virtue is to watch and be mesmerized by Faye's glorious singing, her distinctive contralto voice.

This is the movie where Faye sings "Oh, You Nasty Man" -- one of her most cheerfully lurid (though not necessarily the best), songs. Other songs and numbers include "So Nice", "Every Day's a Father's Day", "Following in the Mother's Footsteps", "Sweet and Simple", "Picking Cotton", and "The Man on the Flying Trapeze".

Audiences applauded Faye's vivacity, and the movie made her an instant musical star. Up until her 1936 musical, "Sing, Baby, Baby", Faye really looked like a Jean Harlow-ish platinum blonde with pencil eyelashes. A year later she starred in a follow-up, "George White's 1935 Scandals" - also worth seeking out, if only for Faye's singing.

Unlike Florenz Ziegfeld who died before MGM could properly enshrine his memory on film with The Great Ziegfeld, Ziegfeld Girl, and The Ziegfeld Follies, his rival George White wasn't about to wait until he was beyond caring. White produced two versions of his famous scandals for Fox and the film is interesting because it's a chance to see a Broadway review, a type of show now relegated to piano bars.

It might have really been something had White hired Busby Berkeley for the dance numbers. Then again he probably knew that those films like the ones Berkeley did at Warner Brothers would be remembered for him and not White even with his name in the title.

White appears in this and looks every inch the dapper man about town and former hoofer himself. But George White's Scandals suffers from two drawbacks. The first is a rather silly backstage plot involving a romantic triangle of Scandals performers Rudy Vallee and Alice Faye and society débutante Adrienne Allen. The story in fact was written by White himself. It would have been a far better film had he done an introduction prologue like William Powell as Florenz Ziegfeld in Ziegfeld Follies with White playing himself.

Rudy Vallee in fact did appear on stage in George White's Scandals of 1931 where he introduced Life Is Just A Bowl of Cherries and a song that did better as a revival in 1943 than when it first came out, As Time Goes By. Alice Faye at this time was a female vocalist hired by Vallee to appear with him and his Connecticut Yankees orchestra and was involved with him romantically. This was her film debut and she gets the best song in the score, Oh You Nasty Man.

Jimmy Durante and Cliff Edwards also appear in George White's Scandals and Edwards has a good number with him comparing his trouble with women with that of Henry VIII. Unfortunately Durante's big number involves the second reason why George White's Scandals isn't shown that often. Durante has a number where he spoofs fellow entertainer Al Jolson. It's not just that Durante dons the black-face which he would have to do to imitate Jolson, but then White had the bad taste to back him with a big chorus of singers and dancers, boys and girls, all in black-face doing one of those Mammy numbers.

Despite a frivolous plot and bad taste, George White's Scandals deserves to be remembered for the debut of Alice Faye, one of the best musical stars Hollywood ever produced.

If you love cute dogs, don't on any account miss a chance to see this picture for the number in which THREE men (Durante, Vallee, and Edwards) try to pick up girls with the trusty device of the cute dog. In "My Dog Loves Your Dog" each man point out to a girl that his dog is very fond of the girl's dog, so why don't they follow their pets' example! (Not such a bad idea, when one considers the number of couples who have broken up because of a pet, so it's great if things can go right from the start.) The song is rather babyish, but it is very sweet because it creates the idea that the reason the woman should take the man is that he will offer her doglike devotion (but not in a drippy way, in a lighthearted way--Rudy Vallee sings to Alice Faye, "You know that I really am/Much nicer than that sealyham"! As dog lovers know, this is another reason to watch the film, a real period piece, because sealyhams, which were fashionable in the Twenties and early Thirties, are now almost extinct!

...because it's an onstage parade of musical numbers supported by a minimal plot of backstage intrigues. Supervised, directed, and starring the revue master George White (though other hands are rumored to havre helped with the direction), it's a rousing, vulgar string of so-so songs and scantily clad chorus girls, who are also called on to introduce the acts, and barely can negotiate their way through that. The top draw is a young Alice Faye, in her debut, basically playing as she did for her first few years there, a Fox version of Jean Harlow. She has only one song but it's a corker, "Oh, You Nasty Man," and she's immediately likable. She also pines for Rudy Vallee, in uninspiring form, while other backstage love stories involve Dixie Dunbar, Adrienne Ames, Jimmy Durante, and a game Cliff Edwards. Exuberant bad taste is all over the place-ethnic jokes, blackface, cheap-Scotsman jokes, breast-feeding jokes, pansy jokes-and this is the sort of 1934 release that may have hastened the instigation of the Production Code. It's not exactly good, but White is an amiable stand-in for Kermit the Frog, and some very long production numbers (when WILL that dog number stop repeating choruses) are at least eyefuls.

There's nothing dull about this film; One could cite it as frequently tasteless, sometimes outrageous, often silly--but there's no moments when you want to flip through a magazine until the next musical number--this one crams all kinds of colorful costumes and genuinely wacky ideas into 80 fun-packed minutes--I can't think of another music so full of action and song--not all of them memorable, but each highly individual, and one so hideously tasteless it puts Jolson's "Goin To Heaven On a Mule" to shame.

Unfortunately, Alice Faye's best number is also her only solo number, but it's the vibrant "Oh You Nasty Man." completely with plenty of lively lassies in lush flashy satins, and even features one miniaturized sweetie who perches on the edge of a cocktail glass, ready to dive in.

For those of us used to Dick Powell as a 30's musical lead, Rudy Vallee is a bit of a stick, but he has several duets, and in a trio with Jimmy Durante and Cliff Edwards and three helpless babies, seems to be having a good time. And it's got a final line spoken by George White himself that's pure naughty pre-code.

And that's the spirit of this offbeat, nutty musical--it isn't always good in the vein of the best musical of the period, Love Me Tonight, and it doesn't always leave you humming in the manner those Dubin-Warren Golddigger Movies, but it's a lovely, wacky, funny and even charming 80 minutes of gossamer Show Biz. That's worth 8 stars to me!