The Big Broadcast

Microphones not only changed cinema, the relatively new sound-capturing technology in the 1930s was also instrumental in introducing a new way of singing. No longer were vocalists, such as Al Jolson, forced to belt out tunes to listeners in cavernous auditoriums. An emerging generation of so-called crooners used the improved microphones to give a softer vocal delivery. Bing Crosby, at 29, was one of radio's more popular new crooners. Capitalizing on his widely-heard CBS radio show, '15 Minutes,' Paramount Pictures took advantage of the singer's star power by slotting him as the lead in his first feature film, October 1932's "The Big Broadcast." Based on William Ford Manley's 1932 play 'Wild Waves,' the movie served as a vehicle showcasing a bevy of radio personalities and musical acts built around Bing.

"The Big Broadcast" has Bing (also his character's name) more preoccupied with his fiancee Mona Lowe (Sharon Lynn) than his radio show when he shows up late for his broadcasts. The manager, George Burns (yes, the comedian), is on the verge of losing his radio station to bankruptcy. The movie's premise parallels Bing's early radio career when he didn't appear for the first couple of days to his premier '15 Minutes with Bing Crosby.' CBS had heavily promoted the singer's August 31, 1931 debut, but after rehearsing in a frigid air-conditioned studio earlier that day, his failure to come to the station that evening and on the following night led to rumors he was either too drunk or too nervous to sing. In reality, Crosby came down with a case of laryngitis.

"The Big Broadcast" was also George Burns' and his wife Gracie Allen's first feature film. Orphaned at a young age, Burns teamed up with three other kids to form the "Pee-Wee Quartet." Later in vaudeville, he was paired with females as a sounding board for his comic, singing and dancing routines. After one brief marriage, he partnered with Gracie Allen in 1923 and married her three years later. Burns recalled, "And all of a sudden the audience realized I had a talent. They were right. I did have a talent-and I was married to her for 38 years." At first Gracie said all the serious lines while George was the comic. As time passed, Burns discovered her quips were getting more laughs than his supposed funny jokes, so they switched deliveries. Gracie is the station manager's secretary in their debut film. The couple went on to become highly popular on the screen, in radio and on television.

"The Big Broadcast's" showcased several popular radio personalities as the station's new owner, Texas oilman Leslie McWhinney (Stuart Erwin), organized a single-night singing extravaganza to raise money. Cab Calloway, The Mills Brothers, Eddie Lang and Kate Smith are shown performing in front of the mic. Crosby himself sang three songs , including his hit 'Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day,' nominated by the American Film Institute as one of 400 tunes for the top 100 Songs in American Movies. The film was such a box office hit it spawned three additional feature films, "The Big Broadcast of 1936," "1937" and "1938." Newspaper reviews were generally very positive about Crosby's future in the entertainment world. Wrote the film critic for The New York American, "Bing Crosby is the star, make no mistake about it. He has a camera face and a camera presence. Always at ease, he troupes like a veteran." The reviewer must have had great intuition because Crosby went on to make over 70 feature films in his lifetime.

The Big Broadcast is so cute! Bing Crosby stars as himself-he actually plays Bing Crosby, the singing radio sensation. George Burns is George Burns, the radio station owner, and his silly secretary is Gracie Allen, who plays Gracie Allen. Bing frequently gets recognized, and when he meets a new friend, Stuart Erwin, who doesn't, Bing starts crooning "Where the Blue of the Night" to jar his memory.

This entire more is tongue-in-cheek, so if you like that humor, you'll split your sides laughing. Once, Stuart enters an empty room and says to the camera, "Hmm, no chair." From off-camera, someone literally slides a chair into frame for him to sit on. In another scene, Leila Hyams says, "First I cry because I'm happy, now I want to do something even sillier." Stuart guesses, "You want to laugh because you're sad?" The main plot of the movie involves a love triangle between Stuart, Leila, and Bing, and the film discusses the concept of hero worship, celebrity crushes, and real love. All that in a silly comedy? Well, when a comedy is a good comedy, it can revolve around actual topics while still including humor. So, the answer is yes.

In one scene, Bing and Stuart wake up in twin beds with no memory of what happened the night before. "This is my bedroom," Bing says, looking at the sheets. In the neighboring bed, Stuart asks, "Are we married?" Then, in pre-Code glory, the camera captures Leila's legs as she slips her negligee and underwear off then hops in the shower. Both Bing and Stuart talk to her while she's covered in only a shower curtain, and once she's fully dressed, Stuart shows her off and says, "Feel how solid she is!" Bing looks her up and down then asks Stuart where he should squeeze. Aren't pre-Code movies grand?

Unfortunately, once the "big broadcast" actually happens, during the last thirty minutes of the movie, it's full of radio acts and singers who are no longer household names today. Modern audiences will probably be very bored by the ending, but if you're bored, just remember the hilarity of the first part of the movie.

...That is, the storyline would plod. It actually does plod, but everything else distracted me from most of the plodding. And besides an intriguing screenplay was never the point of these "big broadcast" films.

So what is so odd? The film opens with a loudly ticking clock as everything in the radio station acts in synchronization with the sound of the clock. The steps of a messenger boy as he goes down the hall, the steps of a black cat as he walks, Cab Calloway's baton, as everybody is waiting for a tardy Bing Crosby.

When the sponsor of the show appears and demands that Bing be fired for persistent lateness, the clock face grows astonished eyes and its hands move in horror. The cat freezes and slips under a door through a half inch crack. A radio microphone grows astonished eyes when a surprising announcement is made.

Who else runs the radio station but George Burns aided by his hare brained secretary, Gracie Allen. "A lot of people around here have been driving me crazy for years and I thought for once I'd hire somebody that would drive them crazy." - Burns' explanation of why he hired this secretary.

The really oddest scene in the entire film? An attempted suicide by Bing and his new pal Leslie McWhinney (Stuart Erwin). Both just dumped by their gals, they turn on the gas in Bing's apartment and wait for the end. They begin to hallucinate, seeing a skull and dancing skeletons. Very precode. That and Stuart Erwin trying to make up with Leila Hyams while she is in the shower and he is just outside the curtain wearing her lingerie. If you want an explanation of this watch the film.

Note that Stu Erwin is top billed over Crosby as Bing's career is just starting out. In fact, this was Bing's first feature film for Paramount, the studio that would become his home. Erwin acquits himself well, including a long mute comic bit towards the end that he handles deftly.

The real reason to watch this besides the weird humor and the macabre and precode moments are the musical acts - Kate Smith, Cab Calloway and his orchestra, the Mills Brothers, and the Boswell Sisters. And Bing Crosby singing "Please" should please just about anyone.

Watch it for the comical and musical oddity that it is. I wish that somebody would clean it up and put it on physical media.

I first watched this movie 32 years ago when I moved to Jacksonville, FL, at 19 and was watching lots of afternoon TV during days I was looking for a job living at an aunt's house. This was Bing Crosby's big break in the movies having previously appeared In shorts and cameoed in other features. Also appearing are the comedy team of George Burns & Gracie Allen with Gracie's logic only making sense to Burns! Also, some of the most popular music stars of the time like Kate Smith, Donald Novis, Arthur Tracy, Vincent Lopez and His Orchestra, the Boswell Sisters who came from New Orleans which is a two-hour drive from where I now live in Baton Rouge, the Mills Brothers who perform "Tiger Rag" which is the theme song for my hometown's beloved LSU Tigers football team, and Cab Calloway and His Orchestra being his own crazy, hip self. In fact, he appears at the beginning as well! Director Frank Tuttle employs some great visual comedy whether through some silent comedy scenes or with some cartoonish effects with inanimate objects. There's even some surrealistic touches during a suicide attempt that's played for laughs. Stuart Erwin makes a good foil for Crosby. Leila Hyams is a fine leading lady, and Sharon Lynn is amusing as the lady that initially jilted Crosby. By the way, I mainly think of her as Lola from Way Out West, my favorite Laurel & Hardy movie. So on that note, I recommend The Big Broadcast.

Paramount made the first of its Big Broadcast films, the first and best of them. This first one gave Bing Crosby his first role in a feature film, previously he had done guest appearances and also short subjects for Mack Sennett. Not wanting to mislead anyone about who was numero uno in this film, Paramount had him play a radio crooner named Bing Crosby. Eleven years later Frank Sinatra would make his feature film debut as Frank Sinatra.

Bing's the star attraction of this one horse town radio station, appearing for Griptight Girdles on the Griptight Girdle Hour. That is when he can get to the studio. His job is being threatened and he's also coming between Stu Erwin who buys the station and Leila Hyams who's manager George Burns's secretary.

It's a thin plot, but nicely done and it's to show off some of radio's greatest talents of that year. In addition to Bing Crosby, appearing are Kate Smith, Arthur Tracy, the Boswell Sisters, Burns and Allen, Cab Calloway and Vincent Lopez with their respective orchestras, the Mills Brothers and tenor Donald Novis.

Bing gets to sing three numbers, Please and Here Lies Love which were written for this film and Dinah. Crosby made a classic recording of Dinah with the Mills Brothers and I wish they'd reprised that for the movie. Instead it's done with a black shoeshine boy giving him a beat with the rag while Bing is scatting like Ella Fitzgerald. Bing was great, but the staging is something that black people would find offensive. Please became a great early hit for him.

Here Lies Love is sung by Crosby, but he reprises it after it's been introduced by Arthur Tracy. Tracy, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, was billed as the Street Singer and had an almost operatic quality to his voice. He rivaled Crosby, Russ Columbo, Rudy Vallee, and Morton Downey in popularity as a radio singer, but American movie audiences didn't take to him. He went to Great Britain in the mid-30s and there he became a movie star. He went back to the US after World War II and only appeared sporadically after that. Tracy was fabulously wealthy due to good investments and lived to the age of 97. He did a cameo appearance in Crossing Delancey, you'll see him briefly discussing issues of the day over the pickle barrel there.

For Kate Smith, radio was a godsend. That beautiful and powerful voice was also trapped in an elephantine body like a Wagnerian opera soprano. She was never going to be a film star. But she was radio's most popular female vocalist, no one else was ever even close and she sings a great rendition of It Was So Beautiful in The Big Broadcast.

Burns and Allen did surreal comedy that was probably only equaled by Monty Python years later. Gracie Allen was in her own world and the ever patient George gave up trying to deal with her reasoning. They did some great guest bits in films like this one and two more with Bing Crosby. But they never really carried a film by themselves with the exception of Here Comes Cookie. I did a review of that and it's the best example of their work.

Donald Novis was a popular radio tenor, totally forgotten now. He also was on the Broadway stage and in Rodgers&Hart's Jumbo introduced their classic, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World. They give him Trees to sing, Joyce Kilmer's poem put to music. I wish he'd sung something more popular.

With all these radio stars it's hard to remember that the nominal star of the film is Stu Erwin. Erwin did a fabulous job in creating some great milquetoast characters from the early talkies. The climax of the film involves a long running gag with him trying to get a recording of Bing singing Please to the studio to substitute for Crosby who's AWOL. It's done almost without dialog and it is interspersed with several of the stars previously mentioned. It's a hilarious bit of slapstick.

The Big Broadcast is enjoyable nostalgic fun and a piece of history since it's the feature film debut of America's greatest entertainer, Bing Crosby.