Jamboree

Executive Paul Harvey wants to hire George Byron and the Schnickelfritz Band to play on the radio, but through the usual musical comedy/wartime misunderstandings, they're stuck as hands on Ruth Terry's farm. Meanwhile Ernest Tubbs and his band want a job.

It's a Republic Pictures musical, so it's clearly intended for the rural audiences, even though the music is quite good and the plot takes up only about 20 minutes of the movie's 73 minute. The Schnickelfritz Band is a funnyne, in line with the better remembered Spike Jones recordings of the era; Tubbs' ensemble is country with a little swing added to it. There's also the Music Maids for a close harmony work, and Miss Terry leads an ensemble version of "Whittle Out A Whistle" that's lively and pleasant. Don Wilson plays a harried executive, and Isabel Randolph is there as a slight variation on her Fiibber Magee and Molly character. Good music of the era, director Joseph Santley speeding things along, and it's a pretty good little show.

Despite the folksy title and featuring country and western music legend Ernest Tubb, Jamboree has more in common with a war years Andrews Sister musical than the type of film that the stix so famously nixed a few years earlier. Pretty stock story about bands trying to get their big break on a new radio show, it's actually not too bad, with mostly everybody, both in front of and behind the cameras, behaving competently and avoiding embarrassment. The home front war time setting provides interest with the labor shortage featuring prominently.

Of course this is all about the music and while I was hoping for more from Tubb and the Troubadours he does get a couple of songs in but it's primarily Freddy Fisher and his gag band (think Spike Jones) that get most of the swing era tunes, several of which are pretty good. Ruth Terry is easy on the eyes and the Music Maids provide her with fine accompaniment for their toe tappers. Republic managed to crank out an entertaining if unremarkable little film that must have kept the home front from thinking about the boys overseas for just over an hour.

One intriguing thing is star George Byron. This was apparently his last film, reportedly dying in June, although the circumstances of his death are obscure to say the least. One of those Hollywood mysteries...