Swing Hostess

This opus glaringly displays the lack of talent that 'poverty row' studios had to contend with compared to the major players. You won't find much here in the way of decent Set design, make-up, clever editing or good photography. Martha Tilton has a nice voice but doesn't project any personality, although this may be the fault of the poor direction. The only performance really worth watching is that of the gorgeous Iris Adrian and even she is just a little too strident in the role. Earle Bruce brings some macho charisma to his role but incredibly this appears to be the only film he ever made. Although it's not a total write-off it certainly makes you realise that a major studio could have brought so many incidental extras to the filming that they could turn even the flimsiest material into something worth watching.

SWING HOSTESS is a vivid example how falling into public domain might just be the best thing that could happen to an obscure movie. This long-forgotten "B" movie (B- really) from PRC has nearly ten reviews currently up on IMDb no doubt thanks to it being available in Mill Creek's 50 Musical movie pack and other p.d. issues by other companies while hundreds of other obscure still-copyrighted minor films from the era sit unreviewed and unseen in studio vaults.

Benny Goodman band vocalist Martha Tilton (perhaps best known today for dubbing Barbara Stanwyck's vocals in BALL OF FIRE) stars as Judy, a girl hoping to break into show business as a singer. Judy resides at a boarding house crammed with show business wanna-bes including snooty Phoebe (Betty Brodel), a hopelessly untalented yet arrogant young woman who also wants to be a singer. Both girls try to land a gig singing with a band but when Judy's audition record is mistaken for Phoebe's vocalizing, it's Miss no talent who gets the contract while Judy is forced to find work elsewhere to pay the bills, landing a job as a "record operator", where quasi-jukeboxes in drugstores and restaurants have a phone where the customers puts in their coin and calls the record operator who plays the record through the line!! Apparently there really were such jukeboxes in the 1940's as has been mentioned Doris Day also played such a record operator in one of her first movies.

The movie is surprisingly polished for a PRC musical with an almost entirely unknown cast other than Tilton and Iris Adrian, as her wisecracking best friend. This was one of Adrian's early film roles and it appears to be her largest part ever, billed second to Tilton. As has been mentioned there's a touch of the future film SINGIN' IN THE RAIN's plot but I was also surprised to see a segment where the boardhouse gang deliberately wrecks snooty Phoebe's nightclub engagement which has strong parallels to the famous similar scene in an future 1950's I LOVE LUCY episode in which Ethel gets hoity and Lucy, Ricky, and Fred pay her back by attempting to ruin her singing appearance in her hometown.

Character actor Harry Holman plays the old girl-crazy executive who is temporarily bewitched by Phoebe while the somewhat more familiar Emmett Lynn has a rather obnoxious character as Blodgett, the slovenly boarding house resident who can never seem to get to use the place's lone bathroom. One Claire Rochelle does very well as Holman's long-suffering secretary. As another reviewer mentions the movie curiously ships off the character Joe Sweeney (played by Earle Bruce in apparently his only film role) from the story midway as a near-boyfriend of Judy's who helps her get her first break, leaving the door open for what is suggested will be a romance after the movie's end with Judy and bandleader "Benny Jackson" (played by Charles Collins). Earle Bruce is quite handsome and does not do a bad job, it's odd this is his only film particularly in that era when so many young actors had to leave the film industry and service their country in the war (perhaps Bruce himself was drafted shortly after this film like his film character). There's also a stunningly handsome young brunette man in the cast among the acrobat act that resides at the boarding house, given that none of the guys is ever referred to by name one can not tell who he is although all three are billed (Bob Gooding, Walter Pietila, Gene Windson) as are Dave White and John Evans, as a "Chick and Chuck" dance team we never see dance but presumably they are the other guys seen at the boarding house. On the other hand, two character actresses with sizable dialogue and several scenes (the old lady who is the supervisor of the jukebox operators and a sassy middle-aged waitress wearing a Betty Grable hairstyle a little too young for her in a role very much like the ones Iris Adrian herself play in later years) are unbilled and to date, unidentified.

Although it's plot of a booking agent desperately in need of a new female vocalist and having trouble finding a good one in New York (!!!) is pretty silly, the movie is so well made and a nice little slice of life of big city living in the war years with an appealing if modest star performance from Martha Tilton, it's definitely worth a view.

"Swing Hostess" is one of the better of the poverty row comedy musicals made during the first couple of decades of sound pictures. The plot is familiar - a singer (or actor) is looking for a chance to break into the music field (or stage, or cinema). The star is Martha Tilton, who plays Judy Alvin. Tilton was a leading singer of the day who sang with various big name swing bands. Of the 21 films in which she appeared, this is her only role of substance. So, for music aficionados it's the best chance to see and hear the lady with the lilting voice sing and act. And, she's quite good.

The plot has good humor when Judy and her boarding house acquaintance, Phoebe (played by Betty Brodel), make recordings for singing auditions at the United Jukebox and Recording Co. Phoebe's voice is flat, but this snooty, tall gal with a Southern drawl thinks she can sing. When the two recordings get mixed up and Phoebe shows up for a nightclub grand opening to sing with Benny Jackson's swing band, the comedy comes to a head.

Movie buffs will strain to find any actors of renown in this film. It just doesn't have any. But, among this cast are several of the professional actors who appear in many hundreds of movies - filling out the bit parts and minor roles. And they're all quite good at their profession. An example is Harry Holman, who plays Mr. Fralick, the head of the recording company. He may be the most recognized, with 137 film credits. Iris Adrian, who plays Judy's friend, Marge O'Day, was in 167 films. Emmett Lynn (Bobo) was in 156 films. Paul Porcasi (Spumoni) was in 147, Terry Frost (Hank) was in 241, and Philip Van Zandt, who plays Merlini, the magician, was in 248 films.

Interestingly, the two actors of the bigger roles of Phoebe and Benny Jackson, didn't have long careers in films. Phoebe's Betty Brodel was in just eight films and Charles Collins, who plays the band leader, was in just 15 films. But they and all the rest do very well and contribute to the comedy in this film.

Sigmund Neufeld productions made 126 B-level movies from 1940 to 1948 when it was bought out by J. Arthur Rank and merged into his new Eagle-Lion International. Eagle-Lion was a British-American enterprise that began in 1946 and went out of business in 1951.

An interesting historical aspect of this film is its plot that includes a good portrayal of the Juke Box automat. That was a system that was used in some of the larger cities, as in Los Angeles in this film. Instead of having physical jukebox machines in bars, cafes and drugstores, patrons could insert coins in a smaller wall-mounted fixture that would have a huge printed list of songs. They would insert coins and tell a person on the other end of a live phone line the number of the record they want to hear. That person, in a central record location, would pick the record off a large movable rack with rows and rows of records, and then play it for the customer. This system lasted but a short time until the real juke boxes took over.

The funniest lines occur in the popular eatery that the would-be star entertainers frequent. Marge O'Day, "What's good?" Waitress, "T-bone steak, pork chops, hamburger, friend chicken and rabbit." Marge, "T-bone steak. T-bone steak." Waitress, "I just said that's good, but we don't have any. Uh, maybe you better have a salami sandwich." Marge, "Oh, well. That's what we had in mind."

Martha Tilton has been auditioning for a position as a band singer for what seems like forever. Finally, she and her friend Iris Adrian take a job as operators in a juke-box center, where customers call in for a particular song at their location. Meanwhile, a test record a friend made for her gets mixed up with one done by Betty Brodel, who's being drooled over by record producer Harry Holman. Because it's actually Miss Tilton's voice -- she had been a vocalist for Benny Goodman, with a hit recording of "And the Angels Sing" -- Miss Brodel gets a contract and a chance to sing for Charles Collins' band.

It's a plot that's not remarkable in broad, and it's been done many times, well and poorly. This one has several advantages, including songs by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston, a couple of years before they hit it big. There are also some nice moments of gag comedy, and it's a pleasure to watch the professional musicians gawp in horrified astonishment at Miss Brodel's voice.

It also has a nice example of inadvertent documentary, showing how centralized jukebox systems worked.

The names in this are not ones to conjure with. Behind the camera was Jack Greenhaigh, a talented cinematographer who never got out of the Bs and frequently used his considerable talents lensing ludicrous films like ROBOT MONSTER and HITLER -- BEAST OF BERLIN. Sam Newfield, a mainstay of the usually dire PRC, directed, and shows that with a good script and eager talent, he can turn out a happy, modest movie.

Made at PRC pictures in 1944 this very funny musical is a near cousin to SINGIN THE RAIN. It delivers a good swing musical soundtrack set in the record industry with a Lina Lamont sound-a-like bad girl called Phoebe Forbes getting inappropriate bitchy stardom over good girl Martha Tilton (who just died Dec 8, 2006) and her hilarious wise-cracking room mate Iris Adrian. The whole film is a case and chase of mistaken musical identity with horrible tuneless Phoebe deluding herself that she has singing talent and allowing Martha's music to be heard as hers. If you watch this film then have a look at Betty Hutton in THE PERILS OF PAULINE made in 1947, you can put the jigsaw puzzle of both films together and get a rough cut of SINGING IN THE RAIN made in '52. One fascinating scene in SWING HOSTESS involves a fantastic deco style jukebox where instead of button pressing, the client phones a switchboard/DJ girl who has a library of records at her fingertips in a room somewhere and she plays the selection. They can talk (in this case shout and be insolent) to each other thru a microphone and speaker in the jukebox. What an invention! What an installation. PRC spent some real money on this film and it is well produced with some excellent sets and decor...so unusual for them. I would suggest this film did very well for them and proved once again that there is so many hilarious musical gems to be found in 'poverty row'. The showbiz boarding house they all live in if crammed with idiotic vaudeville types who can't stop running about and performing tricks and stunts on each other. The whole film is pitched at a silly level which only adds to the fun.