Tell It to a Star

Some spoilers may be contained within.

Odd mixture of some comedy, some music but still entertaining mostly due to it's short running time (67 minutes) and supporting cast. What seems to be a showcase for Ruth Terry (cigar girl and wanna be singer Carol Lambert in a swank hotel in Fla).; instead is stolen away by her unsavory uncle (Col. Ambrose Morgan) played by the always capable and funny Alan Mowbray. Uncle Ambrose (aided by sidekick Eddie Marr as Billy) cons everyone and everything in sight.

Ruth/Carol is given little to do except look nice, sing a few tunes (a nice version of the Joseph Dubin-Gus Kahn standard Love Me Or Leave Me, plus the title tune) and be the love interest for bandleader Gene Ritchie (Robert Livingston). A longer running time may have helped two points...Carol and Gene's romance, told in a montage and Mona's (Adrian Booth, later Lorna Gray) character. Mona is the vocalist in Gene's band, which has a gig at the hotel where Carol works. Mona waits to the last reel before she reacts to Carol taking her vocal spot during a live, coast to coast radio broadcast and shortly after, her man Gene. Before that she puts up some fuss, by not nearly enough.

Fans of the period will recognize other stellar character actors, fussy Franklin Pangborn as hotel mgr. Mr Lovelace, and truck drivers Tom Dugan (Smith); George Chandler (Marx). Again, these pros all make the goings on both watchable and pleasant.

The plot's resolution is fine, but the two leads are lukewarm.

Tell it to a Star (1945)

A lightweight, snappy little entertainment, quite enjoyable. This is just over an hour and was the second movie in a double feature at the time, and is the equivalent to a decent television show these days. Fun, well-enough done to watch, and not too ambitious. A Republic pictures comedy with a lot of good laughs.

The story is simple--a cigar counter girl with a terrific singing voice wants to be noticed by the bandleader in a big hotel. Her shyster uncle comes into town and connives her success. And then the cards fall down, at least briefly. No great tragedies here, except maybe for the poor torch singer who lost her job thanks to the new talent.

The leading woman is Ruth Terry, and she actually can sing. She gives a nice bluesy performance of "Love Me or Leave Me." It's about 41 minutes in if you want to at least check that out. (Seriously--I don't mean she's Billie Holiday, but it's a highlight of the music in the movie.)

The leading man here is probably Bob Livingston who did a lot of B-movie westerns, and he's handsome and at ease as band director, if not really convincing. More impressive (and central to the plot) is the better-known character actor Alan Mowbray, who plays the devious uncle to comedic perfection. Around him in many of his funny scenes are some lesser lights along the same lines--a sidekick as straight man, a woman who owns the hotel and knits a lot, and the hotel manager, who overplays his part but will make you laugh.

And then it's over and all is well and you'll feel just fine about it. It's 1945, after all, and the war is ending with lots of angst about the state of the world, and this is the ongoing filler that kept things going, a kind of flip side to the dark film noir surge that was just getting going.