People Are Funny

If you like old time radio as I do than People Are Funny, a fictionalized account of how the program came to be than you'll enjoy the film. Maybe you won't have too critical an eye for flaws.

It's quite an eclectic group of stars that Pine-Thomas put together for this film from the Paramount B picture unit. The threadbare plot has Rudy Vallee the sponsor looking for a new radio show and having both rival agents Phillip Reed and Ozzie Nelson locating it in some cow county in Nevada. There's also Helen Walker who plays on both Ozzie and Phil for all its worth.

The program was created by Jack Haley who's playing the hick of hicks from said cow county. He gets taken on a magic carpet ride by Helen Walker in Hollywood. Much along the same lines that Jean Arthur took Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes To Town. Haley is far more a rube though.

We also had a vocal group, the Vagabonds doing all kinds of numbers. One was most distastefully done in blackface, probably the reason that the movie People Are Funny is not seen too often except on YouTube where I caught it. The version I caught regretfully cut out Frances Langford's number.

No one also had the presence of mind to have a duet number with Rudy Vallee and Ozzie Nelson, both popular radio crooners of the Thirties. No one thought of posterity in Hollywood, especially not when you were making B films.

The film is a mildly amusing one and is a historical curiosity.

Philip Reed and Ozzie Nelson are competing radio producers. Each has an eye on Helen Walker, writer extraordinaire, and a contract with potential advertiser Rudy Vallee. When Miss Walker encounters a small audience participation program run on a local station by Jack Haley, she wants to bring it back to Reed, but while Reed has the contract with Haley, Nelson has the contract with Vallee.

It's one of those movies with variety acts, linked by a silly plot.The Vagabonds perform several swing numbers, and the laughs are offered by the games played by various "audience" members, under the supervision of Mr. Haley, and later, by At Linkletter, the master of ceremonies on radio and later television.

It's a peculiar series of gags for a radio show, but very funny ones for a movie. It's produced by Bill Pine and Bill Thomas, Paramount;'s "Dollar Bills", who produced cheap programmers for the company that reportedly never lost money. Besides the talent already mentioned, such performers as Clara Blandick, Frances Langford and comics like Billy Bletcher and Joe DeRita make appearances.

This is the perfect movie to watch on a rainy day. Unless you work in the broadcasting biz, it'll have nothing to do with anything. So it's a great getaway.

The story centers around a group of characters who work in radio. There are two rival producers, a female writer who is coveted by both (for both her talent and her bod), and then there's Pinky the clueless chump who's just along for the ride--yet he's the glue that holds it all together.

There are some pretty interesting themes going on, a lot of backstabbing & questionable loyalties that'll keep you guessing who's the good guy & who's the bad guy. It's basically every man for himself, every woman for herself, and then there's Pinky who is totally neutral due to his naïveté. He plays the host of a variety show that exposes the ridiculousness of people. See the clever metaphor? The musical numbers are thoroughly enjoyable. There's a Spanish number, a mellow Bing Crosby-type song, some great Dixieland piano, and then there's a minstrel routine which is pretty funny because it features a bluegrass band done up in blackface & singing an Italian lovesong (I have no idea if that should be offensive to African-Americans, Italians, Kentuckians or all of the above, but it's pretty crazy).

As you're watching this, you realize you're taking a behind-the-scenes historical peek at a form of entertainment (live radio) that is now completely extinct. That alone should be worth the price of admission. The music, gags, story and lame jokes are icing on the cake.

When I was a kid, I listened to a lot of Old-Time Radio shows that were syndicated on AM radio or FM public stations during the late '70s-early '80s of which one of the shows was "People Are Funny", the Art Linkletter show. He played practical jokes on various audience members that sounded quite funny whenever he described what was going on. So this movie has him doing what he does and you actually get to see some of the stunts being performed as they are happening and they're quite amusing, if not hilarious. There's also some music that are quite entertaining performed by the likes of Jack Haley, Rudy Vallee, and Ozzie Nelson plus a novelty singing group called The Vagabonds though one pauses when they do a blackface number. The plot is mostly miss in the humor department and drags the proceedings to the lumbering 90 min.-time slot. I'm also disappointed that the Frances Langford number was cut from the version I watched. Still, People Are Funny was an interesting curio so I say give a watch. P.S. Haley-who was the Tin Woodman in the classic The Wizard of Oz-is reunited with his co-star from that movie, Clara Blandick, who was Auntie Em in that. And that "PAF" creator John Guedel was also responsible for picking Groucho Marx to host "You Bet Your Life". He's, by the way, fictionalized as a sneaky producer in this picture. And later Stooge Joe DeRita appears near the end.

Two radio producers compete to go national with the popular rural radio show People Are Funny. In the process personal loyalties clash between musical numbers and comedy spots.

Unfortunately the 40's flick is neither very funny nor even tuneful. Mostly the 93-minutes lumbers along in plot-heavy fashion for a musical-comedy. But please, the so-called Vagabonds and their knock-about numbers are more obnoxious than either funny or musical. So why are they given so much screen time-- it's almost like padding the runtime. Fortunately the Spanish production number stands out as quality. But the version I saw appears in noirish half-light that I could barely see. So what was going on there. Worse, where oh where is Frances Langford, a big reason I tuned in. Her expert level of 40's song-birding is badly, badly needed. Then too, why is her lovely presence featured on the poster when she's absent from the movie-- seems like false advertising.

Speaking of noir, catch the star-crossed Helen Walker as Corey the double-dealing go-between. Her promising career as a sinister vixen was tragically cut short by an auto accident from which her career never really recovered, (IMDB). Here, her presence is almost too strong to furnish much needed lighter mood. At the same time, Vallee and Nelson walk through their roles like they're on one cylinder. No wonder Vallee is almost unrecognizable behind big eye glasses.

Anyway, I take no comfort in flogging the movie. I guess I was expecting more since I followed the radio and TV show over many years of rich entertainment. My parents even took me as a kid to the studio for a live broadcast, so I guess the film was an especial letdown for me. I just hope that younger folks won't confuse this lame film version with the real thing.