George White's Scandals

Clarabelle Evans (Margaret Hamilton) is opposed to her brother Jack Evans (Jack Haley) getting with the inappropriate comedic star Joan Mason (Joan Davis). Tom McGrath (Phillip Terry) is the assistant to Broadway impresario George White. He has nice banter with Jill Martin (Martha Holliday) from a rich family.

It's a rom-com musical out of RKO. It certainly names a lot of stars. That's what this feels like. It's a second tier cast doing their musical stage performance best. I like Joan Davis and maybe it should be all about her. I certainly see the reason why a younger pairing is included. It's an old musical with mixed results.

This typical mid-40s RKO musical is enlivened a bit by Joan Davis' goofy mugging. The plot, of course, only serves to gives people time to take a break between the comedy bits and the musical numbers. We also have a view of Roach silent comedy star, Glen Tryon as George White.

The musical numbers are pretty good, particularly the first one with Gene Krupa, a triumph of choreography and camera-work. Krupa seems a little.... weird in the number, however, like he's on strong drugs and flipping out. Although this is not unheard of in drummers who are not on drugs, it may be significant that Krupa had spent time in jail on a marijuana rap in 1943, and this might have been an attempt to capitalize on his 'bad boy' image.

I have a feeling that over at RKO they heard that MGM was doing The Ziegfeld Follies and decided to do George White's Scandals. White who was an actor as well as producer appeared in his own shows and in adaptions over at 20th Century Fox. Here however White is played by Glenn Tryon.

But White himself is extraneous to this story which concerns two backstage plots. White's number one assistant Philip Terry falls for Martha Holiday whose mother back in the day was chorus girl in the Scandals but who married English nobility and retired. Now Holiday is trying out but lets no one know including Terry. Holiday also has Jane Greer as a rival who is pretty ruthless about getting her way.

The second story concerns those lovebirds Jack Haley and Joan Davis who are both in the Scandals. They'd like to get married, but Haley promised his dear old parents that he wouldn't until his sister did. Unfortunately his sister is Margaret Hamilton and if you think the Wicked Witch intimidated the Tin Man in The Wizard Of Oz wait until you see her in this film. They even hire a professional escort for her in Fritz Feld who falls down on the job.

That last one is pretty silly, but the players make it work. The best song in the score is the revived Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries which was introduced in the 1931 version of the Scandals on Broadway. It was introduced by Rudy Vallee and too bad they couldn't have gotten him to do it in the film. Vallee and White however came to a nasty parting of the ways and I doubt Rudy would have made himself available for this film.

It's not MGM and it shows, but George White's Scandals is a decent enough film and it also features Gene Krupa and his band and Ethel Smith on her Tico Tico organ.

Fans of the Wizard Of Oz might like to see Haley and Hamilton as brother and sister. No one is putting a smile on Margaret Hamilton's face.

its an average corny musical,from the mid 40s, that has many flaws, but can still be kinda fun to watch, if you're in to older movies....

it has an OK cast including Joan Davis, Jack Haley, Philip Terry, Martha Holiday, Ethel smith, Margaret Hamilton, Glenn Tryon, Jane Greer,Audrey Young.......

the musicals parts of the movie are OK but very corny and kinda stupid, like most musicals back then i guess, so i cant totally say i recommend this, but it wasn't totally bad i guess, if you do want to see it, good luck finding it.....

I gave this film "5" out of "10", but there's a caveat.

The movie itself might be described anywhere along the continuim, from "Awful" to "Excellent", depending on what the viewer is looking for. My rating is purely arbitrary.

It's total escapist fare, one of hundreds of films ground out during WWII to divert the American people from the horrors of war for an hour or two, and it must have done its job. It's certainly diverting.

But what it is, more than anything else, is a time capsule of the fashions, manners and mores of a particular time and place. It is the year 1945 preserved in amber, and it was completely dated by 1947.

From the showgirls in the musical numbers - pompadoured, lacquered and outrageously costumed in what looks like whatever the wardrobe department had left over, to the irrepressible Joan Davis dressed to the nines and beyond in shoulder pads, sequins and hair, hair, hair - this picture is a never-ending parade of "What Not to Wear", '40's style, and it's a hoot.

Add a couple of silly romantic sub-plots and the slinky Jane Greer as the backstage back-stabber, and you have the whole package. There's even leading man Phillip Terry - briefly married to Joan Crawford in real life, and the scene-stealing Margaret Hamilton thrown in for good measure. And believe me, anyone who can steal a scene from Joan Davis and Jack Haley in their prime is guilty of grand theft thespeus.

So there you have it. This one is not likely to show up on AFI's list of anything. If you're looking for a Golden Age musical, this isn't it. But if you're in the mood to spend a little time watching how your grandparents did it, this one's for you.