The Big Broadcast of 1937

Sometimes I think it's not worth it to review films like this - they are so often a compilation of musical numbers that there doesn't seem to be much to say.

This film has more oomph to it. It stars Jack Benny, Burns & Allen, Ray Milland, Martha Raye, Shirley Ross, Frank Forest, and Bob Burns.

Benny plays a radio exec, and Ray Milland works for him. Burns and Allen portray sponsors. Raye is Benny's secretary, and Shirley Ross is an aspiring singer who desires radio stardom.

Gracie Allen of course was hilarious doing her dingbat stuff. I had just seen Burns in Going in Style so I was impressed with how good- looking and vital he was in his day - not that I hadn't seen him before, it just stood out because he was so old in the other film.

I was extremely impressed with the beautiful singing of Frank Forest, who was a Metropolitan Opera star. Shirley Ross was excellent as well, playing a singer who gets lost in the attention of stardom. Ross never really made it to film stardom, and was given a great opportunity to star on Broadway in Guys & Dolls, but decided against it and devoted herself to her family instead.

Raye as Patsy the secretary gets her big break at the end and shows what a great voice she had.

Bob Burns has a funny bit as a country boy who keeps coming on the radio and trying to find Leopold Stokowski, who also appears. He wants to show Stokowski his invention, an instrument which is a long tube, calling it a bazooka. That's some trivia if anyone asks where the name came from.

Worth seeing for the talent.

Despite the talent involved, the movie never really gels. It also wastes too much of that headline talent in an over-crowded plot. For example, Jack Benny is stiffened into what's basically a straight role with too many conventional lines. Too bad that his comedic talents are not put on better display. Then too, George Burns has little to do but trail around after Gracie. Fans know how leeringly witty he could be given the right material. And I guess Benny Goodman's one brief showcase was for marquee value.

Anyhow, the movie largely wastes these folks by trying to crowd too many characters into the 90-minutes. Then too, I thought Bob Burns' running gag as a hick quickly became more tiresome than funny. While Forest's glass-shattering version of La Bomba had me reaching for the mute button. And I guess Stokowski's near noirish classical performance was dropped in to add a little class.

On the other hand, Gracie Allen's scatter-brain is on funny display as the radio station's chief sponsor. While Martha Raye gets to liven things up with an upbeat number near the end. There are such moments of genuine humor, but too often they're eclipsed by aimless comings and goings. In sum, the movie's very much a mixed bag, as other reviewers point out. All in all, considering the cast potential, the movie adds up to an unexpected disappointment.

I found this to be the most entertaining of all the "Big Broadcast" movies. This isn't saying much, since these films were mainly just mash-ups of all the big names in radio that year, doing sketches independently of one another and strung together into a movie.

This one, however, has a very strong and entertaining plot. Jack Benny plays a sardonic radio executive, with Ray Milland as his slightly oilier second-in-command. George Burns and Gracie Allen play radio sponsors, which is just an excuse to trot them out and do their shtick (but what a great shtick it was). Shirley Ross plays the young ingénue who comes to New York to find stardom on the radio.

It was probably Ross who impressed me the most, she seems to have been a very funny actress with a great singing voice. It's a pity she didn't have more of a career in films.

Jack Benny, I think, was better suited to playing the wise-cracking supporting character -- as he did in this film -- as compared to the leading man. He was not a very good actor and had a lifelong difficulty memorizing lines. He was great here, though, playing a sarcastic cynic, a character in direct contrast with the miserly wannabe character he played on the radio.

It is also worth noting that I think this is Benny's only film pairing with his best friend, George Burns. The two don't have much to do together, but it's nice to see, just the same.

A final note: Bob Burns also has a very funny role in this movie as a Hillbilly who keeps interrupting radio shows trying to find Leopold Stokowski. He wants to find the maestro to show him a musical instrument he has invented. It is a long black tube that you blow into. Burns used it on his own radio show. He called it a "bazooka." Turns out, that's where the weapon got it's name. See how much we owe to radio?

The New Republic's critic, Fergeson, who died as a Merchant Marine in World War II, gave this movie a rave review.

This movie is another example of a superb movie that either vanished or is very hard to find.

Ian Hamilton made this comment regarding films made from screenplays by Nathaniel West. Nathaniel West is considered by many to be the greatest writer of his generation (he was married to the real My Sister Eileen).

Not having seen a movie made from a screenplay he wrote, I have no way of knowing whether his fan club is right.

The same is true of Carl Dreyer's films, Sternbergs and other early movie directors. The French have ranted and raves on this topic for more than half a century.

THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1937 (Paramount, 1936), directed by Mitchell Leisen, is the third installment of the "Big Broadcast" musicals, and possibly the best and funniest of the series. Sad to say, of the four movies bearing the "Big Broadcast" name, this is the least known and revived in spite of its great popularity at the time.

Jack Benny stars as Jack Carson, the radio director of the National Network Radio Company, with Martha Raye as Patsy, his clumsy secretary who makes her entrance falling down the stairs. The comedy team of George Burns and Gracie Allen return to the series for the third and final time, playing George and Gracie Platt, new sponsors for the radio station who add to the confusion. The comedy begins from the start when Carson and his radio actors perform a skit, with the sound effects not matching to what is supposed to be played, and actors who are supposed to be from Maine talking like Southerners, etc. It is explained that they are from the Southern part of New England. But the main attraction to the story is Shirley Ross (in her Paramount lead debut) as Gwen Holmes, a lady radio announcer from a small town who gives to twitting one of the network's leading tenors, Frank Rossman (Frank Forrest) in her nightly broadcast. The tenor insists that she be stopped. The sponsors lure her to New York with a promise of a job, but to keep her away from the microphone. She later meets and falls in love with Bob Miller (Ray Milland), the program agent who, according to Mr. Carson, "will not only fix your program but will help get your program in a fix." Bob Burns is also featured as Bob Miller, a country hick, who prows the studio door to door with his philosophies, some that get broadcast over the air. The movie includes guest appearances by Benny Fields (The Minstrel Man), Leopold Stokowski and his Symphony Orchestra, Benny Goodman and his Swing Band, among others.

On the musical program, songs include: "Heigh Ho, the Radio," "La Bomba" (sung by Frank Forrest); "You Came to My Rescue" (sung by Forrest and Shirley Ross); "Your Minstrel Man" (sung by chorus); "Here's Love in Your Eye" (wonderfully sung by Benny Fields); "I'm Talking Through My Heart" (sung by Ross, the film's best song); Johann Sebastian Bach's "Fugue in 'G' Minor, conducted by Stokowski; "Vote for Mr. Rhythm" (sung by Martha Raye); and "Here Comes the Bride" (sung by Raye during the wedding ceremony). While the song, "Night in Manhattan" is credited as one of the songs in the film, it's only heard instrumentally during the opening credits and not vocally. The song did get its plug production wise and by a vocalist in a Paramount musical short, NIGHT IN MANHATTAN (1937) with a very young Glenn Ford hosting as master of ceremonies.

THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1937 is both amusing and entertaining, and at times silly, but what movie with Burns and Allen isn't? It's worthy of rediscovery again, and considering it being out of circulation since the 1980s when public broadcasting station WNJM, Channel 50, New Jersey, used to show it once in a while during that time, it took a cable channel as Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: June 28, 2014) to resurrect this rarely seen third edition to the "Big Broadcast" series. (****)