Sur l'Avenue

Alice Faye's movie career was just getting into high gear when she did this gem in 1937. The Irving Berlin score is among the best he ever wrote for the screen and Alice does well with Let's Go Slumming on Park Avenue and This Year's Kisses. The former is somewhat autobiographical for her as Alice Faye was brought up in Hell's Kitchen and she sings it against a Hell's Kitchen background.

In her early career at 20th Century Fox, Darryl Zanuck had a problem with finding someone who could sing opposite her. The only one available on the lot was Don Ameche. Zanuck's number one leading man, Tyrone Power, was non-musical. So Zanuck had to reach out to his former employer, Jack Warner, to borrow Dick Powell to play opposite Faye. Ironically Powell got the hit song out of this film with I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm.

The rest of the cast is top rate. Madeline Carroll plays a typical 1930s débutante and it's the antics of her family and actor-writer Dick Powell's satire of same that form the basis of the story. My two personal favorites of the supporting cast are George Barbier who always hits the right note as Madeline's perennially choleric father and Billy Gilbert who has a great bit as a diner owner.

Wonderful film, great entertainment.

Alice Faye's singing is a real plus for this movie and Dick Powell sounds pretty good as well. The story is pretty terrible and predictable, but there are lots of good character actors along to help save the day. The dancing is great throughout, really well done. But it's really the Ritz Brothers I wanted to comment on. Is it only me or are they really not that funny? They are great dancers but the skits they performed were for the most part too slap stick for me to find amusing. Overall this movie is well worth seeing and hearing - the singing and dancing is great.

"On the Avenue" is a highly underrated gem from the 30s and one of Alice Faye's best musicals at Fox. It is less well-known than Faye's other Fox musicals such as "Alexander's Ragtime Band", "That Night in Rio" and "Hello, Frisco, Hello". But "On the Avenue" has a taste and class of its own, not to mention lots of great and rollicking tunes including the memorable "Slumming on Park Avenue", "He Ain't Got Rhythm", "I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm", and "This Year's Kisses". Excellent stuff.

Nice example of musicals of the Thirties. Just boy meets girl,but the score by Irving Berlin lifts this one above most of the others.Two of his gems "This years kisses" and "Your laughing at me" show why his songs are timeless.One of Alice Faye's early roles,and the one that made her a star.

Songs include : He Ain't Got Rhythm - This Year's Kisses - You're Laughing At Me - The Girl on the Police Gazette Slumming On Park Avenue - I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm

"On The Avenue" has been sitting on my video shelf for more than a dozen years - unwatched and overlooked. An oversight.

In spite of one of the other reviews above, the film is hardly the cinema tragedy painted by that reviewer.

Dick Powell, on loan out from Warner Brothers to Fox, Madeline Carroll and Alice Faye and The Ritz Brothers head an all star cast of Hollywood favorites - Joan Davis, Billy Gilbert, Alan Mowbray, Walter Catlett, George Barbier, Cora Witherspoon, Sig Ruman, Stepin Fetchit and others.

The production values are quite high, though the story in uninspired. Beautiful crisp blacks and whites fill the screen. Half a dozen hit tunes - some still performed 70 years later - written by Irving Berlin. Both Powell and Faye are in top voice and each get their share of tunes to introduce.

Alice Faye receives third billing under Powell and Carroll. This was likely one of the last times she would be billed as such - top stardom was right around the corner for her.

The dance routines are very 1930s and staged, somewhat generically, by Seymour Felix - lots of chorus girls and big stages. Sadly, "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm", the most enduring song of the film, is kind of tossed away in a production number of modest proportions.

The Ritz Brothers are an acquired taste, perhaps. They do have some better moments in the film, especially so in the opening number where they are less zany than in the rest of the film. Dance skills? Absolutely!

Madeline Carroll is an attractive woman, but Alice Faye sings, dances and quietly radiant through-out the entire film.

There are some amusing similarities between this film and "Hollywood Hotel" another Dick Powell from 1937 - both are show business stories, Powell gets slapped in the face in both films by a stuck up girl and uses the same facial expression both times, Powell escorts his female star around the circumference of an outdoor fountain at night in both films, Alan Mowbray also appears in both films

It's not a great film or a great musical, but it is as entertaining as many musicals of the era with it's greatest strengths being its score and its 2 top performers, Powell and Faye.