Larceny with Music

This musical from Universal looks cut down to its running time of just 64 minutes. In the finale we see evidence of musical numbers that never appear. That being said, what's left is enjoyable if minor.

Former MGM star Kitty Carlisle plays a singer who gets fired from her job in the Blue Room after wily manager William Frawley cons the dopey owner (Leo Carrillo) into booking Allan Jones and his band by letting him think Jones is rich and that his contract will entitle him to half Jones' wealth. It's a con conning a con.

But Carlisle won't go away and takes a job as a waitress because she smells a rat. She also falls for Jones and eventually joins the show for a big wartime finale with the King Sisters and Alvino Rey (and his band).

Kitty Carlisle is very good though this would prove to be her last starring film role. Jones is OK but rather unlikely as a big-band singer. Frawley and Carrillo are funny. Others in the cast include Gus Schilling, Lee Patrick, Murray Alper, Sig Arno, Samuel S. Hinds, and John Hamilton.

The musical is forgettable but nicely done.

This film has a singularly appropriate title because the larceny is equal to the music in this very short B musical from Universal. There's also equal parts of comedy and chicanery here as well.

Leo Carrillo is a former bootlegger who's now a respectable hotel and nightclub owner and running up really respectable debts in both. He even considers an arson fire on a house he owns in Rochester, but girl Friday Lee Patrick reminds him he hasn't paid his fire insurance premiums.

Agent William Frawley knows about Carrillo's money troubles and hatches a scheme that will get his clients the Alvino Rey Orchestra with the King Sisters and singer Allan Jones all employed. Frawley hires out of work ham actor Gus Schilling to impersonate a lawyer and visit Carrillo on the pretext that he's looking for Allan Jones who was left a quarter of a million dollars by his uncle in Argentina. That gets Carrillo's attention as he goes to hear Jones and Carrillo with great fanfare has announced the most incredible singing discovery since Frank Sinatra.

Carrillo does have a problem though and that's the contract he has with his current attraction Kitty Carlisle. She doesn't take kindly to being shoved aside and smells a rat. And the rat in this particular case is Schilling who starts blackmailing Frawley over this con he's pulled off.

With some better production values and musical score Larceny With Music could have been a classic. One hit song would have made this film. As it is it's got a stellar cast and a wacky plot that really keeps the film moving.

Hopefully TCM will broadcast this one, it's a comic gem in the rough.