Twenty Million Sweethearts

Twenty Million Sweethearts is out of that era of wonderful musical entertainment that Warner Brothers did the very best of in the Thirties. It's a musical about radio during that quarter of a century when it was the most popular entertainment medium. Dick Powell and Ginger Rogers play a pair of young hopefuls eager to break into radio and Pat O'Brien is Powell's discoverer/manager whose machinations get Powell in the door and almost out of the industry before he's started.

O'Brien played this part so often in those years he could have phoned in the performance, but it's what you expect of him. He finds Powell as a singing waiter doing a boffo version of The Man On The Flying Trapeze, a very popular song in 1934 with it getting a prominent place in It Happened One Night.

Pat may be a little too sharp for his own good, but he does know talent and he brings him to radio station owner Grant Mitchell and sponsor Joseph Cawthorn. They've got a girl singer in Ginger Rogers already, but Ginger and Dick hit it off. But there are complications and they make up the rest of this film.

Harry Warren and Al Dubin wrote most of the original score for this film and the best song in the film is one of my personal favorite Dick Powell number, I'll String Along With You. It's sung both solo and as a duet with Rogers. Powell recorded it and Fair and Warmer for Brunswick records and it enjoyed a good sale during the Depression. It was recycled for Doris Day for her film My Dream Is Your's where it's done as a lullaby to her small son. But when you hear Powell do it, you will hear him at his best as a singer. Interestingly enough Doris's film is also about the radio industry. Powell also does a nice scat version with the Mills Brothers of Out For No Good which is also done by Rogers as a solo.

Twenty Million Sweethearts was done by Ginger on loan out from RKO where she had just signed a long term contract. She had just done Flying Down To Rio, her first with Fred Astaire. Previously she had worked with Powell though not opposite him in 42nd Street and Golddiggers of 1933. Jack Warner thought they'd make a good team together and they did make some beautiful music and beautiful box office. But she made even bigger box office with Flying Down To Rio over at RKO with Astaire and RKO wasn't about to give her up. So the screen team of Powell and Rogers never made another film.

Take note of the performance of Allen Jenkins as the grouchy host of a kid's radio program, he's got some very nice lines. When you hear talk of a Hooper rating, back in the day that referred to the barometer of popularity, like the Nielsen is for today's television. I liked hearing the Radio Rogues, only hearing them mind you, at the beginning of the movie where you hear them do their imitations of the current radio stars. They had appeared in Bing Crosby's We're Not Dressing earlier in the year at Paramount and now that they were not in his film, his imitation is added to their repertoire.

Twenty Million Sweethearts is charming and entertaining with a nice cast going through their usual paces on screen. It may not be the best film ever made about radio, but until the day that one comes along, I'll string along with Twenty Million Sweethearts.

I found this film to be light hearted and great fun musically. Grant Mitchell almost steals the show as the near apoplectic manager of the radio station. It's always fun to see radio settings in old movies, as it's a form of entertainment (in this manner) long gone. Dick Powell displays the boyish charm that made him a hit in movies. Ginger Rogers, often overlooked as the great film actress that she was, gives her usual excellent performance as does Pat O'Brien. The opening of the film, with The Radio Rogues doing horrible impersonations of then celebrities (some of whom are long forgotten), gets off to a wobbly start, but things manage to pick up with O'Brien's character setting the pace. The Mills Brothers lend a wonderful contribution with their smooth effortless song style. I liked this film and would urge anyone who enjoys the music of the early and mid 1930s to tune in when it's scheduled.

What a fun film, and what an education about the entertainment field, taking us back to the early '30s and the importance of radio.

Pat O'Brien has one of his wheeler-dealer roles as Russell Blake, an agent who's not delivering the great talent he's promised his boss but keeps getting pay advances nonetheless. Finally he's fired. However, at a restaurant, he hears a singing waiter, Buddy Clayton (Dick Powell) do a goofy "The Man on the Flying Trapeze" and brings him to the attention of the radio station. Reluctantly, his boss (Joseph Cawthorne) gives Buddy an audition - and is immediately sorry. Admittedly it's hard to hear Buddy's real voice singing the Flying Trapeze song.

Eventually, however, everyone hears Buddy sing and a radio show sponsor wants him. The current singer, Peggy Cornell (Ginger Rogers) clicks with Buddy, which makes for complications.

The score by Dubin and Warren is very good, as well as other songs, and there are performances by the Mills Brothers, bandleader Ted Fio Rito, Ginger Rogers, and The Radio Rogues.

The versatile Dick Powell had a beautiful tenor voice, showcased here, and Rogers is delightful. They made a cute couple. Besides his in front of the camera talent, Powell was a very astute businessman and had a keen eye for talent himself. During his career, he acted, produced, directed, and was responsible for giving Aaron Spelling and Sam Peckinpah their starts. Rogers of course would go on to do her films with Astaire.

Fun film, some good music, loved the cast.

When Lee Tracy plays a promoter who gets fired but tries to promote a nobody anyhow, that's chutzpa; when Pat O'Brien is in the role, it just seems like failure with bluster. If Tracy tried to break up the happy couple it would be playing the "game" too far, and he'd really regret it later. O'Brien just seems like a heel, and there's no sense of his remorse even when he belatedly fixes things up. RKO's similar PROFESSIONAL SWEETHEART, also with Ginger Rogers and made the year prior, is a much better, much funnier film, although even it doesn't have the timing and ensemble playing of the very best Warners films. Unfortunately, TWENTY MILLION SWEETHEARTS isn't one of the best Warners films by a long shot; it's too long, too flabby, not smartly written, and with a weaker cast than the RKO film (Cawthorne is not Ratoff). The story has Powell singing several songs more than once, and he sings them all the way through each time. And they're not great songs. The Mills Brothers are great, but their two numbers are placed back-to-back (perhaps to more easily excise them in the South). And the plot doesn't really make much sense. One has to assume that this was made LATE in 1934, after the stringent implementation of the Production Code. (But Ginger is splendid anyhow.)

This is a pleasant little romantic musical comedy in the tradition of 1930's Warner Brothers, minus Busby Berkeley and minus some of the rougher precode elements of some of Warner's musicals from 1933 and before.

Dick Powell plays Buddy Clayton, a singing waiter in a beer garden discovered by the slippery fast-talking talent scout Rush Blake (Pat O'Brien). Rush takes Buddy back east where he becomes a radio singing sensation and heartthrob, although it does take awhile and a few odd quirks of fate. In the meantime, Buddy has started up a romance with singer Peggy Cornell (Ginger Rogers) that is leading to the altar, but the sponsor of the radio show on which Buddy sings says that a married heartthrob is no heartthrob at all, and instructs Rush to talk the pair out of marriage. This split is at first amicable and temporary, but then Rush dreams up a publicity stunt that misfires hilariously.

The film features the music and lyrics of Warren and Dubin, the comic support of familiar Warner contract player Allen Jenkins, and the direction of Ray Enright who managed to get this one right - it's funny in all the right places without being inane.

They really put a damper on Ginger Rogers' performance this time. After playing the tough precode chorine in the earlier Berkeley musicals, here they've turned down the volume on her sauciness a couple of notches. Plus, in anticipation of the production code, the romance between Peggy and Buddy is squeaky clean. There is no taking a can opener to metal bathing suits or checking into the Honeymoon Hotel in this musical as there was the previous year.

Highly recommended as a pleasant way to spend 90 well-paced minutes.