Ever hear of Pinky Tomlinson? He was a singer/songwriter who got his start thanks to Louis Armstrong. If you've watched an Our Gang short and tormented yourself with Alfalfa singing -- if that's the word, which it isn't -- "The Object of My Affection", then you've heard one of his songs. As the nominal lead of this Poverty Row musical, the next-to-last directed by the once-great Marshall Neilan, he makes it seem like they wanted Rudy Vallee, but had to settle for someone less dynamic.
Mr. Tomlinson is fired as a Professor of Music at his college because he doesn't know swing. He goes on the road and winds up in Chicago, where he winds up fronting as owner of a nightclub for Milburn Stone for the object of his affection, Paula Stone (in real life, they were cousins; she was the daughter of the great Fred Stone), who's accepting no favors. Tomlinson brings in his swing-deficient fiancee, Mary Kornman, and there's the usual sex-free sex conflict. There's also a major subplot of Bill Elliott as a competing gangster who thinks Tomlinson is a big, deadly mobster; and Tomlinson sings some songs written by other people.
Given all of these things and the usual Poverty Row values, there's nothing about this movie that should work except for two short dances by Miss Stone; she's dynamite. And, looking at the first fifteen minutes, which starts with a "comedy trio" that aspires to be the Ritz Brothers but lacks their intellectual complexity, and a Hooverville chorus of the Sextet from LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR accompanied by the ocarina, it looks pretty blah. Yet once you get past the minefield of that beginning, the movie finds its legs and becomes moderately entertaining.
