Sweetheart of Sigma Chi

This delicious snazzy 1946 Monogram college swing musical had a famous review that stated: "More bounce than a bad cheque".... and with seven good songs and a wild college rowboat race sure packed a lot of audience and critic pleasing antics into its 76 minutes. What a lot of just straight out good natured fun this pic is! Alas, I have never seen the 1933 version with Buster Crabbe, Betty Grable and Leif Ericson( !!!) but I really really want to. I also want to see this version again. I last saw it in the 60s before the local TV station store library burnt down in 1966 taking with it 1500 other Monogram PRC and Republic titles that were TV staples here in Sydney. SWEETHEART is also famous as part of a 40s Monogram musical run including SUNBONNET SUE and SWING PARADE OF 1946 each fondly remembered by pensioner friends of mine. Monogram and Republic were loved (later) for placing unknown or new musical combos into their musicals (I guess cheaply) especially when they turned out to be big stars in the 50s and 60s. Anyway, any film with Elyse Knox is watchable. Warner Bros now own the whole Monogram Allied Artists library... so if we all yell loud enough they might start DVD releasing them in packages.

Elyse Knox is the 'sweetheart of Sigma Chi' and she fancies one of the blokes in this film but he doesn't seem interested at first. The cast are all interchangeable and forgettable. There is another plot about a boat race being fixed that runs alongside the main love story.

The first music number gives you hope that you are going to be wowed by a little gem of a film. The song "Five Minutes More" is head and shoulders the best thing about this film. There is also an entertaining segment where someone plays the piano towards the end of the film and a semi-OK song that is sung on the dancefloor by another bloke who is in the film. There is also a peculiar section where a black band play a few numbers - it's weird because they are slightly discordant in what they do and a little hard to stomach. They are good but they aren't very palatable.

All in all, the film is dull.