Kid Nightingale

Don't be mislead by all those promising George Hurrell promotional photos released for this film showing beefy John Payne in very noir boxing ring poses. This boxer is a bird-brain singing waiter who gets discovered by a promoter when he loses his job for brawling in frustration. There are lots of annoying developments involving a hyperactive romance with a blond, brassy Jane Wyman while on his way to becoming "Kid Nightingale" ,the boxer who gets on a winning streak by singing when he's hit. Altogether a silly exercise but Payne, always watchable, is entertaining both as a singer and as a boxer. The film is almost a criminal waste of John Payne. Boxing sequences should have been extended; they are way too brief and would have added much more interest.

A programmer from that golden year of 1939 may not be a classic but does spotlight two plucky kids who went on to become big stars, one much more acclaimed than the other.

Made at a time when contract players, sometimes even the big stars, averaged at least four pictures a year this was one of those four for Jane although for John there would only be three this year he made up for it in '40 with six. Obviously not all could be winners but this one is a chipper little piece of hokum almost totally reliant on the charms of its two leads with Walter Catlett full of bluster as the shady promoter who discovers Kid Nightingale.

Jane's in the dizzy blonde period the studio could never make work since her native intelligence always shone through. She's flip and charming. Payne handsome and fit had a big advantage over many of the other young actors, Wayne Morris, Jeffrey Lynn, Dick Foran etc., he was competing against he sang very well and the studio was wise to find ways, sometime ridiculous, to utilize that gift.

This is one of those time crafting perhaps the only singing boxer movie in existence for him. Isn't one enough though?

A pleasant and speedy diversion, just under an hour, that's as good an example as any of the B pictures the studio churned out to support their big ticket films.

JOHN PAYNE and JANE WYMAN spent their apprentice years at Warner Bros., Payne usually playing the cocky hero and Wyman the brassy blonde who gives out with the wisecracks. Here we have a boxing yarn that mixes the sport with music (Payne sings) and gangsters. The results are a mixed bag.

Payne is a singing waiter who gets into a brawl with rude customers and punches a couple of guys out. WALTER CATLETT just happens to witness his fisticuffs and presto, he's Payne's boxing manager. JANE WYMAN is a rehearsal pianist (and singer) who duets with Payne on a little ditty when they first meet, looking pert and pretty.

The plot thickens when Catlett decides to take Payne on in a deal he makes with a crooked fight promoter, promoting him as "Kid Nightingale", a guy who can belt out a song as well as a punch. Payne looks good, his sturdy physique shown off to good advantage in all the boxing scenes.

ED BROPHY does his usual hot-tempered, fast talking bit as a fight manager living on bicarbonate of soda, but it's John Payne's film. He gets to sing bits of operatic arias as well as the usual tin pan alley songs as a fighter who sets female hearts aflutter when he finishes each boxing bout with a song.

It's formula stuff but it's entertaining and amusing, with a brief running time. Wyman is pretty much wasted but Payne is delightful in a winning role, perfectly suited to the role of a waiter who becomes a heavyweight contender with fixed fights and a gimmick.

With material like this it's no wonder John Payne got out of his Warner Brothers contract and went on to 20th Century Fox where he finally got to do some major musicals. This is probably something that Dick Powell rejected as he was leaving Warner Brothers as well.

Still Kid Nightingale does have a certain amount of goofy charm to it. Payne is a singing waiter who gets fired for getting into a brawl, but he comes to the attention of fight manager Walter Catlett who's a quick buck artist. Payne is no boxer, but he sings beautifully. Charles D. Brown goes into partnership with Catlett and they bill Payne as Kid Nightingale and set him up with a bunch of tank artists. They even send an orchestra around to accompany him as he gives the fight audience which no consists of a lot of women, a song after each knockout.

Of course Payne is such a knucklehead he hasn't a clue. He even accepts an Italian wrestler as an opera coach when he insists on singing lessons.

Only levelheaded Jane Wyman suspects something's not quite kosher in this setup. She's the means to an inevitable happy ending.

Which I won't give away, but that other Warner Brothers boxing film, The James Cagney classic, The Irish In Us provides a clue, if you've seen it.

Kid Nightingale is so silly it has a certain amount of dopey charm to it and I actually enjoyed it. But no wonder Dick Powell and John Payne whose careers took similar paths left Warner Brothers and didn't look back.

John Payne is a singing waiter who gets into a brawl. Fight promoter Walter Catlett decides to build him up into a challenger by hiring palookas to take dives, and to hire wrestler Harry Burns to impersonate a singing teacher to help string him along. Payne is oblivious, but girlfriend Jane Wyman might have something on the ball.

It's true enough that Payne had earned money as a pro wrestler while studying singing at Julliard, but it's a remarkably silly premise for a movie. I wasn't even sure they were playing it for laughs for a half hour, even with a cast that includes Eddie Brophy and a band that plays "Listen to the Mockingbird" whenever Payne knocks someone down. Director George Amy might later win an Oscar for editing, but Frederick Richards, his editor on this movie cuts out enough to keep the running time under an hour, and to make certain plot points incomprehensible.