Hooray for Love

A not very memorable score from Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields characterizes Hooray For Love. But Gene Raymond and Ann Sothern have every reason to believe the title. And where else will you get to see Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson dance and Fats Waller sing and play piano in the same number. That in itself is worth setting aside some time to see this.

But the real star of this film is Thurston Hall who usually plays stuffy establishment types in films and on television. But here he's a larcenous old conman who fleeces earnest young Gene Raymond who is trying to put on a show.

Raymond wants to put it on with Ann Sothern and Hall who sees that his daughter who is the only thing that really means anything to him makes some heavy sacrifices with society matron Georgia Caine. Over at Paramount WC Fields would have played this part to perfection.

I'm surprised at the number of people who don't know about Ann Sothern's theatrical background. Under her real name of Harriet Lake, Sothern was in any number of shows on Broadway, she in fact starred in one of Rodgers&Hart's musicals before coming to Hollywood. It was only in television that she seems to have given up the musical part of her performing persona.

Hooray For Love is an enjoyable piece of Thirties backstage fluff with the main features being Robinson and Waller and a different kind of role for Thurston Hall.

You have to wait till near the end to see the Bojangles number, with a brief appearance from Fats Waller, but the wait is painless. Ann Sothern stars on the strength of her singing, of all things...

Douglas Tyler (Gene Raymond) pursues Patricia Thatcher (Ann Sothern) as both a performing partner and girlfriend. She's not having any of it. He struggles to get anywhere in the business of show. The Commodore talks him into investing in a show after he realizes that it's Pat's father. The show rehersal goes horribly with the bad singing of Trixie Chummy (Pert Kelton). Doug mortgaged his family home and is in danger of losing it.

I love Pert Kelton's comedic section and Bill Robinson's dancing. I really like the first half of the story. I'm less in love with the second half. It's nevertheless pretty good.

TCM presented this the other day as a forgotten gem from the RKO vaults. Forgotten I'll give you, gem not really.

It could have been a lot better, because there's lots of talent here, all pretty much wasted. I very much enjoy seeing Ann Sothern in musicals. She had a fine voice and was a decent dancer. (See her in Follies bergère with Maurice Chevalier, for example, where she appears with him in the number that inspired the *Singing in the rain* number in the 1950s movie of that name.) Here she has no one to dance with - though Bill Robinson was on the set - and not a single decent song, though Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh had and would produce good songs for other movies.

Just to put things in perspective: rhe same year RKO released this musically-forgettable picture, 1935, they also released Top Hat and Roberta with Astaire and Rodgers, the first with songs by Irving Berlin, the second with songs by Jerome Kern. Both pictures contain standards that remain part of the Great American Song Book.

Sothern's co-star, Gene Reynolds, couldn't dance or sing, evidently, so he is of no help to her. (That hadn't kept RKO from putting him in *Flying Down to Rio* a few years before, where he did no damage to a great movie musical. But there you had Astaire and Rodgers and others for singing and dancing.)

Raymond and Sothern make a nice romantic pair, but that alone can't save this movie.

Then there r the specialty numbers. Bill Robinson was a great dancer, certainly, but he doesn't get very impressive choreography here. His partner, Jeni Le Gon, gets even less. Fats Waller gets even less chance to show off his piano playing.

The other side shows make even less effect. Maria Gambarelli may have gone on to be prima ballerina with the Metropolitan Opera - not as big a deal back then as it is today - but again, like Sothern, she has no one to dance with here. She is limited to an uninteresting series of pirouettes, and so makes no impression. Pert Kelly's number is equally forgettable.

No point in summarizing the plot. It's not interesting, and previous reviewers have covered it.

I wanted to get a lot out of this movie, since it has some real talent who did great stuff elsewhere. But they don't here, so, since the music is instantly forgettable, there's no point in bothering with this.

I found this movie in the 1970s and it usually played on or around Thanksgiving. I love Vintage movies like My Man Godfrey and this one. It is a totally underrated movie with one of the nicest casts around. Ann Southern, Gene Raymond, Bill Robinson and Jeni Le Gon. Guess you wonder who Ms. Le Gon was. She was a woman from Chicago that was not formally taught Tap but could mimic the moves until she got a role in the movie. She and Bill Robinson does a really crisp dance together. I saw this lovely woman on television about 10 years ago. She explained how she got the part.

What I really like is the chemistry of Gene and Ann and the little loose plot and the music. When Ann Southern Sings "I'm in Love All Over Again", it kind of pulls at my heart. Actually, I want to find this movie, I really do because for some reason it hasn't been back on television in about 15 years or better!