Hooray for Love

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.

"Hooray for Love" is a potboiler comedy romance and musical revue typical of so many that all the Hollywood studios made in the 1930s. After sound entered moving pictures at the end of the 1920s, these musical revue type of films began to supplant the live performances that people were used to from vaudeville. But, a studio couldn't just string together a bunch of numbers and routines on film; although to audiences within a few decades looking back, it appeared that many of these old films were little more than that. So, they wrote stories in which to place all those numbers. And, most of these turned out to be little more than strings to tie together the musical numbers and comedy sketches.

The absolute rubber stamp of all these films is their setting in New York City. It had to be there because that's where Broadway is located. Broadway isn't just a street. It's the name of the general theater area of New York where live plays are staged, and that the street traverses. And, Broadway had been the birthplace and headquarters of theater shows since its first theater opened after the Dutch bought Long Island from the natives in 1626.

With so many movies showing the glitz and glimmer of the Big Apple, the draw of the big city to many small town kids was strong. The vast majority of those who left home for the lights and glamour of New York never made it in show biz, obviously. Some stayed and settted down after finding real work. Others went back home. And some struck out, seeking opportunities elsewhere.

Of course, Hollywood wouldn't have sold many tickets to movies that showed disappointment. Struggling and hard times, yes, until the breaks came. But then, the hero and or heroine would get the break and make it big with a hit on Broadway. A frequent variation on this theme would be the traveling theater shows that would take trains across the country to put on shows. In short order, these types of musical films - the revue formats, set on and off Broadway, became like the dime novels of literature of the time. The better talents appeared in musicals with more story substance and/or quality music and dance; and they were set in numerous locales from nightclubs in exotic cities to every imaginable setting.

Now, back to this 1935 musical revue and comedy romance. It's the standard hair-thin plot with just a slight variation, set on Broadway but without any standout musical talent, or any memorable numbers. Bill Robinson, a song and dance man of the period does some nice tap dancing and singing, but his numbers are forgettable, and the scenes are far too long and unimpressive. Legendary jazz piano player Fats Waller is wasted with some mundane key work. The music is sparse and not of star quality. Indeed, the film has just a few numbers stretched out and repeated a couple times.

One wants to give Gene Raymond and Ann Sothern better marks. They are very likable here. But the story just drags on and quickly becomes boring. Even the best of the humor, provided mostly by a middle-aged (53) Thurston Hall, wears thin after a while. This movie just doesn't have much.

For a comparison of films of the musical revue type, look at another RKO picture that also starred Gene Raymond. Two years earlier, the studio made "Flying Down to Rio." It was loaded with talent and great musical productions, and it had a good plot.

Gene Raymond graduates college and heads to the Big Apple to make a smash on Broadway. It's a lot slower than he expected. Then he meets up with songbird Ann Sothern, her deadbeat dad Thurston Hall, who get him to put his last buck in a stage show.

It's 1935, and across the lot Astaire, Rogers and Sandrich were redefining the musical, a book musical. This one has a book, which is ok, but the musical numbers are specialty acts.... but what specialties! Pert Kelton has a very funny routine as a ridiculous singer, Maria Gambarrelli, soon of the NYC Met, offers some ballet. The standout number has Bill Robinson and Jeni Le Gon singing and dancing to Dorothy Fields' and Jimmy McHugh's "I'm Living in a Great Big Way" while Fats Waller plays the piano. How are you going to do better than that?

"Hooray for Love" is a film where most of it is very ordinary and familiar. But there's also a part that is pretty amazing and it is well worth watching the movie just to see these performances.

Douglas (Gene Raymond) is a struggling performer and Broadway wannabe. He tries working at the bottom for a local radio station and is soon fired. Shortly after, he meets a bombastic braggard. 'Commodore' Thatcher (Thurston Hall) claims to know people and can get Douglas in touch with some Broadway producers. In reality, Thatcher is a schemer and he mostly is interested in Douglas' money! The Commodore's daughter, Patricia (Ann Sothern) is a singer for this production....and early on there is a meet cute with Douglas and she can't stand him...at first. The rest of the film is about the ups and downs of putting on this show despite the odds.

If all this sounds familiar, well...it is! I have seen many films like it...including various musicals from Warner Brothers (such as "42nd Street") and the MGM Rooney-Garland films. But what makes it stand out are the cameos by Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson (one of the great tap dancers of his era), Jeni Le Gon (a great tap dancer and singer) and Fats Waller (one of the finest pianists...and quite the singer). Seeing the film just for their performances wouldn't be a bad thing! Overall, I give this one a 7....the story is okay and the dancing and music is tops.

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.