Let's Sing Again

There are no pretensions toward cinematic greatness in evidence from the producers of this first of eight black and white RKO musicals that showcase the arresting eight year old boy soprano Bobby Breen, yet reception accorded it by an entertainment starved public that was grappling with the Great Depression was so laudatory that the succeeding seven works tended to concentrate more upon Breen rather than upon other cast members. Born in the Canadian province of Quebec, Bobby was fortunate in having his sister Sally recognize his innate talent, becoming his voice coach, and despite being somewhat isolated from most United States audiences, he began performing while only at the age of three years in a Toronto night club, committed to weekly appearances there for nearly two years as he burnished his coloratura, afterwards junketing, as a five year old show business veteran, south to Chicago, New York, and on to fame as a regular before live audiences upon Eddie Cantor's highly popular weekly radio program. In this film that initiated the series, Leon (George Houston) and Alice (Ann Doran) Alba are residing in Naples, Italy, in 1928, but Alice has wearied of their austere existence that is owed to her baritone husband's faltering operatic career, and she leaves him, taking along their infant son, returning to her native United States, where viewers will find the boy (Breen) eight years after, living in a Mapleton, Connecticut, orphanage since his mother has died and no one knows of his father's whereabouts. Two years after the youngster is placed at the orphanage, a circus, Carter's Travelling Theatre, visits Mapleton, and the lad, now called Billy Gordon, manages to escape in order to attend the troupe's performance, subsequently running with the Carter company, being looked after by a comedic performer, Joseph Pasquale (Henry Armetta), a once renowned operatic tenor who, although vocally washed up, instructs the runaway in the fine points of vocal technique to augment Billy's inherent skills. A married pair of Carter acrobats, Jim (Grant Withers) and Marge (Inez Courtney) Wilkins attempts to appropriate Billy's gift of song by legally adopting him. This expectedly creates a conflict with Pasquale and, to make the affair even more complicated, Billy's father Leon, now a widely recognized soloist touring throughout the United States, seeks assistance from "The Missing Persons Bureau" as he attempts to locate his long-lost son. Heavy cutting gives the work a quality of narrative compression resulting in a film having few memorable scenes or performances, although Houston and Breen effectively employ their material, the latter with renditions of Verdi's La donna è mobile from Rigoletto, the traditional Santa Lucia, and the title number, penned by Jimmy McHugh and Gus Kahn, while father and son separately and nicely sing a lullaby composed for the film by Hugo Riesenfeld. Direction is uneven and continuity at times glaringly substandard, but there is some sparse footage of routine circus activity that is realistically depicted. Withers gains the acting laurels here as a conniving acrobat. Digitally restored and reissued by Critics' Choice, LET'S SING AGAIN is coupled with RAINBOW ON THE RIVER, the second (and better) Breen film for a DVD version that unfortunately reverses the synopses of the two productions that are printed upon the DVD case.

George Houston is in Italy, waiting for his break as an opera singer. He's about to get it, but his wife, tired of living on hope, takes their baby and sails back to America. Some time later, we encounter Bobby Breen (in his first movie). He's an orphan. He runs away to the circus, where Henry Armetta takes care of him. Armetta had once been a great opera singer, and had trained the now-famous soprano Vivienne Osborne. But his voice died suddenly, and now he sings in the circus, while the audience pelts him with vegetables. He trains Breen. When the show dies on the road, Armetta and Bobby head to New York. Meanwhile, fellow circus performers Grant Withers and Inez Courtney have arranged to adopt him. Armetta and Bobby are pursued, even as Miss Osborne is introducing Houston to American audiences.

Bobby gets several songs, and Houston gets a couple, showing off his fine singing voice. Breen had been born in Montreal as Isadore Borsuk, to poor Jewish emigrants. His sister decided he had a great voice and managed his career into radio appearances with Gloria Swanson and Milton Berle. RKO came a-calling, and this was the first of nine movies before his voice broke in 1939. He struggled for a decade to re-establish himself in show business, and eventually wound up in Florida, managing the condominium circuit of aging stars. He died in 2016 at the age of 90.

This movie has few surprises in its story, but it does have the advantages of Breen's singing and a typically sympathetic role for Armetta. Lucien Littlefield, Richard Carle, and Ann Doran also appear.

The short but interesting movie star career of boy soprano Bobby Breen had its debut in Let's Sing Again. In this film young Breen set the pattern of his film career as the little curly haired kid with the big soprano voice, a kind of male Shirley Temple. Later on he branched out and became a kind of male Deanna Durbin.

Producer Sol Lesser discovered him and was so high on him that he formed his own production company which had RKO release his films. Hopefully Breen got to see some of the money he made in adulthood.

Bobby was also a regular on the Eddie Cantor Show on radio as Lesser brought Breen to Cantor and Cantor claimed discovery. It all worked out well for a few years for all concerned.

In Let's Sing Again Bobby is the son of singer George Houston and Ann Doran who separated in Naples and Doran returned to America. But she died and Bobby was placed in an orphanage. He runs away when a traveling carnival comes to town and is taken in by Henry Armetta who used to be an opera singer himself. Bobby has certainly inherited his father's voice as everyone discovers. The villain of the piece is trapeze star Grant Withers who arranges an 'adoption' so he can sponge off the young man's tonsils.

As would be the case in most of Breen's films, Bobby gets a nice array of songs, some opera, some popular, some Italian folk songs. Until he reached puberty Breen had a great career, after that he had a Peter Brady moment and it was never the same.

Let's Sing Again is still a nice family film and as good an introduction now as back in the mid Thirties to Bobby Breen and his brief career of film stardom.