Born to Sing

In the late 1930s and early 40s, MGM made a string of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney films featuring young people putting on a show. Movies like "Babes in Arms" and "Babes on Broadway" were popular with audiences....so it's not surprising that Warner Brothers would try their hand with this formula. Aside from having different actors...the formula is pretty much the same here in "Born to Sing".

When the film begins, Snap (Leo Gorcey) gets out of reform school and he goes back to see his old friends. Soon, they smell gas and find a guy trying to kill himself. They save his life and to prevent his nice daughter (Virginia Weidler) from knowing the truth, they make up a lie...though she sees through their ruse. Soon, to help her and her dad, the gang does what they can to help out...and ultimately it results in them creating a show using various kids in the neighborhood. Can the gang manage to pull it all off or are they destined to flop?

Aside from a brief scene with Weidler in blackface, the film is charming and fits the formula almost exactly. While I am not particularly a fan of these sorts of musicals, it's pleasant entertainment and worth a look if you love the old musicals. A couple folks who I really liked in the film were Sheldon Leonard (as a thug who wants to help make the show a success) and Darla Hood of the Little Rascals fame...who had a remarkable singing voice!

This is such an interesting film, if as the previous comments attest to, some details that even I never knew, IE: The finale that was originally part of the WPA (ask kids today what THAT was!) and the Federal Theater Project's contribution to the Depression. What I found interesting/sad/macabre, was how many of the young actors in that film met an early demise. On the IMDb site itself:

1)Virginia Weidler: Heart attack, age 41

2)Larry Nunn: Self inflicted gun shot wound, age 49

3)Ray McDonald: Death by choking on food in hotel room, age 34

4)Ben Carter, age 35

5)Leo Gorcey: Liver failure, age 53

6)Douglas McPhail: poison, after 1st failed suicide attempt,age 30

7)Rags Ragland: uremic poisoning, age 40

8)Darla Hood: died in North Hollywood following a relatively minor

operation of acute hepatitis under "mysterious

circumstances", age 47

9)Richard Haydel, age 22 Was this film cursed? Or did actors die quicker then?

When Ballad for Americans became a big hit in 1939 out of the WPA Theater Project Musical Sing for Your Supper, MGM quickly bought the screen rights to the song. Both Paul Robeson and Bing Crosby made hit recordings of it that same year, though the song is pretty much identified with Robeson now.

MGM waited three years before putting it into a film and it went into one of the products of their B picture unit, Born to Sing. This film is no doubt something that Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland rejected for one of their 'let's put on a show' films.

It's just that kind of film. Crooked producer Lester Matthews and even crookeder press agent Charles Lane, plagiarize the work of Virginia Weidler's father, Henry O'Neill for their show. Topping that all off they frame Ray McDonald, Larry Nunn, and Leo Gorcey on an extortion rap.

As they're being taken to jail, they're riding in the same paddy wagon as gangster Sheldon Leonard. They go along in an escape his gang has planned and he in turn gets ensnared in their machinations. Which as it turns out is to put on a show before Matthews does and showcase O'Neill's music.

So help me that's the plot of this one. It's all quite innocently and charmingly done, but the presentation leaves one breathless.

Tacked on to the end of the show is Ballad for Americans where the lead singer is Douglas MacPhail whose career came to tragically to an end the following year. Staging the number is Busby Berkeley and the staging of it is similar to some of what he did in Ziegfeld Girl the year before.

Why MGM didn't put Ballad for Americans into one of their A films is something we'll never know.

It's been suggested that the ending of "Born to Sing" was some sort of jingoistic war- promoting effort spliced on the end of this film--and it certainly was badly spliced, especially since we are not shown its effect on the audience, which up until the end has been a living part of the film. It should be said, though, that the piece "Ballad for Americans" which concludes the film actually was written for a WPA Theatre production, "Sing for Your Supper," in 1939. This show, 18 months in rehearsal, brought about the end of WPA's "Federal Theatre Project" and never reached much of an audience.

"Ballad for Americans," though, was written by John Latouche and Earl Robinson, who later produced one of the best American operas, "The Ballad of Baby Doe." The "Ballad for Americans" was introduced on radio by Paul Robeson, who recorded it as did Bing Crosby, and both recordings were best-sellers. The piece was actually performed at the 1940 Republican AND American Communist Party Conventions, and remained in the repertoire through the 1960's. The piece seems rather dated and jingoistic today, though oddly enough it was considered pretty left-wing at the time! I've always had a soft spot for it, as did my high school choir director. The shouted/spoken parts of the piece were a popular device of the time, another practice that lingered through the 1960's in various guises. I think that its inclusion in the film was meant to show just what a fine composer the Virginia Weidler character's father (Henry O'Neill) was (although it stretches the imagine a bit to think that in a couple of evenings Virginia could play it out a few notes at a time on the harmonica and have it transposed by an eight-year-old kid ("Mozart"--Richard Hall) who has to draw his own staff paper.) Unfortunately, we don't know whether it did that or not, because the film ends abruptly at the end of the piece--almost as if the production had run out of money so everybody went home.

Actually, I think it was pretty spiffily staged by Busby Berkeley, in a way that is reminiscent of his "Forgotten Man" number at Warner's and in a way that recalls the Deco/Moderne style of much of WPA art.

It should also be noted that Joe Yule is featured in a (very) minor role here at a time when his son, Mickey Rooney (AKA Joe, Jr.), was MGM's biggest meal ticket.

Whatever points I give this one is strictly based on the talented DOUGLAS McPHAIL and his rich baritone singing the climactic number, "America". MGM obviously was grooming him for big time stardom that never came. He was a Nelson Eddy kind of baritone, stolid looking, rather humorless, but usually just given background roles in any of the studio's big films.

Here at least he takes the spotlight in the film's final number, a rousing tribute to Americana. But what precedes this is strictly hokum, a "let's put on the show" routine accompanied by some gangster stuff led by SHELDON LEONARD who gets off some typical '40s tough guy remarks. ("I'm gonna put him in opera if I gotta buy the joint," he says of McPhail.) Another amusing and typical '40s moment has Leonard landing in the same police patrol wagon with a few of the show biz kids, including LEO GORCEY. Another youngster takes one look at his suit and says, "If you get the hot seat, can I have that suit?"

VIRGINIA WEIDLER is totally wasted in the leading femme role as the daughter of a musician, but the cast is perked up by RAGS RAGLAND, MARGARET DUMONT, DARLA HOOD and especially young RAY McDONALD, who was a hoofer who ranked easily with Donald O'Connor as one of filmdom's best dancers.

Summing up: Unfortunately, never rises above its B-picture material, except for the climactic song celebrating America.