Cocoanut Grove

Here's another film in which Fred MacMurray demonstrates his smooth comedy style.

He plays a bandleader who is trying to get from Chicago to Hollywood so he can audition for the Cocoanut Grove night club. The band is a disparate group of musicians as well as the Yacht Club Boys and Eve Arden and Ben Blue as a dance "speciality" act. MacMurray also has a kid (Billy Lee) who isn't his and a tutor (Harriet Nelson). With no money, they go on a road trip in a jalopy pulling a trailer. They also pick up a bizarre singer (Rufe Davis) because he has a tow truck.

MacMurray is excellent in this little film; he gets to be funny but also shows his tender side in scenes with the kid and with Nelson. He even gets to sing a serious song and play clarinet. Nelson sings "Love, Says My Heart." Arden and Blue do a comic apache dance and another number. The Yacht Club Boys sing the hilarious "We're Four of the Three Musketeers." Especially nice chemistry between Fred MacMurray and Harriet Nelson, who would (as well as Eve Arden) go on the be among the biggest TV stars of the 50s and 60s.

"Cocoanut Grove" is one of dozens of movies made in the 1930s through the 1950s about band leaders and their bands, life on the road of musical entertainment, and the competition and climb to fame and a name. Most of the later films were biopics about the most famous musicians, their bands and their distinctive "sound." The most famous of these is "The Glenn Miller Story" of 1953. But many other bands and their leaders had biopics made or were featured in film. Among those are Benny Goodman, Harry James, Louis Armstrong, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Count Basie, Les Brown, Lionel Hampton, Gene Krupa, and Red Nichols and his Five Pennies.

But this film is in the earlier batch of fictional stories with a dance or swing band theme. It's a decent enough movie, and has some entertaining skits and numbers. The star, Fred MacMurray has a role that he may have had for life, if not for his acting career. MacMurray was raised in a musical home and learned to play a number of instruments. In college and afterwards, he played saxophone and clarinet in bands, and he also sang. Fred gets to do a little of both in "Cocoanut Grove," as he leads his Johnny Prentice Band.

The music isn't particularly great - nothing on the order of Miller, James, Ellington, Goodman or the Dorsey's. But it's good and it's complemented with some good acts. The Yacht Club Boys have a couple of dynamite numbers, one with a skit dressed as the Four Musketeers. And Eve Arden and Ben Blue have a couple of very good and amusing dance skits.

This film has some notable aspects that should be of particular interest to movie and music aficionados as well as students. The band playing in the Cocoanut Grove - ostensibly Johnny's band, is the Royal Hawaiian Orchestra, led by Harry Owens. Owens plays the part of Hula Harry, Johnny's piano player and a composer and song-writer he didn't seem to know he had until Linda Rogers (played by Harriet Nelson) came along.

Harry Owens in a story unto himself. He was a trumpet player with various bands at the Cocoanut Grove in the early 1930s. After hearing an island melody, he became interested in writing and playing music of the islands. He went to Honolulu and soon became the creator of the sounds of Hawaii for which it is known and identified with today. And, Owens is an Oscar winner, for the best original song in 1937, "Waikiki Wedding," which Bing Crosby sang in the movie of that title.

Another thing of note in this film is the performance of Billy Lee who plays Half Pint. He had just turned nine years old a couple months before this movie came out. And, could he knock out a beat and play some fine percussion on the drums!

Also notable is the setting for the end of the film - the famous Cocoanut Grove of Los Angeles. Although the movie was filmed on the Paramount lots, the set was built to resemble the actual Cocoanut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel. The Grove was the most prominent night club of Los Angeles for much of the 20th century - from 1921 to 1989. And, the Ambassador Hotel was the residence of half a dozen Presidents on tour and visits to LA. It also hosted the Academy Awards for several years in the late 1930s through early 1940s. The Ambassador Hotel closed in 1989, and most of the hotel and adjoining buildings were demolished in 2005.

This film is a good light comedy romance with some entertaining music and skits. And, for comedy, it also is just one of a few that have a very long exchange of almost nonsensical dialog that is very funny. Most people sitting in the theater wouldn't have been able to catch it all, but the advantage of modern technology and playback made it possible to catch all this dialog, with some effort. Here it is:

Johnny, "I wanna ask you something." Linda, "Well, go ahead." Johnny, "I, I don't mean now." Linda, "Well, then why bring it up?" Johnny, "Well, I don't think this is the place." Linda, "What's the matter with this place?" Johnny, "It's all right, but I'd rather ask you on the night without you asking." Linda, "Well, what was it you wanted to ask me?" Johnny, "If I tell you, I might as well ask you. But look, there is something I wanna tell ya, even if something happens and... I don't ask ya." Linda, "Johnny, you're not making any sense." Johnny, "W, well, what I'm tryin' to tell you is that, well, I don't seem to be able to say what I wanna tell you without being able to say what I don't wanna say." Linda, "You seem to be a little bit involved.

And, one more line for closing. Linda, "The bigger the fire, the better I look. In fact, during the Chicago fire, I was a ravishing beauty."

Sure, it's pretty lightweight, but like any half decent road movie it offers a more than pleasant ride. Johnny Prentice (Macmurray) tries to keep his struggling Chicago-based swing band from breaking up by convincing them they've got a shot at the legendary Cocoanut Grove in LA. The movie is basically the saga of the band getting across the US to make the Grove, in a trailer not unlike Lucy and Desi's (The Long, Long Trailer). Harriet Hilliard (of The Nelsons fame) comes on board as tutor for Johnny's adopted son, Half-pint, and naturally is soon discovered to be a fine singer who could change the fortunes of the band, especially when she unearths the hidden talents of band member Hula Harry (Harry Owens, whose orchestra provided most of the music).

What lifts this from most B-musicals of this period is a great sense of camaraderie among the musicians on the road, some delightfully eccentric characters (Ben Blue and Eve Arden as the Dancing Dilemmas; Rufe Davis, with a dizzying array of animal noises and sound effects; the child Half-pint, a demon at the drum kit) and some highly improbable scenes, verging on the bizarre, that work for comic value. And some of the songs! Thec signature tune, Says My Heart, will stick in the mind for a long time, as will a couple of the numbers done by the Yacht Club Boys (the deliberately clumsy cruise ship opener, and the OTT Four of the Three Musketeers) not to mention the two Rufe Davis songs. In between, the Hawaiian-flavoured tunes of Harry Owens and his orchestra keep the vibe well and truly on the mellow side.

Cocoanut Grove is silly, and for a road movie is somewhat studio bound, but its principals all have charm and there's enough pace to make the 90 minutes fly by. A delight!

"Cocoanut Grove" is an enjoyable rags to possible riches story. In the mix are a variety of songs which I surprisingly enjoyed and some light comedy.

The story begins with a bandleader and his band out of work. Johnny (Fred MacMurray) has the bright idea of heading to California with the band, as there is a possible opening coming up for a band like his. But they have no money, so they go on the cheap...a roadtrip through America. Once they arrive, however, they find things aren't quite as easy as they'd hoped.

This film is very lightweight--with a slight story and lots of singing. Normally this would spell death for the movie from me except something odd happened in this film...I found I actually LIKED all the singing and music. There were quite a few snappy tunes and I found myself humming along a few times. Well worth seeing.

By the way, Harriet Nelson (Ozzie's wife) is in the film but Ozzie isn't....which seems unusual as they were married and later became America's favorite family with "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet". Interestingly, Johnny mentions Ozzie Nelson in the film, as Ozzie was a famous and successful bandleader himself at the time.