The Phantom Broadcast

The premise is interesting but really stretches the imagination. The story involves a deformed man who becomes the voice for a 1930's style crooner. The two of them have a symbiotic relationship; they need each other. However, the crooner needs the manager/songster much more because without him, he is nothing. The fact that no one ever gets wise is the first flaw. It's just too much. The second is that the abused man continues to function in the face of all the nasty remarks and putdowns. Enter a beautiful young woman singer who is seeking a manager and has great sympathy for the deformed man. A murder is committed and everyone clams up. So many of these movies depend on someone refusing to talk, even when they have nothing to lose. When a murder is committed, the accused acts in a totally irrational way, thinking a young woman is going to be blamed. But there is no reason to do this. He has a witness and she has no motive. Anyway, it's not very tight, and while it has its moments, it kind of fizzles.

Ralph Forbes may have given his best screen performance in The Phantom Broadcast. Unfortunately it was for poverty row studio Monogram and I venture to say a lot of people even back in 1933 probably never got to appreciate it. If they did see The Phantom Broadcast they could not have missed the resemblance to Cyrano De Bergerac.

Forbes plays a brilliant pianist, singer, and teacher who unfortunately is a hunchback. In the quiet of the sound proof broadcast station he's hit upon a scheme where handsome Arnold Grey appears at the microphone and mouths the words to Forbes's voice.

But Grey as the Christian of the piece is not as noble a character as Christian. He's a womanizing playboy and his fooling around with gangster's moll Vivienne Osborne has not gone unnoticed by some bad people.

Eager young hopeful Gail Patrick enters the picture and she interests both Forbes and Grey in different ways, maybe the same way, but Cyrano Forbes won't say and he's also determined that Grey will not trod here.

The Phantom Broadcast is an interesting idea that should have been tried by one of the big studios. It's highly melodramatic and probably too old fashioned for today's tastes. Still Ralph Forbes is brilliant.

The idea behind "The Phantom Broadcast" is very good...merging the classic story of Cyrano with a modern murder mystery. However, I can pretty much guarantee that folks won't love the end result...and I was left thinking it SHOULD have been a lot better.

Norman Wilder (Ralph Forbes) has a gorgeous voice and his songs are adored by millions over the radio. But what few realize is that Wilder is ashamed of his severely hunchbacked body and uses a proxy to pretend to sing his tunes. So, he plays the piano as his dummy moves his lips and pretends to sing. Sadly, however, this 'dummy' is incredibly foolish and soon begins to believe that he's god's gift to women and he even begins mistreating Norman...even though Norman is his meal ticket.

In addition to treating Norman like dirt, this puppet uses his fame to chase women...lots and lots of them. And it's because of this that he eventually gets himself killed. At this point, the story goes off the rails, so to speak. What had been a very good story suddenly began making less and less sense...leading to a finale much like that in "Cyrano de Bergerac".

With a slight re-write, this Monogram film could have actually been very good and quite memorable. But the behaviors of Norman AFTER his proxy was killed...well they really didn't make a ton of sense. Worth seeing as a time-passer and not much more.

This film is really NOT a "mystery"....it's about a popular radio "crooner" (who has all the women swooning for him), and his mysterious relationship with his pianist/arrranger.

The film contains a VERY minor "mystery", but it is explained half-way thru the film (I can't reveal any more without giving it away).

However, this is a VERY sad film and has a very unhappy ending (I may be naieve, but I like my films to have happy endings!), and I wouldn't recommend this tear-jerker to anyone, unless you want a good cry.

Don't waste your time with this one.

Norm

The story moves very slowly, but that does not take away from the fun of watching this movie. The enjoyment is seeing the period of the early 1930's--in dress, hairstyles, furniture, automobiles, and the Art Deco design of the sets. Made in 1933, this movie is at about the height of the Art Deco movement, a movement that permeated the design of everything from architecture to kid's toys. Also notable is the slow speech. Since sound was fairly new in the movies and fast casual speech was often not caught by the infant equipment, the actors speak slower than by today's standards and with the clarity of trained stage actors. Since this is a Monogram Studio production, I suppose there were few multiple takes of the scenes and probably a low budget, but some of the performances are almost equal to those of better known film actors working for the high-priced studios of the day, and the sets are fairly elaborate for a low budget film. All in all, it's fun to watch this movie, in spite of the fact that the story leaves a lot to be desired and moves at a snail's pace.