The Phantom Broadcast

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.

Alpha Video which continues to serve serious movie lovers, especially those who want to explore the past through films that will never make it to TV, has an interesting item in 1933's "The Phantom Broadcast." The plot is simple: a much beleaguered by adoring female fans crooner is a first class fraud. Actually "his" voice is that of his crippled accompanist and manager, referred to as "the hunchback."

Singer and manager both pursue the beautiful, innocent girl. The singer is also beset with the affections of a discarded mistress who won't take "no" or "get lost" for a permanent disposition of a tired relationship. Exit singer through a bullet wound.

The sweet, decent gal is a suspect but the old hunchback tries to attract the law's heat to protect her. Such nobility.

Nothing novel about the plot but the acting is, largely, not bad.

For $4.99, which is what I paid, this was 73 minutes of entertainment. Now who do I palm the DVD off to?

Back in the thirties, every studio had its own distinctive style...there were star-studded epics like "Gone With the Wind" at MGM, breezy comedies like the Hope-Crosby "Road" movies at Paramount and gangster films with the likes of Bogart and Cagney at Warner Bros. Then there were the Poverty Row studios, principally Monogram and PRC, where "quickies" were churned out on five day schedules. So it's no wonder that while Monogram's "The Phantom Broadcast" is entertaining, it's also confusing. The premise is that piano player Norman Wilder, a hunchback, is the behind-the-scenes voice for a murdered radio crooner. There are a few obvious questions like why no one notices that while the crooner is performing, his pianist is simultaneously singing up a storm. Or how a few characters enter someone's apartment then apparently forget that it's not their own home. Someone at the studio may have noticed that lapse but was told Monogram's policy...no retakes. Still, "The Phantom Broadcast" is fun. And you can't say that about quite a few movies from the major studios.

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.

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.