Folia a Bordo

Lots of mainly young and beautiful stars of the thirties appear in this movie. Dorothy Lamour and Shirley Ross are knockouts with the zany Martha Raye as a comic foil. This is a great movie for black and white buffs.

Some classic scenes in this movie:

W. C. Fields in his best golf playing scenes ever.

Martha Raye hugging and puffing with her big mouth against a sail to keep a life raft sailing toward a big ocean liner.

Kirsten Flagstad from the Metropolitan opera delivering a Wagner aria.

But the piece de resistance is Shirley and Bob singing what would later become Bob Hope's Theme song, "Thanks for the Memory."

Although not listed in the cast, I saw Lucille Ball, probably with the most lines of any of her thirties' movies.

One must have at least a passing familiarity with the 1930s to understand and/or enjoy "The Big Broadcast of 1938". Without that, the movie is a curio piece to be remembered only as Bob Hope's first major film appearance and the one where he first sang "Thanks for the Memory" (soon to be his theme); W.C. Fields's last film for Paramount; and, perhaps if you're of a certain age, Martha Raye and Dorothy Lamour.

"The Big Broadcast of . . . " series of films were strictly pastiche: an odd mixture of familiar film faces, radio personalities, and vaudeville, burlesque and novelty acts with an extremely loose storyline stringing it all together. For 10¢ and the B-picture with an A-picture double-bill, the movie would have hit the spot for most Depression-era movie-goers.

The humour and jokes are pretty period specific, making the movies already out-of-date even ten years later. Without a map and a compass, the territory would be unfamiliar to audiences 70 years later. But that's not unique to "The Big Broadcast of . . . " series either. How well will "Canonball Run", "Airplane", "Scary Movie" and "Meet the Spartans" (all products of their time) hold up in 70 years? As others have stated, the best segment of the film is Hope and Shirley Ross singing the very tender and bittersweet, "Thanks for the Memory". Don't expect much from "The Big Broadcast of 1938", view it as the mind-candy of your great-, grand- or parents' generation.

This movie is very dear to me. I saw it on late-night TV when I was about 12 years old, tape-recorded the sound track and listened to it over and over again. This is a movie that has everything: wacky W. C. Fields bits like his golf and pool routines, Bob Hope bombing out with the crowd on the ship (imagine, in his first movie role he can't even raise a laugh!), bizarre but charming performers like Shep Fields with his Rippling Rhythm orchestra (whom Lawrence Welk obviously ripped off), accompanied by an even more bizarre animated segment.

It's almost like watching a '30s stage revue of really gifted and varied performers, including a Mexican singer so beautiful he must be gay, and Martha Raye doing her foghorn bit. But the crowning glory of this film is the funny and poignant duet, Thanks for the Memory, with Bob Hope and Shirley Ross.

Most people know the tune as Bob's theme song, but few know the clever, tender, almost Dorothy Parker-like lyrics. This is the story of a sophisticated but madcap couple, not unlike Nick and Nora Charles, running through money like water, traveling the world, and finding bliss in bed. Each verse tells a little bit more of their story in an arch, clever way that is never too trite because of Shirley Ross's marvelous acting. Her facial expressions reveal the deeper story underneath the actual events, a couple who were madly in love but stormy and tempestuous, with fights that may have included screaming and hair-pulling.

Shirley makes reference to "the night you came home with lipstick on your tie", making it sound like an uproarious joke, while Bob rolls his eyes in discomfort. He sings of "that weekend in Niagara when we hardly saw the falls," and Ross murmurs, "How lovely that was." "Thank you," Bob replies.

This is a fresh and sensitive take on what could be a very sentimental song, and I can never see it without tearing up at the end. This movie is worth renting or buying, if you can find it, as a great example of '30s entertainment with the bonus of a truly great "love-lost" song.

The "plot" of this slapdash musical concerns a transatlantic ship race between two new "super-ships", the Gigantic and the Colossal. On board the former, S.B. Bellows (W.C. Fields), the brother of shipping line boss T. Frothingill Bellows (also Fields), tries to ensure that his ship wins, although he spends most of his times in drunken calamities. Also on board is entertainment host Buzz Fielding (Bob Hope), who takes time in between introducing musical acts to rekindle romance with one of his ex-wives (Shirley Ross), while his current girlfriend (Dorothy Lamour) falls for handsome ship radioman Bob (Leif Erickson). Things get even more chaotic when Bellows' daughter Martha (Martha Raye) comes aboard. Also featuring Ben Blue, Grace Bradley, Lynne Overman, Patricia Wilder, Rufe Davis, Lionel Pape, Virginia Hale, James Craig, Richard Denning, Monte Blue, Mae Busch, Leonid Kinskey, Bernard Punsly, and Russell Hicks.

Seemingly assembled from bits of different movies awkwardly stitched together, there's some funny stuff here, but no kind of pacing or interesting narrative. Fields, who was making his final Paramount film here, is funny, and his golf game and billiards game scenes are top notch. Bob Hope, making his feature debut, sings his signature song. I was pleasantly surprised to see future Road co-star Lamour already working with him. Martha Raye gets a rather impressive song and dance number that gets acrobatic and she obviously didn't use a double. The music numbers are an odd lot, too, with a couple of songs by Mexican star Tito Guizar, a performance from Norwegian opera diva Kirsten Flagstad (doing Wagner's "Brunnhilde's Battle Cry"), and Shep Fields and His Rippling Rhythm Orchestra doing "This Little Ripple Had Rhythm" which combines live action with animation to show the "origin" of the "rippling rhythm", which apparently was an ambulatory blob of swamp water that separates from a bog and walks to Fields' band and teaches them. It makes as much sense as it sounds. The movie won the Oscar for Best Song ("Thanks for the Memory").

I really don't understand what some people expect when they watch an old movie like this. This one in my estimation, is light hearted and entertaining. It is a showcase for some of our greatest stars as they were just starting out. Is it their best effort? Probably not. But it is fun to watch if you don't take it too seriously. I'm awfully glad we have it around to watch. Being a fan of almost every star in it, I consider it a treasure chest of many favorites talent. W.C. Fields is wonderful through out the film. Some of his skits are hilarious! Bob Hope is so good in his role that you have to really feel sorry for his character. Of course the song "Thanks For The Memories" is forever linked to him with this film. Martha Ray is hilarious in another one of her zany roles. All in all, a very good and entertaining film to be watched over and over. A real, or reel part of history.