Zis Boom Bah

Oh Gawd. I want to time travel back to Monogram Studios and throttle someone in their 2 room front office for this sloppy musical. It is one watt above flat-lining for 60 of its 61 minutes and then actually shows (for the one thin minute, spread in milli-second blips across the hour) that there is real life talent being badly photographed.I just don't see the point of going to some trouble to actually make this film that could easily be energetic and actually funny and allow lethargy to be the main thing on view. The weird storyline shows cranky vaudeville trouper Grace Hayes bulldozing her blowsy way into a college where her rat-bag son is rich college clown. She's gonna fix his playboy ways, no matter what.Her real life son (weird looking) Peter Hays plays her screen son. His real life wife plays her secretary. Talk about nepotism. I suspect this talent package was almost the raison d'etre for Monogram financing this back-lot musical produced by resident schlockmeister extraordinaire Sam Katzman. As with other Monogram musicals it just looks more like a reason to film recent new furniture purchases and light fittings in order to show off to other studios that Monogram Pictures are 'lavish' in their B grade ways. Have a ghastly look at SWING PARADE OF 1946 for genuine evidence of this: they just constructed this gigantic nightclub set then found an excuse to film actors and musicians running all over it. Story? None. Anyway ZIS BOOM BAH is more BAH than BOOM. Where was Gale Storm and Mantan Mooreland when Monogram really needed them? Probably standing at the boom gate of PRC Pictures wondering if it looked safe to enter there. Junior jive hepster Roland Dupree springs to life to rappety tap his teen legs around two wobbly dance numbers, especially in the 'big show' finale set in the new and expanded malt shoppe/club set. The usual crumpled curtains are loosely hanging on the back wall, and the stage set of mis matched drapery even has one dark main rag that is yanked back and forth as each amateur sequence elbows past the previous one. The chorus girls and their very plain looking partners in this finale just look like Monogram office staff borrowed (from typing and carpentry) for the morning of filming. They have absolutely no dance talent and are so ordinary on screen... ALL the girls look like they are all called Joyce. There is even a costume calamity where they wear frilly hot-pants...on one leg only. It is all so awful and crummy...and actually annoying when one more tweak up by all concerned would result in ZIS being actually FUN. The one strangely interesting thing is the dialog delivery between Grace and her son/daughter in law: it is so casually delivered that it actually works in spite of the script and logic. She has a very life like presence which is the only thing that allows the ridiculous story to be slightly compelling. The Dupree kid is the real star. He can actually do something...in spite of looking like a tubby Liberace tap dancing teen... You read that right.

Often dressed for a funeral, matronly musical stage star Grace Hayes (as Grace Hayes) goes to college. There, she wants to put secret son Peter Lind Hayes (as Peter Kendricks) on the right track. He's been swallowing gold-fish, and acting bratty. Also appearing is pretty secretary Mary Healy (as Mary Healy), who makes romance with Mr. Hayes. The couple were married in real life, and Ms. Hayes really is his mother. Taking a break from his "East Side Kids" duties, Huntz Hall (as Skeets Skillhorn) performs as Hayes' musically schooled pal. Most of the time, "Zis Boom Bah" progressively lives up to the words of its title, with tap-dancer Roland Dupree (as Pee Wee) and the minor players bringing more punch to the revue.

**** Zis Boom Bah (11/7/41) William Nigh ~ Grace Hayes, Peter Lind Hayes, Mary Healy, Huntz Hall

The main portion of this lightweight musical story is located at fictional Midwick College, which Peter Kendricks (Peter Lind Hayes) attends due to the largesse of stage actress Grace Hayes, his real-life mother who fills the same role here, and who manages to supply his love interest through her secretary Mary (Healy) who is his real-life wife. Drably directed from a weak script, and additionally hampered by excessive cutting and poor editing, this film does provide some treasures among its eight songs, including the title number, and has nice turns by soprano Healy, Benny Rubin as a snack shop proprietor, and the dynamic tap dancing Roland Dupree.

Behind the jumpin' title this rather subdued Monogram programme-filler resembles 'Stella Dallas' for the first two thirds with the twist that mom is an opera singer in elegant kid gloves and the initially unacknowledged son is a honky tonk entertainer (whose repertoire includes 'hilarious' impressions of Charles Laughton & Ronald Colman).

The funky stuff (including Huntz Hall in drag) eventually takes centre stage for the rousing finale in which (SPOILER COMING:) Peter Lind Hayes and his real-life wife Mary Healey (the two of them best-known for 'The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T') join each other before an ecstatic audience while tears well up in Hayes' real-life mother Grace Hayes' eyes. The End.

Grace Hayes is giving up performing. She and protege Mary Healy will hunt new talent, maybe produce.... but first she needs to see her son (played by real-life son Peter Lind Hayes). He thinks she's dead like her father, and his grandfather, president of a small college, has had the raising of him. When she discovers how snobbish and profligate he is, she decides to stick around and reform everyone. Of course that means all the young people will put on a show.

The show within the show is a pretty good one, with some nice tunes -- even Huntz Hall sings, and sings well! -- good tap and chorus line dancing and some nice trumpet playing. If this movie were a revue, it would be a good, if not outstanding musical. It is not, however, a revue, but a book musical, and the story idea is fine, the acting is good, the comedy is a bit corny but well performed. However, either the writers that producer Sam Katzman didn't bother to polish the script so that it made much sense, or editor Robert Golden didn't know how to cut a movie. Maybe both. His credits as an editor are utterly undistinguished, except for one picture: NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. Well, maybe Charles Laughton did the actual editing on that one and Golden just handling the physical side of the job.

Despite the poor result, it must have been a happy set. Miss Healy would marry Mr. Hayes and they would live and perform together until his death.