Idílio Sincopado

Band Leader Kay Kyser and his big band return to America after a long stint playing for the troupes. He wants to take a break but his publicist convinces him to do another show for plant workers. His regular singer needs time to get married. He reluctantly accepts Julie Carver (Ann Miller), the plant owner's daughter, as her replacement.

It's a bit of song and dance during the war years. The writing isn't much. The acting is fine. There isn't much of anything other than the musical breaks. It may as well be a concert show. It's a waste of an hour although that was needed back then. People just needed a break and that's what this is.

I like neither Kyser's screen persona nor his bland style of swing, so wouldn't ever recommend going to a film to see him. But he sometimes had a talent for pepping up his films with good specialty acts.

The show-stopper in this film is the "Mr. Beebe" number, featuring Harold Nicholas (without brother Fayard), supported by a number of other top black singers and dancers including The Four Step Brothers, Marie Bryant, June Richmond, and others I can't identify. Kyser's band with Ann Miller singing briefly introduce the number, then leave the set - typical for the era, the scene was clearly designed so that the black performers could be edited out when the film was shown in the south.

The disappointment is that all that talent, including Ann Miller, is given very little footage to show their stuff. Miller's only tap number is hacked by some dialog. Harold Nicholas is brilliant, but the other singers and dancers in the number only get to do quick cameos.

The Kyser personnel do get to do a couple of other cute numbers. Significantly, these occur informally, when Kyser isn't directing or arranging them.

Kay Kyser had many top-selling recordings, but his Kollege of Musical Knowledge show, both live and on the radio, was more of a floor show than the performances of other swing bands and orchestras. His show is, of course, incorporated into this film. So in that respect, the film bears resemblance to other films in which Kyser appeared.

The extra bonus is the addition of sweet and lovely Ann Miller to the cast. Unfortunately, her one and only dance performance is butchered by cutaway shots and editing, so that about half is gone. You can only faintly hear the singing and tapping in the background.

What's left, however, is still pure Miller magic. Nobody else was such a machine-gun on feet.

I tuned into this movie half way thru, but apparently I've seen more than poster "It Lives", who wrote a review apparently without seeing any of this movie. This movie has a great musical section with spectacular dancing from Harold Nicholas, The Step Brothers, the Layson Brothers, well you can read the credits. So his comments about the lack of black performers in a Kay Kyser movie isn't true of this movie. This movie preserves the work of these wonderful dancers. "It Lives" comment should have been put on Kay Kyser's page or the the page of the movie he's actually referring to, if he could remember which one.

If you look him up, Kyser called his band the Kollege of Musical Knowledge. Corny yeah, but how is that racist? Where is the 3 K's in that? If there was a movie where a big band was dressed like the KKK I think that movie would be famous for that, and I've never heard of it. I looked on Wikipedia and I didn't see anything about Kyser and race, I googled it and I didn't see any connection with him and the KKK, though please correct me if its there. At one point in this movie there's a discussion about whether Ann Miller will sing with another famous band, such as Cab Calloway.

I'm guessing that the music business, especially the big bands, were not nearly as racist as other US institutions at the time, because black musicians were so talented they were pretty much in the process of inventing modern music and everybody sort of jumped on board what they were doing. If there were no black musicians in Kyser's band in the movie the first poster saw, maybe its because he played music, per quotes in his IMDb bio, that was "corny" and "sweet" and that's not where black musicians were going.

I'm not saying there wasn't something racist about Kyser's success, I mean obviously, he got to be a movie star, not a more talented band leader, like Duke Ellington, but "It Lives" post doesn't exactly make the case for Kyser being a symbol of racism, or whatever he was trying to say.

Just like Swing Fever--released in the same year--Carolina Blues features the corny persona of Kay Kyser. The guy has as much charisma as Bing Crosby, which is to say not much.

Here again, Ann Miller does not get enough time on the dance floor. She is so fresh faced in these early films; if only they had featured her talents more.

I still have not figured out which band member sports bangs and again plagues this movie with his senseless, humorless bits.

Some of the music by Styne and Cahn is really disappointing. The lyrics are silly--and not in a good way.