Idílio Sincopado

A big band goes through shenanigans trying to raise money for WWII bonds.

Typical wartime musical on a B-budget. There's lots of bounce with engaging performers, but I could have used a better distribution of musical numbers. Mainly they're bunched into one segment, while the rest is taken up with storyline. The nimble-footed Step Bros., however, have to be seen to be believed. Plus, Ann Miller sings and dancers her way into our collective heart, along with a gorgeous Georgia Carroll.

Kyser may have been a big band conductor, but he's quite a good actor, even comedic one. Then there's Victor Moore in multiple curmudgeonly parts, and Ish Kabibble looking like a handsomer version of the Three Stooges. Put them all together, and the 'gang' comes up with enough war- bonds to finance a new navy cruiser. I guess those were the days when we actually paid up front for our wars. Anyhow, it's nothing special, just a light-hearted look at America pulling together during the Big One, with a few lively tunes thrown in.

The best part of "Carolina Blues" is the title music, a very swinging instrumental of "There Goes That Song Again", ending with a close-up of Kay conducting his band. Story line is not all that compelling, and Victor Moore's comedic contributions are many and mostly ineffective(however, he WAS pushing 70 at the time, so the physical bit he tries to do, I'm sure, was quite difficult). A plus is the several accurate references to Kay's hometown of Rocky Mount and surrounding areas, along with playing a show in a local tobacco warehouse. In eastern North Carolina, on the too-rare occasion that a big band did come to town, tobacco warehouses were just about the only facilities big enough to host their dances. According to Steven Beasley's new book on Kay, Kyser himself did play a date at a tobacco warehouse in Rocky Mount, 4 years earlier, as part of that town hosting the world premiere of his first movie, "That's Right, You're Wrong". So, there is a bit of a thrill for this eastern Nawth Cahlinian in hearing places and things from our neck of the woods mentioned in a movie.

Decent Kay Kyser vehicle with some fun performances. As is usually the case with Kyser films, he's not the most appealing part of the picture. Here we have a young Ann Miller with Victor Moore as her dad offering good support, an extremely talented group of black performers who put on a show-stealing number in the middle of the film, and the criminally underrated Jeff Donnell who is so full of personality in all her scenes I kept wishing she was the star. Also in the mix is Kyser's usual cast of characters - Ish Kabibble and the rest. They're ok. Several big positives for this one. What keeps it from being more highly rated is that the story is very old hat and it goes on about ten minutes too long. Still, worth a gander for fans of the period.

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.

Out of the 7 feature films starring Big Bandleader Kay Kyser, i rate this one dead last. I hate to say it, as I've commented on other Kyser films, and am a BIG Kyser enthusiast, but this, his one film for Columbia, and as it turned out, his last feature, is just embarrassing. It wasn't his fault. It was that Columbia had NO idea what to do with him. Kyser started w/ RKO in '39, did 5 features there, and was very successful. Then one for MGM, SWING FEVER, which was not very good, but better than this. But i digress...I don't know if it's just my 16mm transfer to vhs, but the production values seem cheap, as in dark lighting. The great band doesn't get enough to do, and though Ann Miller is good, comic relief Victor Moore practically chews the scenery. In a scene in a taxi, you can see Kyser mouth the other actor's line as he delivers it. The first 3 Kyser films are priceless in my book, as the freshness and heart are so very apparent. But this really drags. Thank God Ish Kabibble (Merwyn Bogue)is in fine, dumb-as-a-brick form.