Alô, América!

Remember Hollywood Cavalcade, the film that showed a tumultuous relationship between Alice Faye and Don Ameche during the transition from silent to talking pictures? If you liked that movie, you'll want to give The Great American Broadcast a chance. It stars Alice Faye and John Payne, so you know there'll be some songs sung by beautiful voices, and it shows their tumultuous relationship during the advent of the radio.

This isn't the best movie in the world, but it is certainly entertaining. There are two good-looking, talented people in the lead roles, and even though Alice gets to sing much more than John does, you still get to hear his singing voice, something he didn't get to show off in his movies very often. Oftentimes, either the romance or the actual plot overshadows the other, but in this movie, both are equally interesting. John is torn between his love for Alice and his desire to explore the power of radio broadcasting, and his pal Jack Oakie provides plenty of support. There are by far more movies made about early Hollywood than early radio, so if you're interested in that part of our history and culture, you can watch this extremely sugar-coated version while basking in a melodramatic romance and listening to lots of songs. And as a bonus, you'll get to see the Nicholas Brothers dance!

Even back in the early 1940s when MGM was dazzling the world with their spectacular Technicolor musicals, Twentieth Century Fox under Daryl Zanuck's direction was still turning out modest B&W musicals like this one about the early days of radio. No breath-taking dance numbers but lots of pretty if ultimately forgettable songs by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren, enjoyable specialty numbers by the Ink Spots and the incomparable Nicholas Brothers (as railroad porters!); and even a parody radio commercial sung with German accents by those madcap expatriates from the Berlin cabarets, the Wiere Brothers (the poor man's Ritz Bros.) The fast-moving plot is expertly directed by the usually lethargic Archie Mayo with lots of gags and even a bit of pathos from Jack Oakie, and enough romance between handsome John Payne and adorable Alice Faye to keep the girls in the audience happy. Fans of big studio high-style glamor cinematography will enjoy the gorgeous close-ups of Alice Faye lit by J.P. Marley and Leon Shamroy. Mike Frankovitch, who was one day to become president of Columbia Pictures, can be seen briefly as a radio announcer.

Archie Mayo and the writers took a stock project (a show biz musical) and made it special. The plot line about the beginnings of radio doesn't get lost in the welter of specialty numbers nor does the love story intrude too much in the fun. We even get a sense of what it was like when radio was expanding from a hobbyist's pursuit to a a mass market entertainment industry. The cast is nearly top notch all around but the Wiere Brothers are a marvel, providing the best turn in the film despite competition from the Nicholas Brothers, the Ink Spots and the always professional and often underrated John Payne, Alice Faye and Jack Oakie. Payne was usually justified in sleepwalking through the roles Fox saddled him with, but in this outing he shows what he can do with a congenial plot, director and co-stars. The primary reason for watching this film is to see the Wiere Brothers at their antic best. They were a deft and whimsical European comedy trio--comedians, instrumentalists, dancers and jugglers--with a long lineage in Continental circus, ballet and opera, and their style may be baffling to tastes weened on hit-them-over-the-head roughhouse comedy. Nothing wrong with roughhouse, but the Wieres offer something gently different.

Few middle-aged people now even remember the waning days of big time network radio, much less its prime time from the late 1920s to the mid 50s. When I first became aware of radio, about 1930, the networks had been operating for some time. Nothing in this movie would tell me how long. The signals were, indeed, carried over telephone lines. In fact, by the late 30s, at least, telephone cables consisting of thousands of wires in a lead sheath carried larger gauge wires in the center to provide a cleaner signal for radio transmission. Broadcasts originated mostly in New York, with quite a few from California, some from Chicago, and a few from other places around the country -- like Nashville. If it was necessary to switch the feed from, say, New York to Hollywood for a special interview, it took about 5 seconds for the phone lines to be reconnected in the opposite direction. It was a fun time, that this movie pretends to have invented. When it originated, the people -- broadcasters and listeners -- must have been fully as excited about it as the movie depicts.

The plot of the story is one we've seen in at least a dozen films: boy steals friend's girl; friend and girl succeed big in some enterprise, boy, left out, becomes jealous and disappears; boy turns up just in time to observe girl's ultimate triumph. The enterprise may be a business, a farm, or a mine, but more commonly it's an act or dramatic career. The story is always stupid, and this film is no exception.

Still, the music featuring Alice Faye, a couple of numbers by the Ink Spots, the hilarious Wiere Brothers, and the incomparable Nicholas Brothers, and even John Payne in one of his early singing roles, makes for eminently watchable entertainment, with the bit of questionable broadcast history thrown in for good measure. Despite the too familiar plot, it's far better than the average musical of the 30s through 50s. I loved it enough to save the recording I made off the cable 15 years ago, and liked it just as much when I dug up the tape this week.

For those of us lucky enough to see Turner Classic Movies library of great MGM, Warners and RKO pictures, it comes as a letdown to see comparable 20th Century Fox pictures done with such juvenile plots--and there were many.

The Great American Broadcast is worthwhile to see gorgeous Alice Faye (about the time she married Phil Harris), hear her great songs, see the incomparable Ink Spots, Weire Brothers and Nicholas Brothers! Also performing well in restrained character for a change is Jack Oakie.

The backdrop of early radio is interesting, but the plot was so bad I had to turn away for a while--like broadcasting from a building rooftop from a tent in a thunderstorm(early AM low power radio would never reach far with all that lightning and static), also preposterous that John Payne would leave his beautiful new bride Alice Faye and run away to south america....only to have Jack Oakie beat him up to get him to look at her in the end....ha!!

Thanks to the Fox Classic Movie Channel for providing a beautiful print, enjoy it just the same.