Fantôme Radiophonique

Good, Old-fashioned musical of the kind no longer made in Hollywood - partly because musicals went out of style and partly because of the antiquated subject matter. In this case, you have to be of a certain age to appreciate the storyline. It concerns a made-up feud between two old-time names, Ben Bernie who was a band leader, and newspaper columnist Walter Winchell. The feud was carried on mainly on radio and in newspapers.

Have I lost you yet? If so, you're probably too young to remember any of the stars or the songs. Alice Faye was as famous as she was pretty, but Jack Haley had yet to achieve immortality as the Tinman in 'The Wizard Of Oz". Patsy Kelly had a long career as an abrasive comedienne in many movies and Joan Davis had yet to hit it big in television. And radio was the main medium in those days - no TV or DVDs or internet or any related device.

Us old-timers can appreciate, but you young folks who are movie archaeologists will find plenty to like here, including several good songs which were popular a long time ago, like "Never In A Million Years" and "There's A Lull In My Life", and the dubbed voice of Buddy Clark, a Golden Age singer. If you can find this picture, watch it - as far as I know it hasn't been released in any format yet.

Another classic motion picture that has never been available on video and another shame for eager classic movie fans. This 90 minute musical has everything you could ever hope for from a film. Great songs, dancing, comedy, drama, suspense and Alice Faye! The "feud' between Ben Bernie and Walter Winchell (as real as the "feud" of Jack Benny and Fred Allen) inspired this film which takes place during the great days of live radio.

Bernie and Winchell are the main attractions here but Jack Haley, Alice Faye, Patsy Kelly and Ned Sparks are the real stars of this picture. With the fine backing of Fox, this film was one in the long series of musicals featuring Faye and a stellar supporting cast. It is in this film that she introduces the standard classic song, "There's A Lull In My Life".

Jack Haley is featured as a singer who suffers from mike fright. Actually, Haley's wonderful singing voice is dubbed in this film by Buddy Clark! For trivia fans, Haley refers to this role in his next picture, "Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm", when he lets a young girl who is afraid of microphones know that he was once afraid of them too.

The film is a timepiece of an era long gone. If you ever get the chance to see this great film with all of its wonderful songs, "It's Swell Of You","Wake Up And Live" and, "Never In A Million Years", you won't be mislead.

Fox musicals are often weighed down by leaden screenplays, dull camera-work, irrelevant specialty acts, and personalities with not that much personality. Some of those traits are evident in this musical-comedy piffle about the Walter Winchell-Ben Bernie feud, but there are compensating pleasures. High among them is Alice Faye warbling good Gordon-Revel songs such as "There's a Lull in My Life" (a surprisingly boring arrangement of it, though, and she's unflatteringly gowned); also, a genuinely funny second couple in Patsy Kelly and Ned Sparks; also, a specialty dance by Joan Davis. Jack Haley's an adequate leading man, though not a particularly charismatic one, and, since the plot turns on his golden voice, his songs are dubbed by Buddy Clark. (Haley could sing, but not well enough to be a "phantom troubadour.") It's brisk and reasonably comical, the musical numbers are fine, and the production bloat that hobbled so many Fox musicals over the next decade is nowhere evident.

One of Darryl F. Zanuck's peculiar quirks was that he frowned upon his musical stars making records. Unlike Bing Crosby who recorded nearly all the songs he sang in Paramount films and numbers from other Paramount films with the encouragement of Adolph Zukor, Zanuck felt that if the public bought records they wouldn't pay to see his films. Alice Faye did manage to record about 20 sides during the Thirties and the last batch she did was four songs from Wake Up And Live. Good thing to because Mack Gordon and Harry Revel wrote some of their best material for this film.

The film itself was based on a make believe radio feud between columnist Walter Winchell and band-leader Ben Bernie who play themselves on screen. Make believe feuds among radio personalities was a common enough thing back in the day, it made for interesting programming and bigger Hooper ratings. The Hooper was the radio equivalent of the Nielsen before television became commercial.

Jack Haley and Grace Bradley are a pair of vaudevillians who travel to New York hoping to cash in on the fact that Haley's sister Patsy Kelly is Walter Winchell's assistant. A mention in Winchell's column gets them inundated with offers, but Haley who apparently has no problem performing before a live audience of a hundred or so in a theater, gets paralyzed with fear over speaking and singing into a microphone that will broadcast to millions.

But one night when Alice Faye is singing on Ben Bernie's program, Haley is in an empty studio singing into what he thinks is a dead mike. His voice comes over the air and no one knows who it is. Immediately he's dubbed 'The Phantom Troubadour' and the hunt is on to find him. It's a contest between Winchell, Bernie, and a bottom feeding sleaze-bag agent played by Walter Catlett. Of course Faye finds out first and looks to exploit Haley in her own way.

It's a nonsensical plot, from an era that spawned this kind of nonsense. Doesn't detract a whit from the fact it's an entertaining film with Alice Faye singing at her very best.

But you won't hear the familiar voice of Jack Haley that you know as the Tinman from The Wizard of Oz. Instead Haley's voice in this film is dubbed by one of the great radio crooners of the time, Buddy Clark. Buddy never did too much work before the camera, but on radio he was one of the most popular singers in his era. Sadly he was killed in a plane crash right before the era of television, I'm sure he would have made it big there.

Alice and Buddy get to sing the title song, Never In A Million Years and Swell Of You. Alice does There's A Lull In My Life and Buddy sings Ooh, But I'm Happy.

Long before I finally got to see Wake Up And Live I had a long playing 33 1/3 vinyl album of Alice Faye with the four songs she sings before Zanuck put an end to her recording career. I knew the songs and loved them. So it was a special treat for me to finally see the film and more so to hear Buddy Clark sing as well even if the words came out of Jack Haley's mouth.

I think if you can ever catch Wake Up And Live you will feel as I do about the great singing voice of Buddy Clark.

Three decades after first seeing a poster of this movie in the encyclopedic book about movie comedians-"The Funsters"-in the bio of Patsy Kelly, and a few years ago after I found out this particular film was on YouTube, I finally got to watch Wake Up and Live. The main reason I just watched this was because since this is Black History Month and one of the players in this picture was Eddie Anderson, who by the time this was released had just been cast on radio in "The Jack Benny Program" as Rochester, well, since I usually go chronological in reviewing African-Americans in film during this month, this was next on my 1937 list. Anyway, Anderson appears in two scenes, both on an elevator since he works at one. In his second scene, Eddie tells leading man Jack Haley about an important radio star who wants to see him, first mentioning Fred Allen before segueing to "Jack Bernie" and then to Ben Bernie who's the one looking for Jack. The story itself concerns Haley's mic fright (illustrated by a cartoonish effect of that gadget becoming a demon in front of his eyes) and his attempts to overcome it while practicing in front of a "phony" one for Alice Faye. I'll just now say there are plenty of good songs, a couple of good tap routines by some brothers, some witty lines, a funny dance from Joan Davis, and good supporting turns by Ms. Kelly, Ned Sparks, William Demarest, Walter Catlett, fine numbers by bandleader Ben Bernie, and a good performance by newspaper columnist Walter Winchell as he and Bernie play up their off-screen "feud"! So on that note, I recommend Wake Up and Live.