You're a Sweetheart

While I don't think "You're a Sweetheart" is a great film, it's well worth watching just to see the ultra-bizarro musical number with folks dressed up like birds near the beginning of the movie!

The story is about a Broadway show starring Betty (Alice Faye) which seems doomed. Why? Because the opening night is scheduled the same night as some big charity gala....and all of high society will be at the gala and not the show. So the producer comes up with a weird scheme with Hal Adams (George Murphy)...to have Hal pose as an Oklahoma millionaire and buy up the entire show for its first week run. The thinking is that if the public CAN'T see the show, they'll really want to see it. In other words it's a big publicity stunt.

As for Betty, for some inexplicable reason, no one tells her this is all a stunt. So, she believes Hal is rich and she acts accordingly. What will she do when she learns he's a phony? See the film and find out for yourself.

The best part of the film is the interplay of Faye and Murphy. But it slows down considerably when they get to portions involving the Broadway show...and I would have been happy with less of this...especially since it seemed more like a talent show than a Broadway show. Still, it's enjoyable if you set your expectations lower and see it as more of just a nice time-passer.

I've always liked Alice Faye. She had a joie-de-vivre about her that always made me reckon that she really did appreciate just how fortunate she was to be making a good living from films. Here she turns in an amiable enough performance as "Betty", a would-be star of the Broadway stage. She is to headline the opening night of a new show from a much earlier, less flamboyant, iteration of "Don King" (Ken Murray). Thing is, nobody realised that this star-studded occasion was going to clash with an even bigger gathering, and unable to move his performance, the show looks to be going the way of the dodo. There must be solution - and it falls to waiter and sometime PR guy "Adams" (George Murphy) to come up with a clever plan that involves getting a wealthy backer to buy out the performance - "Daddy Warbucks" style. Who would do such a thing? Anyway, you can guess that a plan will be concocted, but poor old "Betty" is left out of the scheme, and so when she meets said millionaire, the two start to fall for each other with some engaging, if entirely predictable results. It's not a great film, no - but it has a certain freshness and it looks smart and stylish. The theme song is catchy enough, though not especially memorable, and the dance numbers are well put together offering us a glimpse of what passed for entertainment in 1930s America. It is a fun watch, just not a particularly notable one.

Ken Murray is trying to get his musical show about Oklhoma starring newcomer Alice Faye open on Broadway. He has to open on the 20th according to his contract, but it's a bad night for it, so he hires George Murphy to pretend to be a wealthy Oklahoman madly in love with Miss Faye, who has bought out the house for a week. Murray wants to marry Miss Faye, but soon enough, Murphy's breezy personality and off-stage dancing win her over.

David Butler directs the kitchen-sink musical with a harpist playing "The Saint Louis Blues", Andy Devine doing the 13x7=28 skit, and a dance act working with lariats in between the wise cracks and such. It's actually pretty much the model that Universal's musicals would follow through the middle of the next decade, and the professionalism of the leads carries the nonsense along at a good clip, Murphy does a nice bit of hoofing, Miss Faye sells a couple of decent but unremarkable songs, and the cast includes Samuel Hinds, Charles Winninger, Frank Jenks, and Donald Meek. Frances Hunt has a good role as the second lead.

It starts promising but quickly becomes boring. The songs are nice but the sound recordings are really done like from a sewage system and knots nice to listen to. Miss anything is of course very famous from singing and dancing and references by Elizabeth Taylor in who's afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee and because of this you just want to see all of these movies with her plus the fact that it was nominated for an Oscar which only increases the value so you would think but unfortunately it gets boring because the story really goes nowhere at all and that is the sad thing about it.

During her career at 20th Century Fox, Alice Faye was lent out for two films. You're A Sweetheart was the second of the two and Alice was sent to Universal Pictures to co-star with George Murphy in this backstage story.

Alice is a young budding star who's set to open in a show produced by Ken Murray called incredibly enough Oh Oh Oklahoma. They were six years early with that one. But catastrophe looms for Murray and the cast. A big benefit is set to open the same night and no one who's anyone will be there. And for reasons not quite explained, Murray can't push the day forward or back.

What to do, Murray is in a tizzy and he fires press agent William Gargan for not coming up with solution. But a sharp eared waiter, George Murphy, who used to be in the publicity game gets an idea. Why not say that the house was bought out like Walter Brennan would do three years later in The Westerner to see Lily Langtry. Who to buy it. An eccentric Oklahoma oil millionaire who is said to be madly in love with Alice Faye.

Now where to get a millionaire. No problem, Murphy pretends to be one and he gets to rather like the idea, especially since he's living high on the hog with Ken Murray's money. He likes it even more when he meets Alice Faye and of course they fall for each other. She's not in on the fact it's a publicity stunt.

Now you'll have to see You're A Sweetheart to see how this all resolves itself. But along the way you'll be treated to a very nice score of songs written by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields. Interestingly enough they were the songwriters on Alice Faye's other loan out film to Paramount, Every Night At Eight.

Of course the title song, sung warmly and winningly by Faye, became a popular standard. She has another nice number in the film, My Fine Feathered Friend and the rest of the score is good as well.

One musical number I did enjoy in his only film appearance is jazz harpist Casper Reardon. And I thought Harpo Marx was the only one who played a harp in film. He does a nice medley of jazz on the harp, an instrument not associated with that style of music.

And can you imagine anyone thinking of using Oklahoma in the title of a Broadway musical?

Though You're A Sweetheart got an Oscar nomination for Art&Set Direction, personally I think Alice Faye was far better served in that department over at her home studio at 20th Century Fox. Still the cast performs well and the songs are fine with one of them becoming a classic.