Le point faible

I was curious about Fanny Brice in her younger years, and this is the only commercially available film that stars her of which I am aware. The plot is thin and preposterous, but that's not the point. The point is viewing Fanny's comedy and musical talents and some unusual production numbers as well as the great art deco style of the nightclub in which she works.

Fanny plays a nightclub performer who has financed her younger brother's law school and also set him up in business for himself. He has quite the memory for individual laws, but is a little too ambitious at chasing ambulances only about ten years after ambulances have been around. Enter down-on-his-luck boxer Jerry Moore (Robert Armstrong), who frequents the club where Fanny works. He gets mad one night at a fellow patron, boxing champ Mac, who has been mouthing off to him, and Jerry knocks him out after only a few punches. This gives Fanny and her brother the idea that maybe all that Jerry needs is a good manager to organize his career, and they decide to take on the job. After Fanny invests in a bunch of training equipment for Jerry she learns that he's only fought four times and he's only won once, and that was a technical decision. She doesn't quite have on her hands the diamond in the rough that she thought she had. Will Fanny get Jerry to stop lying down every time after he is punched the first time? Is a lasting romance in the cards for the two? Can Fanny get her brother to stop suing people? Watch and find out.

As for the songs - "Cookin Breakfast for the One I Love" is very cute and is probably the only time you'll ever see Robert Armstrong in a duet with anybody, the production number "Kicking a Hole in the Sky" has Fanny and chorus dueling with the devil, and "When a Woman Loves a Man" has a torch song quality to it. The five numbers included here really showed Brice's musical range.

There's also some cute comedy bits involving the other girls that work in the club. One mentions that she told her boyfriend that if he didn't marry her she'd kill herself. While she's getting ready for the next act a package arrives from him. Expecting an engagement ring she instead receives a gun.

I would recommend it to anybody who likes the early talkies.

Fanny Brice was a great Broadway star, one of the ones whose abilities did not translate to film that all well. It is worth it to watch her here, and extrapolate backwards to see the stage talent that made her famous. Blessed with perfect comic timing, she belts the blues, torches a ballad and parodies operatic singing in a way that would make Jerry Lewis jealous. It would all work better live and none of it burns into immortal memory, but still it's all interesting.

William Cameron Menzies' designs are delirious. The nightclub that hosts most of the action is decidedly surreal, and only he could make a boxing arena look like the Arabian Nights.

Harry Green acts a Jewish stereotype with such guilelessness and energy that he doesn't offend. He's safely in the past, and only non-Jews will be made confused and uncomfortable. The dates in his filmography suggest that he moved to England as a result of blacklisting rather than artistic irrelevancy, as is suggested in another review. England was a good choice for exile; they've always welcomed with open arms actors willing to play reductive ethnic clichés.

There is a peculiar fascination in the film with the shape of Robert Armstrong's nose. Fanny Brice had already had one of the earliest of the celebrity nose jobs, inspiring Dorothy Parker to observe that she had "cut off her nose to spite her race."

At any rate, Armstrong and the rest of the cast know exactly what to do and do it well. As with many early talkies, the pacing and continuity are uncertain. More artifact than musical comedy, we can watch the Jews and the Irish warily circling each other from the safe distance of the 21st Century.

"Be Yourself!" is only one of a handful of films made by Fanny Brice. Despite being a bit of a sensation for the Ziegfeld Follies, she never hit it off in movies. And, as an astute reviewer already pointed out, the Fanny Brice we all are familiar with is really Barbra Streisand PLAYING Fanny. Here, you get a rare chance to actually see her as she really was in films. Sadly, what I saw was NOT good at all. Fanny's Jewish ethnic humor is off-putting today, though it might have played better back in 1930. The same can be said DOUBLE for that of Harry Green as her brother. His routine is completely one-dimensional and dumb. And, THE joke was that he was a shyster Jewish lawyer--a nasty stereotype that, again, played well back then but which is painful to watch today.

When it comes to plot, it's pretty limp. Robert Armstrong is a nasty guy who loves to punch people, so Brice and her on-screen brother decide to become his boxing managers! Despite knowing nothing, the guy inexplicably wins---and none of this makes any sense. On top of the plot, there are some songs (not good ones) and some very ethnic humor which falls flat. Frankly, there's just not much to like about this film--it's terribly written, dull and the humor is so incredibly awful. Not worth your time--even if you want to catch a glimpse of Fanny.

After seeing this film, I think I understood why Brice did few films. She just wasn't enjoyable in the least and you wonder what Ziegfeld and the audiences of the 1920s saw in her. Painful and awful.

Just watched this Fanny Brice movie on YouTube. While she's better known as a comedienne who portrayed Baby Snooks on the radio, she was also a fine singer whose first husband Billy Rose wrote many of her standards during this time. This picture showcases many of those songs to good effect and also provides some of her sense of humor but most of the plot is more of a melodrama about her romance with a boxer played by Robert Armstrong who then falls for a gold-digger played by Gertrude Astor after winning lots of bouts. So there's not much time for the comedy sense Ms. Brice is known for and that was a disappointment for me. At least the film is only little more than an hour's length. So on that note, Be Yourself! is at the least worth a look once. P.S. If you're a film buff, you probably know the Robert Armstrong here is the same one that would eventually portray Carl Denham in the original King Kong.

Fanny Brice was a great Broadway star and starred in 3 films between 1928 and 1930. Be Youself is the last of her starring films, although she would make "guest appearances" in several more through 1945.

In this one she is a nightclub star in love with a has-been fighter (Robert Armstrong). She decides to become his coach (along with her brother) and he becomes a success, but he falls for a gold-digging babe (Gertrude Astor). That's all the plot there is.

The film is badly directed and edited, with abrupt cuts and lousy continuity. But Brice is energetic and fun and sings a few numbers, the best of which is "For the One I Love." She also does a bizarre Dante number and a operatic spoof in close-up which is very funny. Brice may not have been a beauty but she was a great talent and had charm and talent to spare.

Armstrong (best known for King Kong) is pleasant as a palooka, and Astor is okay as the floozie. Harry Green is not funny as a lawyer brother. Marjorie Kane is good as a boop-a-doop girl, and G. Pat Collins is the other fighter. The red cap is radio star Jimmy Tolson.

Certainly worth a look to see the legendary Fanny Brice in action.