They Learned About Women

"They Learned About Women" is full of surprises, mostly pleasant. The movie was obviously made to showcase vaudeville stars Van and Schenk, cast here as a pair of pro ball players who do a song-and-dance act during the off-season. What's surprising is what first-rate actors they turned out to be. Then there's Bessie Love, a silent screen stalwart, who surprisingly picks up a ukulele and belts out a torch song in bravura style. In fact the musical numbers are exceptionally well staged, a surprise of sorts less than two years after the advent of sound. Even the sub-plot, about a vamp who tricks Van into marriage, works in a dopey sort of way. As does a climactic World Series game, the outcome of which is -- in this case -- no surprise. Forgive a few un-PC song lyrics and enjoy a movie that's surprisingly better than you might expect.

The vaudeville team of Van and Schenck concluded their brief film career with this positively dreadful MGM musical, a surprisingly bad film considering it was co-directed by Jack Conway and Sam Wood. In a stretch, the two less than wry hams play a vaudeville team who double up as star players for the Blue Sox, a professional baseball team of no apparent fixed address. The film features some poor and forgettable songs, dreadful editing, and some of the most boring baseball footage ever committed to celluloid, including the climactic World Series battle between the Blue Sox (probably modeled on the Boston Red Sox) and the Bears (whose gothic 'B' implies they're standing in for the Detroit Tigers). The only interesting part of the film is the Harlem Madness sequence, featuring the magnetic Nina Mae McKinney as a chorus line singer.

great piece of historical entertainment! Embodying the intersection of at least 3 critical eras of the show biz: Vaudeville, Baseball & Film (also sound movies & musicals).

Check out the Harlem Madness number for dynamite production of the period (1920s, really). Nothing since has even approached the electricity captured in that performance, but lots have tried with endless derivatives (ending but not limited to Moulin Rouge with Kidman & MacGregor).

Sure, the humor's creaky, the acting's stilted, the direction is confusing (although by two of the stalwarts of the golden age of film).

But hey, Washington's inaugural (or Lincoln's Gettysburg) address would look pretty dated now, wouldn't they? I'd still give anything to see them wouldn't you?

... and this is one of them. The early MGM musical comedies were thin on plot, but this thing is a real showcase of sound entertainment circa 1930. Plus you get to see how baseball was once played by just a bunch of average guys who were mechanics, plumbers, and - in the case of Van and Schenck's characters - vaudevillians From October to April. No wading in tens of millions they could never count for these guys.

The jist of the story is that vaudevillians Jerry Burke (Gus Van) and Jack Glennon (Joe Schenck) are singers half the year, baseball players with the Blue Sox the other half. Jerry is the partying type and Jack is the more level-headed one with a girl that he plans to marry soon, Mary (Bessie Love). Everything has been running smoothly until gold digging Daisy (Mary Doran) gets her eye on Jack and his earning potential.

Besides the baseball scenes from 80 years ago, the best part of this whole film is Nina Mae McKinney singing and dancing to Harlem Madness as well as a close look at two true vaudevillians - Gus and Schenck - in numbers that are pretty close to what they did on stage. Also, the fact is that, besides a couple of Vitaphone shorts, this is the only filmed record of their act or of their acting. Two songs in particular will probably seem jaw-droppingly politically incorrect to most modern viewers - "I'm an Old-Fashioned Guy" and "Dougherty Is the Name", but actually the sentiments in these songs do represent main-stream values of 80 years ago. The contrived comedy skits land with a bit of a thud, and it is a bit of a stretch to think of an entire baseball team breaking into barbershop style song in the shower after the game, but believe me you won't be bored.

One thing that cracked me up - and this is only a conjecture on my part - actress Mary Doran as the gold digger has a voice that is identical to the cheating wife-dog in the "All Barkies" Dogville short Hot Dog. Since she was under contract to MGM at the time, and MGM is the studio that produced the Dogville shorts, I wonder if that was her voice. It sure did sound like her.

At any rate, I do highly recommend this one.

I only just found out about this obscure movie after looking at the filmography of Nina Mae McKinney on this site and then looking at the Google Videos list to find out where I could see it online. I'll just now say that Ms. McKinney does a great dance to the "Harlem Madness" number surrounded by lots of men and other women-presumably all of her race and not just people in burnt cork-as well as one girl-possibly a teen-whose name is presumably lost in the wind. The rest of the movie-about a couple of baseball player friends who moonlights in vaudeville during the off-season with one of them involved with a girl who goes to the other one after her previous one finds another and breaks up with her-is quite involving. So in summary, They Learned About Women was a fine drama with good music and some good comedy, as well!