They Learned About Women

in this ok 1930 film that stars Joe Schenck and Gus Van as baseball players who hit the vaudeville stage off season. While Schenck and Van were real vaudeville stars, their film careers never took off, and this film showcases their strengths as performers as well as their weaknesses. Their ethnic accent-oriented songs will strike many today as being VERY un-PC just as their songs now seem blah. Into this mix, however, comes the wonderful Bessie Love as their love interest. The always perky Love has only a few moments to shine in this film, but she makes it all worthwhile once hoisted atop a pinao, ukelele in hand, and sings "I've Got a Man of My Own." Love was at the height of her film career in the late 20s and early 30s, before she bailed from Hollywood and headed to London. Love's number in this film, her appearance in Hollywood Revue of 1929, and her Oscar-nominated starring turn in The Broadway Melody all show why she was popular with filmgoers. Worth a look. Co-stars Mary Doran, Benny Rubin, and Tom Dugan.

This movie has a song by Schenck and Van that they do in the baseball team locker room. The vocal is by Gus Van (with vocal responses from locker room boys), and it rocks pretty good for 1930: "Ten Sweet Mamas" - check it out, the rest of their numbers are more typical vaudeville stuff, but this one is worth listening to.

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!

"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.