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Swing Hostess

  • 1944
  • Approved
  • 1h 16m
IMDb RATING
5.9/10
231
YOUR RATING
Iris Adrian, Charles Collins, and Martha Tilton in Swing Hostess (1944)
ActionComedyMusicMusicalMysteryRomance

Rags-to-riches-to-rags story features Benny Goodman vocalist Martha Tilton as an unemployed big band singer who takes a job as an operator at a jukebox company. After falling in love with a ... Read allRags-to-riches-to-rags story features Benny Goodman vocalist Martha Tilton as an unemployed big band singer who takes a job as an operator at a jukebox company. After falling in love with a bandleader, she gets a chance to get back in the limelight by singing for his group.Rags-to-riches-to-rags story features Benny Goodman vocalist Martha Tilton as an unemployed big band singer who takes a job as an operator at a jukebox company. After falling in love with a bandleader, she gets a chance to get back in the limelight by singing for his group.

  • Director
    • Sam Newfield
  • Writers
    • Louise Rousseau
    • Gail Davenport
  • Stars
    • Martha Tilton
    • Iris Adrian
    • Charles Collins
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    5.9/10
    231
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Sam Newfield
    • Writers
      • Louise Rousseau
      • Gail Davenport
    • Stars
      • Martha Tilton
      • Iris Adrian
      • Charles Collins
    • 15User reviews
    • 2Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • Photos4

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    Top cast18

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    Martha Tilton
    Martha Tilton
    • Judy Alvin
    Iris Adrian
    Iris Adrian
    • Marge O'Day
    Charles Collins
    Charles Collins
    • Benny Jackson
    Cliff Nazarro
    Cliff Nazarro
    • Bobo
    Harry Holman
    Harry Holman
    • Fralick
    Emmett Lynn
    Emmett Lynn
    • Blodgett
    Betty Brodel
    • Phoebe
    Claire Rochelle
    Claire Rochelle
    • Fralick's Secretary
    Paul Porcasi
    Paul Porcasi
    • Spumoni
    Terry Frost
    Terry Frost
    • Hank
    Philip Van Zandt
    Philip Van Zandt
    • Merlini - the Magician
    Earle Bruce
    • Joe Sweeney
    Bob Gooding
    • 1st Butch - Specialty Act
    Walter Pietila
    • 2nd Butch - Specialty Act
    • (as Walt Pietila)
    Gene Windson
    • 3rd Butch - Specialty Act
    Dave White
    • Chick, Chick and Chuck Dance Team
    Joe Evans
    • Chuck, Chick and Chuck Dance Team
    Florence Wix
    Florence Wix
    • Nightclub Patron
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • Sam Newfield
    • Writers
      • Louise Rousseau
      • Gail Davenport
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews15

    5.9231
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    Featured reviews

    6boblipton

    Betty Brodel Sixty Years Before Auto-Tune

    Martha Tilton has been auditioning for a position as a band singer for what seems like forever. Finally, she and her friend Iris Adrian take a job as operators in a juke-box center, where customers call in for a particular song at their location. Meanwhile, a test record a friend made for her gets mixed up with one done by Betty Brodel, who's being drooled over by record producer Harry Holman. Because it's actually Miss Tilton's voice -- she had been a vocalist for Benny Goodman, with a hit recording of "And the Angels Sing" -- Miss Brodel gets a contract and a chance to sing for Charles Collins' band.

    It's a plot that's not remarkable in broad, and it's been done many times, well and poorly. This one has several advantages, including songs by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston, a couple of years before they hit it big. There are also some nice moments of gag comedy, and it's a pleasure to watch the professional musicians gawp in horrified astonishment at Miss Brodel's voice.

    It also has a nice example of inadvertent documentary, showing how centralized jukebox systems worked.

    The names in this are not ones to conjure with. Behind the camera was Jack Greenhaigh, a talented cinematographer who never got out of the Bs and frequently used his considerable talents lensing ludicrous films like ROBOT MONSTER and HITLER -- BEAST OF BERLIN. Sam Newfield, a mainstay of the usually dire PRC, directed, and shows that with a good script and eager talent, he can turn out a happy, modest movie.
    tfwms1

    An absolute JOY to watch ! Martha and the entire cast

    This WONDERFUL film from 1944 is a pure joy ! Not to mention the music throughout... Martha is a beauty as well as a pretty hot singer from her day.. She really shows the evil Phobe (Betty Brodel) a thing or two about singing. One of the better films from PRC during the war years. Sure to please ! That is if you can find it. The film is Public Domain and nobody, I mean nobody runs it, and thats ashame. Some great music from JAY LIVINGSTON & RAY EVANS who ARE credited boldly in the print I own...If you get a chance to catch this lost gem then sit back and enjoy ! JUKEBOX FANS will die over this film featuring ROCKOLA JUKES !
    HarlowMGM

    SWING Your Lady

    SWING HOSTESS is a vivid example how falling into public domain might just be the best thing that could happen to an obscure movie. This long-forgotten "B" movie (B- really) from PRC has nearly ten reviews currently up on IMDb no doubt thanks to it being available in Mill Creek's 50 Musical movie pack and other p.d. issues by other companies while hundreds of other obscure still-copyrighted minor films from the era sit unreviewed and unseen in studio vaults.

    Benny Goodman band vocalist Martha Tilton (perhaps best known today for dubbing Barbara Stanwyck's vocals in BALL OF FIRE) stars as Judy, a girl hoping to break into show business as a singer. Judy resides at a boarding house crammed with show business wanna-bes including snooty Phoebe (Betty Brodel), a hopelessly untalented yet arrogant young woman who also wants to be a singer. Both girls try to land a gig singing with a band but when Judy's audition record is mistaken for Phoebe's vocalizing, it's Miss no talent who gets the contract while Judy is forced to find work elsewhere to pay the bills, landing a job as a "record operator", where quasi-jukeboxes in drugstores and restaurants have a phone where the customers puts in their coin and calls the record operator who plays the record through the line!! Apparently there really were such jukeboxes in the 1940's as has been mentioned Doris Day also played such a record operator in one of her first movies.

    The movie is surprisingly polished for a PRC musical with an almost entirely unknown cast other than Tilton and Iris Adrian, as her wisecracking best friend. This was one of Adrian's early film roles and it appears to be her largest part ever, billed second to Tilton. As has been mentioned there's a touch of the future film SINGIN' IN THE RAIN's plot but I was also surprised to see a segment where the boardhouse gang deliberately wrecks snooty Phoebe's nightclub engagement which has strong parallels to the famous similar scene in an future 1950's I LOVE LUCY episode in which Ethel gets hoity and Lucy, Ricky, and Fred pay her back by attempting to ruin her singing appearance in her hometown.

    Character actor Harry Holman plays the old girl-crazy executive who is temporarily bewitched by Phoebe while the somewhat more familiar Emmett Lynn has a rather obnoxious character as Blodgett, the slovenly boarding house resident who can never seem to get to use the place's lone bathroom. One Claire Rochelle does very well as Holman's long-suffering secretary. As another reviewer mentions the movie curiously ships off the character Joe Sweeney (played by Earle Bruce in apparently his only film role) from the story midway as a near-boyfriend of Judy's who helps her get her first break, leaving the door open for what is suggested will be a romance after the movie's end with Judy and bandleader "Benny Jackson" (played by Charles Collins). Earle Bruce is quite handsome and does not do a bad job, it's odd this is his only film particularly in that era when so many young actors had to leave the film industry and service their country in the war (perhaps Bruce himself was drafted shortly after this film like his film character). There's also a stunningly handsome young brunette man in the cast among the acrobat act that resides at the boarding house, given that none of the guys is ever referred to by name one can not tell who he is although all three are billed (Bob Gooding, Walter Pietila, Gene Windson) as are Dave White and John Evans, as a "Chick and Chuck" dance team we never see dance but presumably they are the other guys seen at the boarding house. On the other hand, two character actresses with sizable dialogue and several scenes (the old lady who is the supervisor of the jukebox operators and a sassy middle-aged waitress wearing a Betty Grable hairstyle a little too young for her in a role very much like the ones Iris Adrian herself play in later years) are unbilled and to date, unidentified.

    Although it's plot of a booking agent desperately in need of a new female vocalist and having trouble finding a good one in New York (!!!) is pretty silly, the movie is so well made and a nice little slice of life of big city living in the war years with an appealing if modest star performance from Martha Tilton, it's definitely worth a view.
    7ptb-8

    a top musical comedy from the bottom rung

    Made at PRC pictures in 1944 this very funny musical is a near cousin to SINGIN THE RAIN. It delivers a good swing musical soundtrack set in the record industry with a Lina Lamont sound-a-like bad girl called Phoebe Forbes getting inappropriate bitchy stardom over good girl Martha Tilton (who just died Dec 8, 2006) and her hilarious wise-cracking room mate Iris Adrian. The whole film is a case and chase of mistaken musical identity with horrible tuneless Phoebe deluding herself that she has singing talent and allowing Martha's music to be heard as hers. If you watch this film then have a look at Betty Hutton in THE PERILS OF PAULINE made in 1947, you can put the jigsaw puzzle of both films together and get a rough cut of SINGING IN THE RAIN made in '52. One fascinating scene in SWING HOSTESS involves a fantastic deco style jukebox where instead of button pressing, the client phones a switchboard/DJ girl who has a library of records at her fingertips in a room somewhere and she plays the selection. They can talk (in this case shout and be insolent) to each other thru a microphone and speaker in the jukebox. What an invention! What an installation. PRC spent some real money on this film and it is well produced with some excellent sets and decor...so unusual for them. I would suggest this film did very well for them and proved once again that there is so many hilarious musical gems to be found in 'poverty row'. The showbiz boarding house they all live in if crammed with idiotic vaudeville types who can't stop running about and performing tricks and stunts on each other. The whole film is pitched at a silly level which only adds to the fun.
    dougdoepke

    Entertaining Despite The Crowded Plot

    Plot- a talented songstress tries to break into the business, but is hampered by mishaps and a connaiving rival.

    Okay, I'm a sucker for low-budget quickies, hoping for the occasional over-achiever. Happily, this is one of them. The flick's really more a comedy with a complex plot than a musical. But the pacing's snappy, the acting's colorful, and Tilton's such a sweetheart. Sure, it's the sassy Adrian and the scheming Brodel who get the acting and screentime, still, songstress Tilton's lovely voice carried me away. I just wish she had more numbers uncrowded by the screenplay. On the other hand, I'd never seen the feisty Brodel before. Too bad she didn't opt for a longer career since her talent for villianry is darkly clear. At the same time, I was hoping for some swing dancing with the flaring skirts so popular at the time, but maybe the budget didn't allow it. Anyway, the pacing never drags, while the sticky plot's happily softened by a supporting cast of humorous oldsters. So give it a look-see, especially for the "liltin' Martha Tilton".

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    Storyline

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    Did you know

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    • Trivia
      The earliest documented telecasts of this film took place in Washington DC Monday 14 August 1947 on WTTG (Channel 5), in New York City Thursday 2 October 1947 on WCBS (Channel 2) and in Los Angeles Saturday 29 January 1949 on KTTV (Channel 11).
    • Quotes

      Marge O'Day: What's good?

      Waitress: T-bone steak, pork chops, hamburger, friend chicken and rabbit.

      Marge O'Day: T-bone steak. T-bone steak.

      Waitress: I just said that's good, but we don't have any. Uh, maybe you better have a salami sandwich.

      Marge O'Day: Oh, well. That's what we had in mind.

    • Crazy credits
      Opening credits and ending are viewed with background of spinning vinyl record being played on a turntable.
    • Soundtracks
      Let's Capture That Moment
      Written by Jay Livingston, Ray Evans and Lewis Bellin

      Sung by Martha Tilton

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    Details

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    • Release date
      • September 8, 1944 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Production company
      • Sigmund Neufeld Productions
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 16 minutes
    • Color
      • Black and White
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

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