Radio Cavalcade

Even back in the early 1940s when MGM was dazzling the world with their spectacular Technicolor musicals, Twentieth Century Fox under Daryl Zanuck's direction was still turning out modest B&W musicals like this one about the early days of radio. No breath-taking dance numbers but lots of pretty if ultimately forgettable songs by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren, enjoyable specialty numbers by the Ink Spots and the incomparable Nicholas Brothers (as railroad porters!); and even a parody radio commercial sung with German accents by those madcap expatriates from the Berlin cabarets, the Wiere Brothers (the poor man's Ritz Bros.) The fast-moving plot is expertly directed by the usually lethargic Archie Mayo with lots of gags and even a bit of pathos from Jack Oakie, and enough romance between handsome John Payne and adorable Alice Faye to keep the girls in the audience happy. Fans of big studio high-style glamor cinematography will enjoy the gorgeous close-ups of Alice Faye lit by J.P. Marley and Leon Shamroy. Mike Frankovitch, who was one day to become president of Columbia Pictures, can be seen briefly as a radio announcer.

Archie Mayo and the writers took a stock project (a show biz musical) and made it special. The plot line about the beginnings of radio doesn't get lost in the welter of specialty numbers nor does the love story intrude too much in the fun. We even get a sense of what it was like when radio was expanding from a hobbyist's pursuit to a a mass market entertainment industry. The cast is nearly top notch all around but the Wiere Brothers are a marvel, providing the best turn in the film despite competition from the Nicholas Brothers, the Ink Spots and the always professional and often underrated John Payne, Alice Faye and Jack Oakie. Payne was usually justified in sleepwalking through the roles Fox saddled him with, but in this outing he shows what he can do with a congenial plot, director and co-stars. The primary reason for watching this film is to see the Wiere Brothers at their antic best. They were a deft and whimsical European comedy trio--comedians, instrumentalists, dancers and jugglers--with a long lineage in Continental circus, ballet and opera, and their style may be baffling to tastes weened on hit-them-over-the-head roughhouse comedy. Nothing wrong with roughhouse, but the Wieres offer something gently different.

Few middle-aged people now even remember the waning days of big time network radio, much less its prime time from the late 1920s to the mid 50s. When I first became aware of radio, about 1930, the networks had been operating for some time. Nothing in this movie would tell me how long. The signals were, indeed, carried over telephone lines. In fact, by the late 30s, at least, telephone cables consisting of thousands of wires in a lead sheath carried larger gauge wires in the center to provide a cleaner signal for radio transmission. Broadcasts originated mostly in New York, with quite a few from California, some from Chicago, and a few from other places around the country -- like Nashville. If it was necessary to switch the feed from, say, New York to Hollywood for a special interview, it took about 5 seconds for the phone lines to be reconnected in the opposite direction. It was a fun time, that this movie pretends to have invented. When it originated, the people -- broadcasters and listeners -- must have been fully as excited about it as the movie depicts.

The plot of the story is one we've seen in at least a dozen films: boy steals friend's girl; friend and girl succeed big in some enterprise, boy, left out, becomes jealous and disappears; boy turns up just in time to observe girl's ultimate triumph. The enterprise may be a business, a farm, or a mine, but more commonly it's an act or dramatic career. The story is always stupid, and this film is no exception.

Still, the music featuring Alice Faye, a couple of numbers by the Ink Spots, the hilarious Wiere Brothers, and the incomparable Nicholas Brothers, and even John Payne in one of his early singing roles, makes for eminently watchable entertainment, with the bit of questionable broadcast history thrown in for good measure. Despite the too familiar plot, it's far better than the average musical of the 30s through 50s. I loved it enough to save the recording I made off the cable 15 years ago, and liked it just as much when I dug up the tape this week.

The Great American Broadcast marks the first of four films that Alice Faye teamed with John Payne at 20th Century Fox. It has long been a contention of mine that Payne was signed by Darryl Zanuck because he looked a whole lot like Tyrone Power and could sing and thus carry his end of musical films with Alice, Betty Grable, June Haver, etc. Funny thing is when he left Fox, Payne abruptly stopped doing musicals and concentrated on all kinds of other films. He never sang a note on screen after 1946.

Putting it mildly this is not the history of the origin of commercial broadcast radio. Still it's a pleasant 90 minutes or so of musical entertainment with Alice Faye, John Payne, Jack Oakie, the Ink Spots, the Wiere Brothers, and the tap dancing Nicholas Brothers. I won't even quibble about how one enjoyed the Nicholas Brothers tap dance on radio.

In 1919 flier John Payne, radio electrician Jack Oakie, saloon singer Alice Faye, and millionaire Cesar Romero essentially all team up to launch commercial radio. If you're wondering what Payne's specialty and what he brought to the table, he was the promoter of the bunch, a role he would repeat in Tin Pan Alley and Hello Frisco Hello also with Faye and Oakie. Alice has all three of these guys panting for her, but her heart belongs to Payne even though he's a bit of fathead and doesn't appreciate what he has.

Harry Warren and Mack Gordon wrote the songs for The Great American Broadcast, the best of which is I Take To You which should have done a whole lot better in record sales. Oakie has a very funny bit trying to fake an operatic tenor during an early broadcast.

The event which launches the quartet in the broadcasting business was the famous Jess Willard-Jack Dempsey heavyweight championship fight and director Archie Mayo did a very good job integrating newsreel footage of the fight with the cast. In the opening montage you'll also see a whole lot of radio personalities who were big in 1940.

As Alice Faye is one of my real favorites I'm prejudiced, but The Great American Broadcast holds up very well after over 70 years even if it isn't the history of radio.

Alice Faye, John Payne, Jack Oakie, and Cesar Romero are part of "The Great American Broadcast," a 1941 20th Century Fox musical about the beginning of radio broadcasting. It's complete fiction, of course, but peppered with some wonderful singing by Faye and the Ink Spots, magnificent dancing by the Nicholas Brothers, and some good comedy bits by the Wiere Brothers.

Payne and Oakie play partners in a radio venture, financed by Romero. They're both in love with the pretty Faye. You've seen this plot a million times.

This is worth seeing for the cast. Romero is very elegant as the money man, Chuck, Payne is handsome and sings well, and Oakie is extremely likable. Besides the specialty numbers, there is footage of the Dempsey-Willard fight in 1919.

The older folks will especially love this one.