This movie would have improved had the ship that WC Fields is piloting struck those icebergs about five minutes in and sank without survivors. It is a sequence of dull acts loosely strung on the strand of a trans-Atlantic race. Some of the stuff is meant to be dull -- like the bad jokes with which Bob Hope tries to keep his radio show going once Ben Blue has broken all the records (78s, that is)and like the stupid "play" performed by a woman who comes on to help Hope out. The rest is awful. The Fields part is badly written (presumably by Russel Crouse) and takes no advantage of Fields' ability to deliver the cynical aside (compare "Poppy" or "The Bank Dick"). Martha Raye comes aboard to smash mirrors with her mere glance and to perform a vulgar dance with a bunch of sailors. Kirsten Flagsted delivers Wagner at his worse and does sound like an animal howling, as Fields said (in lines cut from the film). Shep Fields' band accompanies the dull story of a water drop. The big production number is a numbing tribute to the waltz. The only redeeming moment is Hope and Shirley Ross singing the Academy Award winner that year, "Thanks for the Memories." Hope reveals a vulnerable side that he quickly shelved. And Ross, of course, disappeared, to be replaced by Dorothy Lamour, whom we glimpse briefly in this film. A waste of talent and money and a waste of time for the viewer who savors the films of the 1930s.
Review of The Big Broadcast of 1938
