This is really a lemon of a musical from Warner Bros. with DICK POWELL as a boy singer who wins a contest that sends the naive guy to Hollywood where he ends up escorting a movie star imposter (ROSEMARY LANE) to a Hollywood premiere. Seems Rosemary is impersonating a temperamental diva (LOLA LANE), who overacts in awful style the role of a spoiled movie star who refuses to attend the premiere of her latest musical.
None of the songs are the least bit memorable but occasionally director Busby Berkeley gets to improvise and put some of his touches on the camera-work and choreography of assorted group numbers. Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra with Gene Krupa on the drums and a visible Harry James as a member of the band, gets to have a couple of big band segments, and Frances Langford gets to do a brief song with Dick Powell. Raymond Paige and his orchestra do a nice job on a Russian number with chorus and orchestra. These are the film's only highlights.
Comedy relief is supplied by Hugh Herbert, Ted Healy, Edgar Kennedy, Allyn Joslyn, Curt Bois, Glenda Farrel and Grant Mitchell, weak as it is. You can catch a glimpse of Ronald Reagan as the MC at the premiere of a new film, Carole Landis as a hatcheck girl in the background of a scene with Hugh Herbert, and Louella Parsons plays herself as a columnist who thinks she's getting the scoop on things. It's a good thing she didn't give up her day job.
On the plus side, ROSEMARY LANE is lovely and has a nice singing voice, DICK POWELL does a passable job on some innocuous songs, and GLENDA FARREL has a winning way with some sharp wisecracks. ALAN MOBRAY is painfully bad as an overbearing actor that Powell is hired to sing for, and just about all of the comedy efforts are handicapped by a bad script.
LOLA LANE overdoes the diva bit to an almost irritating degree at the start of the film and it all goes downhill from there.
Good camera-work, some nice B&W photography of plush interiors, and a few nice touches by Busby Berkeley can't compensate for a cliché-ridden story of boy meets girl in Hollywood, set to some "moon and June" songs that can hardly be called inspired.
Summing up: Disappointing musical.
None of the songs are the least bit memorable but occasionally director Busby Berkeley gets to improvise and put some of his touches on the camera-work and choreography of assorted group numbers. Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra with Gene Krupa on the drums and a visible Harry James as a member of the band, gets to have a couple of big band segments, and Frances Langford gets to do a brief song with Dick Powell. Raymond Paige and his orchestra do a nice job on a Russian number with chorus and orchestra. These are the film's only highlights.
Comedy relief is supplied by Hugh Herbert, Ted Healy, Edgar Kennedy, Allyn Joslyn, Curt Bois, Glenda Farrel and Grant Mitchell, weak as it is. You can catch a glimpse of Ronald Reagan as the MC at the premiere of a new film, Carole Landis as a hatcheck girl in the background of a scene with Hugh Herbert, and Louella Parsons plays herself as a columnist who thinks she's getting the scoop on things. It's a good thing she didn't give up her day job.
On the plus side, ROSEMARY LANE is lovely and has a nice singing voice, DICK POWELL does a passable job on some innocuous songs, and GLENDA FARREL has a winning way with some sharp wisecracks. ALAN MOBRAY is painfully bad as an overbearing actor that Powell is hired to sing for, and just about all of the comedy efforts are handicapped by a bad script.
LOLA LANE overdoes the diva bit to an almost irritating degree at the start of the film and it all goes downhill from there.
Good camera-work, some nice B&W photography of plush interiors, and a few nice touches by Busby Berkeley can't compensate for a cliché-ridden story of boy meets girl in Hollywood, set to some "moon and June" songs that can hardly be called inspired.
Summing up: Disappointing musical.