Paramount did a bunch of musicals in the '30s that were essentially variety shows with plots tacked on, and here's one of the most lavish examples. Based on a story by the august team of Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse, it uses a transatlantic ocean liner race as the clothesline to hang all the finery on. Bob Hope, fifth-billed, is the on-board emcee, and he reveals some sides to his personality we don't usually get to see. Notably, there's real tenderness in his "Thanks for the Memory" duet with the excellent Shirley Ross, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to call it one of the great screen duets. The whole score, by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin, is terrific, and you'll also love the humongous "The Waltz Lives On" sequence, Paramount's attempt to outdo MGM's huge "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody" extravaganza in "The Great Ziegfeld." Martha Raye has a lively comedy number with some hunky sailors that looks like an "Anything Goes" outtake, and among the variety acts, Kirsten Flagstad lends some class with a bit of Wagner. It's a silly story, unevenly paced, and I don't love W.C. Fields as much as many others do, though he has a reasonably funny golf sequence here. What impresses is that we get a wide variety of '30s performance styles, and some very fine performers, and it never takes itself seriously. Postscript: One of my earliest memories of living in New York is seeing the film's lyricist, Leo Robin, at the 92nd Street "Y" in 1981 or so. He was quite old, but he got up on that stool and whispered the lyrics to "Thanks for the Memory," which are superb, and by the time he got to "And strictly entre nous, Darling, how are you," I was spellbound.
Review of The Big Broadcast of 1938
