Benny Field opens on Broadway, with a minstrel show he has written and is starring in. When his wife dies giving birth to their daughter, he disappears for 16 years.
The IMDb indicates that Edward Ulmer was in charge for the first five days, then shipped off to the second unit when Joseph H. Lewis took over. There are certainly enough bizarre angle choices to indicate that Wagon Wheel Joe was handling the megaphone, from the opening shot through the stage flies, through the low angle that the dance number in Havana is shot. Judy Clark performs her numbers like she wants to be Betty Hutton, and you can spot John Raitt just before he hit it big as Curly in the Chicago production of OKLAHOMA. The score was good enough to two Oscar nominations, for best score and best song -- and an immediate lawsuit, settled out of court.
However, this is a PRC movie, and it fails on two counts: star Benny Fields -- better known as husband and stage partner of Blossom Seeley, if that name means anything to you -- has no screen charisma and less energy, and the script looks like they started throwing out pages and didn't know where to stop. Gladys George seems to be there mainly to move the plot, and so does Jerome Cowan, although he's good as an agent collecting from both ends and nibbling at the middle. I'm sure it would have run another $40 to shoot enough footage to make them more than brooms to sweep Field along, which would have meant two fewer B Westerns that year.
Minstrel shows had been old hat in 1920, and by the time this was made, it was meant to appeal in a purely nostalgic sense to small-town audiences. Nowadays, you couldn't put this on anywhere. Nonetheless, that's where backstage musicals like this live, and that's where it succeeds. The minstrel show that starts it looks right for the era, and the swing version that closes is nicely done, thanks to choreographer Jack Boyle. It's certainly no movie to show to a modern movie fan, but to someone who loves old musicals, it has some charm.
