The Knight Is Young

June Allyson was a complete unknown at the time she did this short subject with dancer Hal LeRoy. When they meet she's daydreaming in her room and LeRoy is painting a sign across the street.

Allyson does a little dance and LeRoy breaks out in a soft shoe up on his scaffold Before this ends she's his date to the signpainter's union annual bash.

Some nice numbers, songs that are unknown except for a couple. All packaged quite nicely at Warner Brothers.

June (June Allyson) is trapped in her apartment. She fears leaving would allow the landlord to lock her out for back rent. Her singing attracts the attention of Hal (Hal Le Roy) who is painting an advertising mural of a knight across the way. This turns into a musical short with some singing and some dancing and lots of pretty girls.

This is early June Allyson. Hal Le Roy is doing his lackey dancing. The man is all legs and arms with a wacky face. I've never heard of Earlyne Schools and she sadly died tragically young. I am not sure about the black knight reveal. Maybe somebody will explain that to me, but I'm guessing that it's because he's black. Ignoring that, this short is perfectly harmless innocent musical fun.

"The Knight is Young" is an MGM short of 1938 that accompanied a theater release of a feature film. I saw it on the DVD with MGM's "Best Foot Forward" of 1943. This short is a musical comedy that has some very good talent in the music and dance arenas.

Actor and dancer Hal Le Roy has the lead and does a couple of excellent tap and other dance numbers. The latter one is with a young June Allyson, who's just in her 8th short since beginning her film career the year before. Le Roy had a rather unusual dance style and was very adept at fast tap dancing rotating his feet back and forth behind one another. He made a couple dozen films - all but two by 1940, with two later appearances on TV. Most of his later career was back on the stage on Broadway and elsewhere.

Besides June Allyson, the short has Earlyne Schools as herself. She made only two movies and there's little to be found about her on IMDb or on the Internet. That's surprising because she had a fantastic voice in this film. One song was a classic and she could reach super high notes.

This short is very entertaining with some other dancers and a couple of choreographed numbers with a superbly coordinated dance troupe. There is a short scene that the DVD addresses in a written prologue before the film begins. Warner Brothers notes that the film reflects the culture of the time, but that it wrongly makes a derogatory racial slur.

This is one of many such shorts that MGM and all the major studios made in the 1930s to accompany feature films. Some of these showed little known entertainers of the time who were very talented.

Knight is Young, The (1938)

*** (out of 4)

Pretty good musical stars Hal LeRoy but the main attraction is seeing a young June Allyson getting her start. She plays a wannabe tap dancer who refuses to leave her apartment because she fears her landlord will lock her out since she doesn't have the rent. She spends her time talking to a large billboard across from her window, which includes Sir Galahad. Yes, she speaks to a billboard, which leads to a few musical numbers that are actually pretty good. This Vitaphone short isn't anything too special but Allyson is very lovely and does a fine job here. LeRoy isn't too bad either. On a technical level there's really nothing too special but this does serve as a good time killer.

.. but Warner Brothers didn't recognize her! How ironic since they own the "A Star is Born" franchise now. This is a Broadway Brevity that has a thinly devised plot to showcase some musical talent. In this case that talent is Hal Le Roy. Warner Bros. gave him his own starring venue in 1934's "Harold Teen", but he didn't really have any compelling screen presence as an actor. So from that point until they released him, Hal made appearances in WB musical shorts as an eccentric dancer with his "rubber legs" style of dancing.

In this short it is "The Sign Painter's Ball" in which a 20 year old June Allyson plays Hal's date that is the excuse for the musical merriment. Yes, THAT June Allyson. Who wound up at MGM as not one of their biggest stars maybe, but a star nonetheless. And WB just let her go. The climax of this film are awards being handed out to "models of the year" - people who modeled for the signs that were painted by said sign painters. Sir Gallahad - painted on a sign across from her rented room - has been somebody on whom June Allyson has a crush, but when he reveals himself from inside his suit of armor, Allyson has a surprise in store.

Worth the watch just to see some early June Allyson, and the music is catchy too.