This is a terrific film. No masterpiece of film making, just lots of entertainment value and fun.
Sharpie dude Cesar Romero is the manager of a dance hall in an amusement park in Pennsylvania back in 1941. He drives a snazzy convertible car and spends the rest of his time punching out troublemakers at the dance hall, dancing and flirting with pretty girls to big Swing bands and gambling with his buddies. What a great life! Into the dance hall one night walks delicious singer Carole Landis. Romero is hooked from the moment he sees her.
Romero's nice guy buddy Joe plays the piano and leads the band at the dance hall with Romero keeping an eye out for his welfare in life. In the meantime, Joe has eyes for the cutie pie waitress in the restaurant of the hotel that everyone there seems to live in.
Landis begins her gig at the dance hall with a nice dissolve from her rehearsing one afternoon with Joe at the piano with her wearing ordinary street clothes to a sweet crane shot of her in a glamorous gown standing in front of a big band playing a Glenn Miller style ballad. All the boys and men in the house go gaa gaa over her as they ogle her while she sings "There's Something In the Air".
Landis keeps resisting Romero's advances and winds up walking home one evening along a country road after she and Romero have had a spat. Along comes nice guy Max and gives her a ride back to town. He's smitten, too.
The rest of the film revolves around more of the same plot and the picture is about as entertaining a "B" film as you could ever hope to see.
Lots of fine music from the beginning with the band playing some generic Swing number as crowds of people swarm into the dance hall.
There are any number of 'plug tunes' from other 20th Century-Fox pictures of the moment, as well as some nice Lindy Hopping by noted dancers Dean Collins and Jewel McGowan in what may be their only speaking roles on film - "Shoot the torso to me, Toots!" and "What are you, a chiropractor, anyway?" Immortality!
For what this film is and it's total lack of pretension, I rate it a nine out of ten.
If you enjoyed the Glenn Miller film ORCHESTRA WIVES (which featured both Romero and Landis, btw), you will likely enjoy DANCE HALL, too, for they both have that very mellow early 1940s ambiance of an America now long vanished.
