Dulces melodías

Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler must have been busy doing Shipmates Forever or Flirtation Walk when Sweet Music was given to Rudy Vallee and Ann Dvorak as leads. The property is typical of the stuff Powell and Keeler were doing at Warner Brothers at the time.

Vallee appears in Sweet Music with his Connecticut Yankee orchestra and when they weren't backing Rudy up when he was seriously singing, they cut up in a way that was not seen until Spike Jones made an appearance. Rudy and Dvorak start out as rivals for a Broadway review and then a radio show. Of course you know in the end they'll discover true love.

Ann plays a dancer and I have to say she had some nice moves in Sweet Music. The score is from a variety of composers and it has some Vallee standards like the title song, the comic song Outside which he introduced in the Twenties and There Is A Tavern In the Town. However the main song of the score is the Allie Wrubel-Mort Dixon ballad I See Two Lovers which is done by Helen Morgan.

Morgan appears as herself and she is singing the song in an audition and Vallee accompanies her with his orchestra. It's one of her great torch ballads and it was also recorded by Russ Columbo and Dick Powell. Any one of the three recordings I have of the song is a treasure.

Some of Warner Brothers best stock players are in this film with Ned Sparks as an agent, Allen Jenkins as a publicity man with a streak of zaniness in him. One of his zany stunts involves Alice White trying to drown herself for love of Rudy Vallee which results in White's brother Robert Armstrong who's a gangster trying to arrange a shotgun wedding with Vallee and White. Watch the film if you want to see how Rudy gets out of that one.

Dick and Ruby didn't miss anything with Sweet Music, nevertheless it's a pleasant musical comedy from Warner Brothers and will give the viewer a lot of pleasure still.