Oh, Sailor Behave!

This is a pretty standard issue early musical, and I happen to like the type. Charles King is good, Irene Delroy, whom I hadn't seen before in a musical role, has a good voice but a bland personality. I'm a fan of Lowell Sherman, and he doesn't disappoint here in a small role. He plays it to the hilt. The major problems, and the reason for my low rating, are Olsen and Johnson. I've liked them in other movies, even other early movies (they're quite good in "Gold Dust Gertie"), but they're just awful here. Obviously, Warner Bros. was aiming for a new Wheeler and Woolsey, but it didn't happen. Charles Judels also has a typically annoying scene during one of the better songs. I recommend this movie for fans of early musicals or of Charles King and/or Lowell Sherman, but you'll have to fast forward through the Olsen and Johnson parts, which alternate with the main plot parts.

After being envisioned as a Technicolor A-list film, it was released in B&W (you can see the make-up designed for color). This Warners film boasted MGM star Charles King in his last starring musical with an odd assortment of players that include Irene Delroy and Lowell Sherman. Given star billing were the Broadway comics Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson in a plot that was not in the original Broadway play by Elmer Rice that starred Claudette Colbert and Roger Pryor. Olsen and Johnson goon their way thru this muddied effort that was originally titled "See Naples and Die." Inane plot has King as a reporter trying to interview a general but getting involved with a woman (Delroy) involved with a Russian noble (Sherman). King enlists the help of a courtesan (Vivian Oakland) to get the interview but everything is confused. Into this morass Warners injected Olsen and Johnson with the subplot of finding a man with a wooden leg who robbed a navy storehouse. Apparently this man is Noah Beery, who is also the man King is trying to interview. Apparently.

King and Delroy sing a few songs. Oakland also sings. They are fine but the film is a mess and the songs blah. Olsen and Johnson are on par with the Ritz Brothers. If Warners saw them as a new Wheeler and Woolsey, they were very wrong. High point is watching Lowell Sherman bitch about the Italian sun while smoking endless cigarettes and eating an orange. I kid you not.

Charles King's last MGM film was the 1930 Remote Control, starring William Haines. Other than a few shorts, King did not appear in films again. He was on Broadway in several shows through the 30s and died of pneumonia in London in 1944 while on tour entertaining the troops. This was Irene Delroy's talkie debut. She never clicked. She made 4 films in 1930 and 31.

Charles King and Irene Delroy have great voices. Originally planned as a full scale musical, by the time that filming was coming to an end the Warner Bros. realized that the public was tired of musicals. It is a shame that the so called comics Ole Olsen & Chic Johnson were added to this picture in an attempt to sell this musical picture as a comedy. These men are about as funny as finger nails scraping against a chalk board. Their grating laughter is even more annoying. The picture would have been a lot better if all their parts had been cut out of the picture. Vivien Oakland surprised me with her voice... I had no idea she could sing. Her voice is pleasing. Noah Beery is hilarious as the villain. Lotti Loder and Charles Judels are amusing in their comic parts...

Unfortunately the presence of Ole Olsen & Chic Johnson completely ruins the picture....What Warner Bros. saw in them is beyond me. They went on the ruin two other expensive Warner Bros. productions in 1931 including the all Technicolor "50 Million Frenchmen" and the Winnie Lightner (planned musical) comedy picture "Gold Dust Gertie" --- I suppose fans of low-brow buffoons like the Ritz Brothers, The Yacht Club Boys or the Three Stooges might find them amusing.

True enough. It's a ramshackle affair, with Olsen & Johnson a couple of Navy Shore Patrolmen in Venice looking for a man with a wooden leg when they aren't making risqué remarks and assaulting women, Charles King and Irene Delroy trying to evade her nonce husband Lowell Sherman, and, of course, Noah Beery as a Montenegrin general.

There are two or three decent songs with lyrics by Al Dublin, but your pleasure will depend far more on whether you enjoy Olsen & Johnson than the script, which is based on a show written by Elmer Rice, improbable as that sounds. I suspect he was paying off an election bet.