Dashing John Boles was a heartthrob leading man of the 1930's, quite popular early in the decade as a gentle, charming, cultured man usually of means. Superstardom understandably elluded him in an era where most of the big men on the screen were rough and/or brash: Gable, Cagney, Tracy, Raft, etc. He's probably best known today for the films in which he played Shirley Temple's father and the soap operas BACK STREET and STELLA DALLAS. His screen career crashed in 1938 and returning to the screen three years later, there were only a few more films for him, often low-budget pictures for poverty row sudios like ROAD TO HAPPINESS . This one is also a soap opera but it can't be called a "women's picture" since the sympathy is completely for the man here.
Boles is cast as a rather in the tooth aspiring opera singer, a voice student whose been abroad studying for several years only to return to discover his wife has divorced him, married a millionaire, and packed off their son Billy Lee to military school. Boles is indifferent to get his wife Mona Barrie back, seeing her as the frosty money lover she is but he demands custody of their son which his utterly disinterested wife hands over without much protest. Boles takes a small room at a boarding house for him and his son but finds it impossible to crack the high-brow music market but after long unemployment finds a gig as the voice of an Indian in a kid-oriented cowboy radio show. But it's not much money and Billy's kind-hearted stepfather wonders if perhaps he should adopt the boy, not that mother dearest gives a hoot preferring some curiously low-class friends for the Park Avenue social climber she is (one of these pals supplies my title quote upon hearing Boles' western broadcast).
John Boles is the whole show here, he's his patented charming gentlemen, as in his salad days, so sober and mature on screen to seem years older than his true age (early forties now). Billy Lee, a child actor with dozens of small credits in the 1930's, has one of his largest roles as the beloved son and does well walking a fine line of sincerity without being cloying. The print I saw of this film had a few cuts that were probably film repairs rather than editing; Boles' audtion for radio comes out of nowhere after a scene at the boarding house that clearly hadn't wrapped up. The print also had no credits beyond a title card naming the four lead players (comic Roscoe Karns is the fourth in a fairly straight part as Boles' agent), no mention of writers or director but this is also likely a case of missing footage rather than anyone not wanted to be credited. The print I viewed also contained no "shipboard" scenes, hence no Ruth Clifford. It's not a bad little film but not very memorable however if you are a fan of John Boles, you might actually like it.
