Hooray for Love

Brash college man Gene Raymond is a would-be producer of musical shows. Ann Sothern sings in a nightclub. Thurston Hall is Sothern's father, another would-be producer looking for some money to put on his show, Hooray for Love, which will star his daughter. Raymond manages to borrow a bunch of money to finance the show, and the trio set about putting on an extravaganza.

Along the way, the show is off-again, on-again. The producers may be wanted by the police. Raymond gets to be great pals with Sothern and they exchange silly dialog. ("If this hadn't have happened, I'd have never discovered what a sap I am, would I?" "Oh yes, you would. I would have told you.")

The action slows way down for a series of musical numbers shown in rehearsal. A ballet bit with the famous Maria Gambarelli is impressive but feels out of a place. It's followed by a comic relief song delivered by Pert Kelton while her manager Etienne Girardot looks on fondly and musical director Lionel Stander makes rude comments. Sadly, it's just not too funny.

Later on, we do get a real musical highlight called "Living in a Great Big Way," with Bill Robinson, Fats Waller, and an almost forgotten dancer named Jeni Le Gon who is sensational. Again, it has nothing to do with the story but it sure is fun.

The plot, such as it is, finally reaches its conclusion and provides the expected answers to questions like, Will the show go on? And Will the stars get together? Overall, it's not great but has some good moments.

Douglas Tyler (Gene Raymond) pursues Patricia Thatcher (Ann Sothern) as both a performing partner and girlfriend. She's not having any of it. He struggles to get anywhere in the business of show. The Commodore talks him into investing in a show after he realizes that it's Pat's father. The show rehersal goes horribly with the bad singing of Trixie Chummy (Pert Kelton). Doug mortgaged his family home and is in danger of losing it.

I love Pert Kelton's comedic section and Bill Robinson's dancing. I really like the first half of the story. I'm less in love with the second half. It's nevertheless pretty good.

'Hooray for Love' is the great title of this goodish B-musical (and of one poor song near the closing). The best assets of this so-so show are its three African-American performers: the great Fats Waller, the great Bill Robinson, and the very talented (and pretty) dancer Jeni Le Gon. In recent years, Ms Le Gon's career has received much attention in retrospective: oddly, she received far too little attention (and far too few film appearances) during her prime years as a dancer. This can't be entirely down to racism, as other black performers were working steadily during that period.

I've never understood why Bill Robinson was nicknamed Bojangles. Some other tap dancers (such as Buck and Bubbles) wore double-plate tap shoes which created a jangling syncopated sound. But Robinson always performed in single-plate tap shoes which gave a clear crisp tone to his expert footwork. He's in fine form here, doing some of the best dancing of his career without the need to simplify his steps so that some lesser partner (such as Shirley Temple) can keep up with him. Jeni Le Gon shows her own expertise, easily keeping step with Robinson. Le Gon appears briefly in male garb, like Eleanor Powell.

As usual for films of Hollywood's classic era, there are some treasures in the cast here. Pert Kelton is less annoying than usual, speaking in a normal voice (for once). She performs a dance number which is intentionally inept, to good effect. Lionel Stander is good here, but would have been better if he weren't lumbered with an accent more appropriate for Gregory Ratoff or Leonid Kinskey. But the real find is Thurston Hall. A prolific character actor who appeared in literally hundreds of films, Hall usually played blustering millionaires. Here, he plays a Vitamin Flintheart-style "ack-torr" of the old school, and he practically steals the movie. Why didn't Hall get more chances like this? Georgia Caine, as a Margaret Dumont-style dowager, is excellent here in her scenes with Hall. (I kept waiting for some reference to 'Hall Caine'.)

The plot of this musical is nothing much. I was surprised to learn that Bradford Ropes worked on the dialogue of this movie. Ropes, a former chorus boy and stage actor, wrote the backstage novel that inspired the film '42nd Street': he was an expert at realistic showbiz dialogue and cynical wisecracks. I can't imagine what he contributed to this lacklustre movie. At least one cliché was avoided here: for once, we see a chanteuse (Ann Sothern) who has to clean up her own dressing room, instead of relying on a chucklin' black maidservant.

One of the delights of films from Hollywood's studio era is the frequent tendency for some obscure actor to be given a piece of business or a line of dialogue which makes him stand out. Here, an actor named Monte Vandergrift (who?) has precisely one line of dialogue ... but his delivery earns him one of the biggest laughs in the movie.

The songs? Forget it. They're all pretty bad, but Waller, Robinson and Le Gon transcend their weak material through sheer force of talent. Also, we get a chance to study Fats Waller's fingerwork on the keyboard ... but not while he's playing his trademark 'stride' piano style. There are minor pleasures throughout 'Hooray for Love', and I'll rate this movie 5 out of 10.

I found this movie in the 1970s and it usually played on or around Thanksgiving. I love Vintage movies like My Man Godfrey and this one. It is a totally underrated movie with one of the nicest casts around. Ann Southern, Gene Raymond, Bill Robinson and Jeni Le Gon. Guess you wonder who Ms. Le Gon was. She was a woman from Chicago that was not formally taught Tap but could mimic the moves until she got a role in the movie. She and Bill Robinson does a really crisp dance together. I saw this lovely woman on television about 10 years ago. She explained how she got the part.

What I really like is the chemistry of Gene and Ann and the little loose plot and the music. When Ann Southern Sings "I'm in Love All Over Again", it kind of pulls at my heart. Actually, I want to find this movie, I really do because for some reason it hasn't been back on television in about 15 years or better!

"Hooray for Love" is a potboiler comedy romance and musical revue typical of so many that all the Hollywood studios made in the 1930s. After sound entered moving pictures at the end of the 1920s, these musical revue type of films began to supplant the live performances that people were used to from vaudeville. But, a studio couldn't just string together a bunch of numbers and routines on film; although to audiences within a few decades looking back, it appeared that many of these old films were little more than that. So, they wrote stories in which to place all those numbers. And, most of these turned out to be little more than strings to tie together the musical numbers and comedy sketches.

The absolute rubber stamp of all these films is their setting in New York City. It had to be there because that's where Broadway is located. Broadway isn't just a street. It's the name of the general theater area of New York where live plays are staged, and that the street traverses. And, Broadway had been the birthplace and headquarters of theater shows since its first theater opened after the Dutch bought Long Island from the natives in 1626.

With so many movies showing the glitz and glimmer of the Big Apple, the draw of the big city to many small town kids was strong. The vast majority of those who left home for the lights and glamour of New York never made it in show biz, obviously. Some stayed and settted down after finding real work. Others went back home. And some struck out, seeking opportunities elsewhere.

Of course, Hollywood wouldn't have sold many tickets to movies that showed disappointment. Struggling and hard times, yes, until the breaks came. But then, the hero and or heroine would get the break and make it big with a hit on Broadway. A frequent variation on this theme would be the traveling theater shows that would take trains across the country to put on shows. In short order, these types of musical films - the revue formats, set on and off Broadway, became like the dime novels of literature of the time. The better talents appeared in musicals with more story substance and/or quality music and dance; and they were set in numerous locales from nightclubs in exotic cities to every imaginable setting.

Now, back to this 1935 musical revue and comedy romance. It's the standard hair-thin plot with just a slight variation, set on Broadway but without any standout musical talent, or any memorable numbers. Bill Robinson, a song and dance man of the period does some nice tap dancing and singing, but his numbers are forgettable, and the scenes are far too long and unimpressive. Legendary jazz piano player Fats Waller is wasted with some mundane key work. The music is sparse and not of star quality. Indeed, the film has just a few numbers stretched out and repeated a couple times.

One wants to give Gene Raymond and Ann Sothern better marks. They are very likable here. But the story just drags on and quickly becomes boring. Even the best of the humor, provided mostly by a middle-aged (53) Thurston Hall, wears thin after a while. This movie just doesn't have much.

For a comparison of films of the musical revue type, look at another RKO picture that also starred Gene Raymond. Two years earlier, the studio made "Flying Down to Rio." It was loaded with talent and great musical productions, and it had a good plot.