Thanks a Million

After becoming Warner Brothers big musical star in the Thirties, Darryl Zanuck who had formerly been chief of production at Warner Brothers before going to 20th Century, got Jack Warner to loan him Dick Powell for two films. The second was On the Avenue which may have been his best film in the decade and this one, Thanks a Million which is almost as good.

Powell desperately wanted to broaden his range, but the only thing Jack Warner gave him that could be classified as broadening was A Midsummer Night's Dream and that was a bit too broad. While both Thanks a Million and On the Avenue were not heavy drama, the writing was considerably above what Powell was given at Warner Brothers.

I happened to have some old vinyl albums which contained Dick Powell's recordings of the songs he sang from this film even though I had never seen it until recently. I liked the score that Arthur Johnston and Gus Kahn wrote, very much and it was what prompted me to get a bootleg tape of Thanks a Million. I'm glad I did.

It's one of the best political satires, I've ever seen done. Powell is a singer with a troupe traveling by bus to New York when it inevitably breaks down. To sing for their supper they join forces with political candidate Raymond Walburn to provide entertainment at his rallies. Soon they take over and one night when Walburn gets to drunk to go on, Powell gives a synopsis of his speech. Then political bosses Alan Dinehart and Paul Harvey get the bright idea to substitute Powell as their puppet candidate.

Elect a singing governor, nonsense you say. I would hasten to remind you that in that same era, Jimmie Davis was elected governor of Louisiana, Wilbert Lee O'Daniel was elected governor of Texas, and Glen H. Taylor became Senator from Idaho on the strength of their radio entertainment. Not as far fetched as you think. And very shortly Powell's home studio would be signing a mid-west sports announcer to an acting contract who would one day be president of the United States.

Powell gets able support from Ann Dvorak and Patsy Kelly as a singing sister duo, concert violinist David Rubinoff, radio's Fred Allen in the kind of role William Demarest later did for Preston Sturges. But acting honors go to Raymond Walburn. Walburn had playing these bloviating jovial type politicians down to a science, but he was never better than in this film as the tipsy fatuous judge the political bosses nominate as a puppet. He steals every scene he's in and the film should be preserved for him alone as well as one of Dick Powell's best musicals.

The songs Powell sings in this film Thanks a Million, I'm Sitting High On a Hilltop, and I've Got a Pocketful of Sunshine are very good. The last two were the philosophical type numbers that normally one would associate with Bing Crosby. In fact next year Arthur Johnston the composer part of the team would be writing for Crosby, they'd be doing Pennies from Heaven over at Columbia.

You made a million dreams come true and so I'm saying thanks a million to you, Dick Powell.

Dick Powell sings "Thanks a Million" in this 1935 film also starring Fred Allen, Ann Dvorak, Patsy Kelly and Paul Whiteman and his band. A group of stranded entertainers find work performing during political rallies. When the candidate shows up drunk, Powell pinch-hits for him, and the party machine decides to make him their candidate for governor.

This ridiculous premise gets wonderful, satiric treatment from director Roy del Ruth, and the songs are wonderful. Powell sings what became a hit for him, "Thanks a Million," as well as "Sittin' on a Hilltop" and "A Pocket Full of Sunshine." Ann Dvorak and Patsy Kelly dance and sing to "Sugar Plum." They're all absolutely delightful. Powell's acting is charismatic, his voice charming, and who would have ever guessed that under all that juvenile sweetness there was a tough actor and an excellent producer waiting to emerge.

The film pokes great fun at local government, and Fred Allen and Patsy Kelly keep the jokes going. A look back and more innocent times at a film that hopefully lifted some people out of doldrums when they saw it.

...made at Fox shortly after Darryl F. Zanuck took over the studio when he realized that Warner Brothers would always consider him just another employee. There is quite a bit of talent taken from Warner Bros. - director Roy Del Ruth and leads Dick Powell and Ann Dvorak as well as Alan Dinehart who always played less than reputable characters.

A traveling vaudeville troupe is having difficulty getting gigs and is on their way back to New York when the bus stops in a small town during a pounding rain storm. Troupe manager Ned Lyman (Fred Allen) goes inside an auditorium to get out of the rain and sees an old has been judge of a politician stumbling through a boring political speech - He is the Commonwealth Party's nominee for governor. When the rain stops everybody leaves. Nobody wants to hear what this guy has to say. So Lyman convinces the Commonwealth party leaders to hire his troupe to entertain before the judge speaks to get people in a receptive mood.

This is working out pretty well until one night the judge shows up drunk to a rally and is thus in no condition to speak. They get crooner Eric Land (Dick Powell) to give the speech for the judge and he's a huge hit with the audience. The party leaders come to Eric and ask him if he'd consider running for governor in the place of the judge. He agrees only after his girlfriend Sally (Ann Dvorak) tells him that he'll be singing on the radio and that the publicity would be a great way to get out of vaudeville and into radio for good. Besides, who would vote for a crooner for governor? What could go wrong?

Well what goes wrong is that the party boss who enlisted him has a wife who likes the material trappings of her marriage but likes to play the field, and Eric is the field she'd like to play in next. Also, Eric is actually pulling ahead of his opponent AND apparently Eric will be expected to hire a bunch of grifters into his cabinet so that they can steal from the taxpayers. How will this all work out? Watch and find out.

This film is much more sublime than Warner Brothers musicals of the 1930s after the code, many of which put lots of fast talking and flurries of action to replace the sharp edged dialogue and situations they could no longer do. Zanuck figured out how to do musicals in the time of the code - he'd do plenty in the 1940s - but at this time he didn't have the talent to do them yet. Thus all of the borrowing. This has the great feel of old time radio with what I'd even call a "cozy" scene opening the film as the troupe travels on the bus in the pounding rain one night with the movie's signature theme "Thanks a Million" playing on the radio.

A fine-tuned crooner, two dancing sisters, a fast-talking agent, a gin-soaked gubernatorial candidate and an unemployed orchestra troupe collide with a pack of corrupt officials in this well-honed production, often classified as "the greatest political comedy of the Great Depression."

But, in a broader sense, it may well rank as the most entertaining political satire in film history.

Thanks a Million (20th C Fox 1935) would become an early Musical for the newly-formed 20th Century Fox Studio, for which crews constructed Sound Stage #16, a theatre set, to film "a show within a show," casting scores of extras as audience members.

This films's four leading characters arrive from varying entertainment backgrounds.... Dick Powell, a major star of Warner Bros. musicals, as 42nd Street (1933), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Footlight Parade (1933) and Twenty Million Sweethearts (1934), had performed as a tenor in his early career.

Ann Dvorak, a child star in the Silents, had achieved recognition as a leading lady at Warner Bros. In Three on a Match (1932), she, Joan Blondell and Anne Shirley are billed above Bette Davis Warren William, Lyle Talbot, Humphrey Bogart, Allen Jenkins and Edward Arnold.

Fred Allen, host of several radio programs between 1932 and 1949, including "Town Hall Tonight" and "The Fred Allen Show," would arrive from NYC for his first major feature film roll here.

Patsy Kelly, a vaudeville dancer/comedian from childhood, had arrived in Hollywood four years earlier, to co-star with Thelma Todd in a series of comedy short films.

"Thanks a Million" introduces Eric Land (Dick Powell), Sally Mason (Ann Dvorak), Phoebe Mason (Patsy Kelly), Ned Allen (Fred Allen) (Actually should/be Ned "Lymon"), along with Tammany (Benny Baker) and David Rubinoff and the Yacht Club Boys (Charles Adler, Billy Mann, George Kelly, James V. Kern) in its opening scene, aboard a bus being chauffeured (by Herbert Ashley) through a downpour.

As the vehicle's radio receives an instrumental version of the song "Thanks a Million," performed by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra, Ned challenges the Bus Driver that his troupe could outperform (after a little edging by Phoebe).

As the band prepares, Sally learns from Eric that he hails from this state, which they're crossing en route to New York City, and once swore that he wouldn't have returned without achieving success as a singer.

But soon, they're stranded. During a stop over, Ned schemes employment with Mr. Grass (Andrew Tombes) and other Commonwealth Party's gubernatorial candidate's election committee members to embellish the ticket with entertainment coinciding with speech-making.

This plan partially backfires on the heels of Sally and Phoebe's song and dance performance of "Sugar Plum" and Eric's spectacular delivery of "Sittin' on a Hilltop," no one would stay to hear Judge Culliman (Raymond Walburn).

At a celebration party, with Eric, Phoebe and the Yacht Club Boy's singing a politically flavored rendition to the tune of "Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue," Ned enters to douse their enthusiasm, delivering an ultimatum from campaign headquarters, thereby redirecting any plans from New City on.

But the plot thickens as Judge Culliman arrives at the next venue not feeling much pain. Enter politicians from the Commonwealth Pary: Mr. Kruger (Alan Dinehart) Maxwell (Paul Harvey), Mr. Casey (Edwin Maxwell), plus Mrs. Kruger (Margaret Irving), who form agendas of their own.

Before the election is decided, more tunes fill the air: Eric and the Yacht Club Boys team for the magnificent "Sittin' on a Hilltop."

Gov. Wildman's (Charles Richman) reelection committee hires Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra, featuring Ramona and the King's Men, to perform "New O'leans."

And with David Rubinoff at his side on violin, Eric delivers the title song, "Thanks a Million," which would go on to become one of Dick Powell's hit records, as well as signature song.

Patsy Kelly and Fred Allen keep the wisecracks coming through to the ending, a scene which ranks among the most highly implausible endings in film history.

But the very premise of "Thanks a Million" is political farce, so this makes it all the more memorable.

Although the golden days of radio were long before I was born, I've always enjoyed the great radio comedians and was thrilled to see this Fred Allen movie being shown around the time of the 2008 election.

Fred Allen, who passed away in the early 1950s, was a contemporary of George Burns, Bob Hope, and Jack Benny, who pioneered the format of the sitcom in radio and later onto television. Unfortunately, Mr. Allen did not live long enough to make it into television (and he admittedly had a "face for radio", as he put it).

It is AMAZING to see how much the political parody in the movie Thanks a Million still hits the mark; the song "Square Deal Party" is a gem. If you get the chance to see this movie, don't miss it (I would recommend taping it - if you enjoy political satire, you will probably want to hear the lyrics of "Square Deal Party" again). It should be shown by the classic movie channels again WELL BEFORE 2012!!!

Fred Allen has an enjoyably sardonic, self aware delivery in this movie; it can be argued that his political satire on the radio was the first America had within that genre, if not some of the finest at that time. The Looney Tunes character Foghorn Leghorn (think the big rooster with the southern accent) is obviously based on the character Senator Claghorn from his "Allen's Allen." Fred Allen was a wordsmith who coined the phrase "low man on the totem pole" and is seriously underrated, in my opinion. Anyone who has an interest in American comedy/political satire and is not yet familiar with Fred Allen should spend a little time reading up on him and learning about a great American comedian who is sadly neglected and unknown today.