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Simply A Masterpiece

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A Disappointing Continuation

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

A cast like this under the direction of Raoul Walsh results in a strangely talky and uninvolving film. The script has its share of amusing wisecracks, most of them delivered by Patsy Kelly; but the end result is very bland and conventional. Walsh shows an interesting liking for visually lining up his three female leads across the screen; and while its always fun to see Alice Faye during her glossy platinum blonde phase, with the mysterious exception of the uncredited James Miller nobody is really given much to do. And it does go on.

Alice Faye, Frances Langford and Patsy Kelly lose their jobs and can't afford to pay the rent. They enter an amateur contest at a local radio station as a singing trio, but lose to a big band lead by George Raft when Langford passes out mid-song due to lack of food. Raft asks them to join his band, and they become famous, which throws obstacles in the way of a romance between Raft and Langford. An engaging enough little trifle which is largely an excuse to include a lot of musical numbers, the highlight of which is a lady doing a song as a chicken.

Almost fifty years before Dream Girls made its Broadway debut, Paramount put out this film about a band-leader and a trio of singers whom he takes under his wing and then gets a little too bossy about their private lives. One wonders if someone at Paramount noticed the resemblance.Every Night At Eight is the title of the film and also the title of a radio show that the trio and the band-leader wind up with. The trio consists of Alice Faye, Frances Langford, and Patsy Kelly who are three girls with humdrum jobs, Faye and Kelly at a switchboard and Langford as a secretary. One day they wait for the boss to leave and decide to make a record on his Dictaphone machine. Unfortunately they're caught and fired.Luckily they get a break on an amateur hour radio show with Walter Catlett in a spoof of the famous Major Edward Bowes Amateur Hour. On the bill that night is band-leader George Raft and his orchestra of unemployed musicians from the New Deal Civil Works Administration. By the way, Catlett's performance is devastating.Raft won the Amateur Hour contest by default because Langford faints from lack of food. Still he recognizes a good thing when he sees it and signs the girls and gives them a name, The Swanee Sisters. Unfortunately just like in Dream Girls he interferes a little too much in their personal lives. Still it all works out in the end, but I won't tell which of them he winds up with.This is Alice Faye's first of two films that she did on loan out from Fox when she was with that studio. Alice gets a good song to sing entitled Speaking Confidentially, but in this film, she's overshadowed vocally by Frances Langford. Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields wrote most of the score for this film including the aforementioned song that Faye sang, but also from this score is I Feel A Song Coming On which the trio does and later Frances Langford sings the song most identified with her, I'm In The Mood For Love. As you can see McHugh and Fields really out did themselves in the writing of the score of this film. Langford also sings another gem, this one written by Ted Fio Riot, Sam Lewis and Joseph Young entitled Then You've Never Been Blue. Were it not for the other two songs, this one would have been the hit of the film.George Raft does nicely in a role that for once doesn't call for him to slug somebody. But the camera betrayed the poor man in this. Watch during the sequence of I Feel A Song Coming On as Raft is conducting the orchestra. He must have been wearing boots with Cuban heels that were two to two and half inches to give him extra height. I'm surprised neither he nor director Raoul Walsh noticed in the rushes and had it edited out.Also in that number is an obbligato version by a black singer named James Miller who is in his one and only film. It's a good rendition and I do wonder what ever happened to him.The best thing that Every Night At Eight has going for it is one of the best musical scores from the Thirties. And the wonderful stars who perform these numbers.

EVERY NIGHT AT EIGHT (Paramount, 1935), directed by Raoul Walsh, stars George Raft as a brash young band-leader named "Tops" Cardona in one of many musicals of the 1930s set in a radio station. Alice Faye, on loan from Fox Studios, billed second in the cast after Raft, appears platinum blonde with pencil eyelashes in the image of Jean Harlow, but with a personality all her own. Third billing goes to the wisecracking Patsy Kelly, while Frances Langford, in her movie debut, actually the central character, assumes fourth billing and the film's most notable songs. The story involves three singers who, after losing their jobs as switchboard operators, make the best of the situation by going on an amateur radio contest, hosted by the master of ceremonies (Walter Catlett). Before their turn to show their stuff, there's Henrietta (Florence Gill), a hen-faced woman whose specialty is singing like a chicken!; the Radio Rogues playing the Radio Romeos spoofing Dick Powell's "Don't Say Goodnight" from WONDER BAR (Warners,1934), and Tops Cordona and his band. Although the girls lose the prize money to Tops, they team up with him, and billed as "The Three Swanee Sisters," the girls soon become radio's singing sensation appearing on the air every night at eight. As time passes, Langford as Susan has fallen in love with the "all work and no play" Cardona (who is at times so full of himself), but fails to realize this until after the girls take a temporary walk out, but they come back in the end after he realizes he isn't any good without the girls vocalizing him, and save him from becoming "Flops" Cardona With the music and lyrics by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields, the songs are as follows: "Take It Easy" (sung by Alice Faye, Patsy Kelly and Frances Langford); "Don't Say Goodnight" (by Al Dubin and Harry Warren, sung by The Radio Rogues); "I Feel a Song Coming On" (instrumental band playing by George Raft); "Take It Easy" and "Speaking Confidentially" (Faye, Langford and Kelly); "Then You've Never Neen Blue" (a ballad written by Joe Young and Sam Lewis, sung by Frances Langford); "Take It Easy" (reprise); "I Feel a Song Coming On" (sung by Faye, Kelly, Langford/ solo by Faye/ James Miller/ chorus); "Every Night at Eight" (Faye, Kelly and Langford); "I'm in the Mood for Love," "I'm in the Mood for Love" (both sung by Langford); and "Every Night at Eight" (Faye, Kelly and Langford). During the production number of "I Feel a Song Coming On" there's a brief moment where Raft does some fancy dance steps while conducting the orchestra, something that couldn't be appreciated from the radio listening audience. EVERY NIGHT AT EIGHT, an agreeable 80 minute film, is very nostalgic look at old-time radio with fine cast, lively tunes and witty dialog. "I Feel a Song Coming On" and "I'm in the Mood for Love" are the biggest song plugs here, the latter being most associated with Langford. Rarely televised since the early 1980s, this is one of the many musicals from that era one can hope to be revived again. (**1/2)