Swanee River: the Story of Stephen C. Foster (1939)

Oh my god. This is a biopic of the composer Stephen Foster, who wrote "Oh, Susanna!", "Swanee River", "Camptown Races" and a bunch of other songs. It stars Don Ameche, who is great! Andrea Leeds is not given anything to do except love Stephen Foster. Swanee River also stars... Al Jolson as EP Christy (of Christy's Minstrels fame). This makes the film truly unhinged as a historical object. There is an insane amount of blackface in this movie, and Swanee River seems to think it is laudable that Foster took music from the enslaved Black folks he knew and made good money off of it. This is sort of a crazy movie. And its ending is completely bananas.

Swanee River covers over the likely fact that Stephen Foster killed himself. It also invents a very strange alcoholism plot that feels completely fake onscreen, even if the man actually was a hard drinker. E.P. Christy, as it turns out, also committed suicide two years before Foster did. But Swanee River would have us believe that Christy (in blackface, of course) rushed from the theatre to Foster's bedside and then back to the performance, where he performed Foster's latest tune, "Old Folks at Home", to a crowd who sang along (they apparently memorize the lyrics spontaneously). Then the film – while Jolson and the crown are still singing – cuts to images from the American South, including a man picking cotton, a plantation mansion, and an old Black woman sitting outside a cottage. This is how the movie ends. It's unhinged.

Anyway you can watch this technicolor non-masterpiece on YouTube if you so desire.

Two with Sonja Henie & Tyrone Power

Thin Ice is a totally absurd Sonja Henie picture with Tyrone Power as her love interest. He's some Swiss prince or somesuch nonsense. This whole thing is stupidly absurd and delightful, and I enjoyed myself. Both this film and Second Fiddle (two years later) were directed by Sidney Lanfield.

Second Fiddle is a truly charming little Irving Berlin musical. This is fundamentally a much better musical than Thin Ice. All of the songs are diegetic, and of course Tyrone Power does not sing – although he writes a song and croaks out a few lovesick bars while writing it. I have to say that I don't think Sonja Henie is that interesting, but she's pleasant enough, and this film has Edna May Oliver doing tons of great comic shtick, and of course Tyrone Power. He's quite funny in this, and just as handsome as ever. This is a nice little riff on the formula established with Thin Ice, and Second Fiddle has great Irving Berlin tunes.

You'll Never Get Rich (1941)

This is a delightful film. I love the premise, and Rita Hayworth is completely dynamic in this. You'll Never Get Rich is, of course, a pro-war, pro-soldier bit of business, it being 1941, but this film is not hampered by jingoism or pro-war sentiments, even if the entire plot is designed as a kind of pro-military diversion. You'll Never Get Rich sees the army as sort of a funny place.

The film contains several excellent tap numbers, some with Fred Astaire alone and several with Rita Hayworth and Astaire together. There's even one in which Astaire never enters the shot with the crew of black musicians so that they can be cut out for especially racist markets. This is a really excellent movie, though, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

Incidentally, I've no idea what the title means. It hasn't a thing to do with the plot.

Ice Skating on Film?

Sidney Lanfield's odd musical comedy One in a Million stars Olympic gold-medalist and figure skater Sonja Henie as (what else would she be?) an Olympic gold-medalist in figure skating. The film's plot is lighter than air – there is a burned down hotel, apparently an arson-job, but no one cares who set the fire or why after the film's first thirty minutes and this little mystery is never solved. Still, the film made the Norwegian figure skater a big movie star. It was her first picture, and she was a hit in Hollywood.

Inexplicably, the great actor Adolphe Menjou shouts his way through this entire movie. Frankly, the whole thing is pretty stupid, and the songs are unmemorable, but Don Ameche sings a little (and who wouldn't want to listen to that pretty man serenade you?), and there are at least 3 pretty great numbers starring The Ritz Brothers – including a great bit where they play Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff and Charles Laughton and sing about being Hollywood villains... on roller skates.