After being envisioned as a Technicolor A-list film, it was released in B&W (you can see the make-up designed for color). This Warners film boasted MGM star Charles King in his last starring musical with an odd assortment of players that include Irene Delroy and Lowell Sherman. Given star billing were the Broadway comics Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson in a plot that was not in the original Broadway play by Elmer Rice that starred Claudette Colbert and Roger Pryor. Olsen and Johnson goon their way thru this muddied effort that was originally titled "See Naples and Die." Inane plot has King as a reporter trying to interview a general but getting involved with a woman (Delroy) involved with a Russian noble (Sherman). King enlists the help of a courtesan (Vivian Oakland) to get the interview but everything is confused. Into this morass Warners injected Olsen and Johnson with the subplot of finding a man with a wooden leg who robbed a navy storehouse. Apparently this man is Noah Beery, who is also the man King is trying to interview. Apparently.
King and Delroy sing a few songs. Oakland also sings. They are fine but the film is a mess and the songs blah. Olsen and Johnson are on par with the Ritz Brothers. If Warners saw them as a new Wheeler and Woolsey, they were very wrong. High point is watching Lowell Sherman bitch about the Italian sun while smoking endless cigarettes and eating an orange. I kid you not.
Charles King's last MGM film was the 1930 Remote Control, starring William Haines. Other than a few shorts, King did not appear in films again. He was on Broadway in several shows through the 30s and died of pneumonia in London in 1944 while on tour entertaining the troops. This was Irene Delroy's talkie debut. She never clicked. She made 4 films in 1930 and 31.
King and Delroy sing a few songs. Oakland also sings. They are fine but the film is a mess and the songs blah. Olsen and Johnson are on par with the Ritz Brothers. If Warners saw them as a new Wheeler and Woolsey, they were very wrong. High point is watching Lowell Sherman bitch about the Italian sun while smoking endless cigarettes and eating an orange. I kid you not.
Charles King's last MGM film was the 1930 Remote Control, starring William Haines. Other than a few shorts, King did not appear in films again. He was on Broadway in several shows through the 30s and died of pneumonia in London in 1944 while on tour entertaining the troops. This was Irene Delroy's talkie debut. She never clicked. She made 4 films in 1930 and 31.