Ignore the story as much as you can, and the erratic production design, and enjoy the Irving Berlin, there's a lot of it. 20th's big 1938 musical is mainly an excuse to cram as much Berlin as it can into a screenplay that makes utterly no sense. What year we're in at any given moment is almost never clear, but we start in, oh, 1914 or so, where longhair musician Tyrone Power (he mimes violin playing badly, but conducts rather well later) steers toward ragtime, to the disappointment of aunt Helen Westley and music professor Jean Hersholt, who have practically nothing to do. He forms a San Francisco swing band with the aid of pals Don Ameche and Jack Haley, and first despises then falls very suddenly in love with their singer, Alice Faye. Faye had first been hired by 20th to be a sort of Jean Harlow but quickly had her image changed to lady contralto; here, she reverts to sassy platinum blonde, for at least the first third. The Power-Faye romance is rather pointless, they stay apart and reunite without much provocation. The picture gets a boost with the late arrival of Ethel Merman; the first thing out of her mouth is, "AAAAHHH!" She belts some choice Berlin; too bad her best song, "Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil," leaves out its clever counterpoint. Power doesn't sing, he couldn't, but he does look like Tyrone Power, and for most audiences that was enough. Faye, as film historian David Shipman said, was no great shakes as an actress, but hers was a supreme example of an ingratiating temperament caught by the camera; she's a pleasure to watch, in sassy or dignified mode. Ameche leads a sappy rendition of "Easter Parade," and Haley hasn't much to do besides "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning." The fashions and cars go directly from 1918 to 1938 with nothing in between, and the stars, of course, never age, the better to keep them looking their best in time for the finale. Henry King, one of 20th's most reliable directors, guides it surely, though nothing can help that plot.
Review of Alexander's Ragtime Band
