GManfred Good, Old-fashioned musical of the kind no longer made in Hollywood - partly because musicals went out of style and partly because of the antiquated subject matter. In this case, you have to be of a certain age to appreciate the storyline. It concerns a made-up feud between two old-time names, Ben Bernie who was a band leader, and newspaper columnist Walter Winchell. The feud was carried on mainly on radio and in newspapers.Have I lost you yet? If so, you're probably too young to remember any of the stars or the songs. Alice Faye was as famous as she was pretty, but Jack Haley had yet to achieve immortality as the Tinman in 'The Wizard Of Oz". Patsy Kelly had a long career as an abrasive comedienne in many movies and Joan Davis had yet to hit it big in television. And radio was the main medium in those days - no TV or DVDs or internet or any related device.Us old-timers can appreciate, but you young folks who are movie archaeologists will find plenty to like here, including several good songs which were popular a long time ago, like "Never In A Million Years" and "There's A Lull In My Life", and the dubbed voice of Buddy Clark, a Golden Age singer. If you can find this picture, watch it - as far as I know it hasn't been released in any format yet.

mark.waltz In "The Wizard of Oz", Tin Man Jack Haley was searching for his heart, but in this earlier 20th Century Fox musical, he found himself searching for courage, afraid of a big metal box that could have been melted down to make the Tin Man's hat. He's billed way below a bunch of top stars, but really is the lead, a milquetoast radio station page who has a crush on radio singer Alice Faye but goes numb as he tries to face his fears of singing. One day by accident, he tries to get over his fear and sings into what he believes to be a dead microphone but which actually goes live on the air as bandleader Ben Bernie plays. Pretty soon, Bernie's hated rival, Walter Winchell, is forcing Bernie (a real-life bandleader) to come up with what he has named as "the Phantom Crooner", with all but Faye unaware that Haley is singing into what he believes to be just a rehearsal session. That includes Winchell's wise-cracking secretary Patsy Kelly (who happens to be Haley's sister) and Kelly's vinegary voiced boyfriend (grouchy Ned Sparks), providing a lot of laughs and plenty of fun big band late 1930's music.Plenty of insults fly around the room as Winchell and Bernie (the top-billed stars) go at each other-Winchell in his column and Bernie on the air. Like Jack Benny and Fred Allen, theirs is an obviously made up feud, and really, you can't help but realize that they actually worship the quicksand that the other one walks on. Having just played Haley's wife in the college football musical "Pigskin Parade", Kelly is very funny, while future star Joan Davis proves herself to be a very funny girl as she plays a knocked about Spanish dancer (!) in an amusing comedy dance sequence. Haley is actually dubbed by Buddy Clark, but it took some research for me to prove that. Haley had sung in musicals before, but something in his voice was very different, even if the crooner style is obviously not him, the sound is quite similar. "Never in a Million Years" is a very pretty ballad, but was overshadowed by Faye's big solo, "There's a Lull in My Life", a very blues style number that was part of her transition from brassy blonde bombshell to gentle leading lady.A hysterical group of character actors add even more laughs, with Walter Catlett part of the unbelieving Winchell team, and Etienne Girardot (the religious nut from "Twentieth Century" and Edward G. Robinson's miniature imperious boss from "The Whole Town's Talking") very funny as the man sitting next to Haley during a radio show whom Haley incorrectly assumes to be the phantom crooner. Barnett Parker is hysterically funny leading the radio show audience in a chorus where Haley's "phantom crooner" voice is heard in the radio station's office and leads to the confusion concerning Girardot. An above average song score by Mack Revel and Harry Gordon makes this a must for classic movie fans. There will be no time for napping once this comedy gem gets going, so waking up isn't an option.

David Allen Wake Up And Live (1937) is the best "feel good" musical movie ever made, and one of the top 10 musical movies of any kind ever made.Somehow, it disappeared, isn't ranked with famous musical movies....but deserves to be.Everything is right with this movie, and about it. The songs, the acting, the singing, the comedy, the machine gun musical numbers fired at the audience one after the other...all winners. Talent, talent, talent to a breathtaking level which ends in such a rousing way, one has no alternative but to cheer."Old movies used to make people feel good"......no movie proves the truth of this oft stated bromide than Wake Up And Live (1937).Walter Winchell got top billing for the movie...higher billing than the actual main characters played by Jack Hailey and Alice Faye.Winchell was wonderful beyond words, and is true proof that movie stars are never made, trained, or created....they were already there when some smart movie producer put a camera in front of them and "let them do their thing."When the movie camera can and does photograph charisma (with or without the help of microphones and sound recording), a movie star is born, and revealed.Walter Winchell was a natural movie star. He acted in vaudeville before he became a journalist celebrity, and was aware from actual experience as a paid performing artist of the problems and dilemmas actors faced. He didn't have to face those problems in the newspaper business. He moved from acting to writing, but always had the natural movie star actor ability we see shine brilliantly in Wake Up And Live (1937).Winchell has such charisma and is such a natural before the camera (he plays himself.....I don't think he ever did another movie, or at least not one like this where he was center stage so often, and wonderful every second of the time), there's no way to say how good he was. You gotta see him in Wake Up And Live (1937).Alice Faye (1915 - 1998), the female lead star of the movie proves color film isn't needed to show of the most incredible and hypnotizing blue eyes ever to appear in cinema at any time. She is so beautiful, and her eyes especially in the movie's abundant close-ups of her wonderful face, the viewer can't help being enchanted.Wake Up And Live (1937) is wonderful for many reasons....the set decoration is packed with art deco night club scenes better than most big Fred Astaire movies.Supporting actors and character actors of fame abound in Wake Up And Live (1937). Walter Catlett, Ned Sparks, William Demarest, Patsy Kelly, and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson....and on and on and on.......The movie (and every main character in it) has style and élan and charm and pizazz to a level seldom, maybe never reached before nor since......it showed the 1930's classy night club scene and brassy characters part of it all at its very best and most compelling.WAKE UP AND LIVE (1937) is a "Walter Winchell Theme Movie," one of several worth seeing.Two "Winchell theme movies" were made in 1932 (OKAY America and also BLESSED EVENT) when Walter Winchell was VERY important in the show biz world. He was a "wordsmith" of renown and enormous talent, and a showman extraordinaire.....his career went non-stop from the 20's until his death in the 70's. He was always thought important, and for good reason.The high quality of the actor cast in OKAY America (1932) shows the investment big shots in Hollywood thought worth making in a movie about Walter Winchell.....Lew Ayres, Maureen O'Sullivan, Louis Callhern, others. Lew Ayres was slower and less charismatic than Walter Winchell or Lee Tracy playing a Winchell type in BLESSED EVENT the same year. Reviewers complain about this, but never forget what an important actor Lew Ayres was in 1932 (he had had just starred in the biggest movie of those times, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT). Anything Lew Ayres did was and is worth seeing. OKAY America (1932) is "OK!" so ignore the critics and see the movie anyway.This is a quality movie, one of a group all based on the Walter Winchell character and phenomenon.Over movie history, "Walter Winchell" type "theme movies" (the world of gossip column "tell all" newspaper reporters) were made, most of them well done because the subject (Winchell and his dramatic ways) is inherently dynamic, fast moving, and interesting.BLESSED EVENT (1932 starring Lee Tracy appeared the same year as OKAY America (1932), and was based on a Broadway play from 1932 which dealt with "the world of Winchell" (without naming him directly).Winchell himself appeared in WAKE UP AND LIVE (1937 Fox) playing himself "doing his thing" and the movie is wonderful, but also, mysteriously, hard to get, not ranked among the "great" 30's musicals, which it certainly was and is.SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957)starring Burt Lancaster was an anti-Winchell movie (Lancaster played Winchell as a villain, while the earlier Winchell movies presented the "Winchell type as sympathetic and positive).However, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957) but clearly a re-affirmation that Winchell was always interesting, always news for decades! Gathering various "Winchell theme movies" is worth doing. These movies are all good! --------------------------

bkoganbing One of Darryl F. Zanuck's peculiar quirks was that he frowned upon his musical stars making records. Unlike Bing Crosby who recorded nearly all the songs he sang in Paramount films and numbers from other Paramount films with the encouragement of Adolph Zukor, Zanuck felt that if the public bought records they wouldn't pay to see his films. Alice Faye did manage to record about 20 sides during the Thirties and the last batch she did was four songs from Wake Up And Live. Good thing to because Mack Gordon and Harry Revel wrote some of their best material for this film.The film itself was based on a make believe radio feud between columnist Walter Winchell and band-leader Ben Bernie who play themselves on screen. Make believe feuds among radio personalities was a common enough thing back in the day, it made for interesting programming and bigger Hooper ratings. The Hooper was the radio equivalent of the Nielsen before television became commercial.Jack Haley and Grace Bradley are a pair of vaudevillians who travel to New York hoping to cash in on the fact that Haley's sister Patsy Kelly is Walter Winchell's assistant. A mention in Winchell's column gets them inundated with offers, but Haley who apparently has no problem performing before a live audience of a hundred or so in a theater, gets paralyzed with fear over speaking and singing into a microphone that will broadcast to millions.But one night when Alice Faye is singing on Ben Bernie's program, Haley is in an empty studio singing into what he thinks is a dead mike. His voice comes over the air and no one knows who it is. Immediately he's dubbed 'The Phantom Troubadour' and the hunt is on to find him. It's a contest between Winchell, Bernie, and a bottom feeding sleaze-bag agent played by Walter Catlett. Of course Faye finds out first and looks to exploit Haley in her own way.It's a nonsensical plot, from an era that spawned this kind of nonsense. Doesn't detract a whit from the fact it's an entertaining film with Alice Faye singing at her very best.But you won't hear the familiar voice of Jack Haley that you know as the Tinman from The Wizard of Oz. Instead Haley's voice in this film is dubbed by one of the great radio crooners of the time, Buddy Clark. Buddy never did too much work before the camera, but on radio he was one of the most popular singers in his era. Sadly he was killed in a plane crash right before the era of television, I'm sure he would have made it big there.Alice and Buddy get to sing the title song, Never In A Million Years and Swell Of You. Alice does There's A Lull In My Life and Buddy sings Ooh, But I'm Happy. Long before I finally got to see Wake Up And Live I had a long playing 33 1/3 vinyl album of Alice Faye with the four songs she sings before Zanuck put an end to her recording career. I knew the songs and loved them. So it was a special treat for me to finally see the film and more so to hear Buddy Clark sing as well even if the words came out of Jack Haley's mouth.I think if you can ever catch Wake Up And Live you will feel as I do about the great singing voice of Buddy Clark.