King of Burlesque *** (1936, Warner Baxter, Alice Faye, Jack Oakie, Mona Barrie) – Classic Movie Review 10,736

Six decent songs ‘Lovely Lady’, ‘Shooting High’, ‘Whose Big Baby are You?’, ‘Spreading Rhythm Around’, ‘Too Good to Be True’, and ‘I Love to Ride the Horses on a Merry-Go-Round’, a strong cast and a vivid, well-staged production enliven director Sidney Lanfield’s bright and sassy 1936 20th Century Fox musical King of Burlesque.

But this tale of the fall and rise of a Manhattan burlesque musical producer, Kerry Bolton (an effectively typecast Warner Baxter), is so thin that the whole enterprise looks more like a glossy revue rather than a coherent film. He spurns his top singer and marries a selfish socialite. Feisty Alice Faye as the top singer Pat Doran, who returns from success in London and saves the day for her buddy Baxter, and wonderful Fats Waller as Ben help to make it really worthwhile. Jane Wyman appears briefly as a dancer. It is shot in black and white by J Peverell Marley but colour would have been better.

It is remade in Technicolor as Hello Frisco, Hello (1943) with Alice Faye and Jack Oakie returning in the same roles but different character names as heroine and sidekick, along with John Payne and Lynn Bari.

Also in the cast are Mona Barrie, Arline Judge, Dixie Dunbar, Gregory Ratoff, Herbert Mundin, Fats Waller, Kenny Baker, Dixie Dunbar, Nick Long Jr, Charles Quigley, Keye Luke, Herbert Ashley, Sam Lee, James C Morton, Al Shaw, Vernon Downing, C Montague Shaw, Andrew Tombes, Harry Welch and Jane Wyman.

It is shot at 20th Century Fox Studios, 10201 Pico Blvd, Century City, Los Angeles.

King of Burlesque is directed by Sidney Lanfield, runs 86 minutes, is made by Twentieth Century Fox, is released by Twentieth Century Fox, is written by James Seymour, Gene Markey and Harry Tugend, based on the story by Viña Delmar, is shot in black and white by J Peverell Marley, is produced by Darryl F Zanuck and Kenneth MacGowan, is scored by Victor Baravalle and is designed by Hans Peters.

‘Lovely Lady’, ‘Shooting High’, ‘Whose Big Baby are You?’, ‘Spreading Rhythm Around’, and ‘Too Good to Be True’, have music by Jimmy McHugh and lyrics by Ted Koehler, and ‘I Love to Ride the Horses on a Merry-Go-Round’ has music by Lew Pollack and lyrics by Jack Yellen.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,736

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