Cult Flops - Dancing Pirate

RKO/Pioneer Pictures, 1936

Starring Charles Collins, Steffi Duna, Frank Morgan, and Luis Alberni

Directed by Lloyd Corrigan

Music by Richard Rodgers; Lyrics by Lorenz Hart

Now for one of the most peculiar cult flops I've ever seen. It's not scary, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or inherently offensive or badly made, like Golden Dawn. In fact, it's history. This was the second feature-length film made in two-strip Technicolor after the comedy Becky Sharp in 1935, and the first musical. In a way, this odd little film could be thought of as the ancestor of all those MGM and 20th Century Fox Technicolor extravaganzas set in the past that flooded theaters in the 40's and 50's. How well does the story of a dancing teacher in 1820's Boston who ends up literally teaching dance to Spanish ladies to save his life look nowadays? Let's begin in Boston, as dancing master Jonathan Pride (Collins) teaches the well-to-do of the city how to dance the scandalous waltz, and find out...

The Story: Jonathan is supposed to be on his way to visit a relative, but he's shanghaied by pirates and is forced to work for them. He manages to escape off the coast of Spanish California, where the overly anxious residents of a small town think he's a pirate and they're being invaded. It doesn't help that he ends up in the home of the town's mayor Don Emilio Perena (Morgan) and Perena's niece Serafina (Duna) thinks he's after her. 

Don Emilio and the town jailer Pamfilo (Alberni) order him hung, until he shows them what he can do. Serafina insists on waltzing lessons. She protests how close they are at first, but gradually falls in love with Jonathan. Trouble is, she already has a suitor, the wealthy Captain of the Guards Don Balthazar (Victor Varconi). What they don't know is Don Balthazar was fired from the Army and is looking to loot the town with his men. Jonathan rounds up the local Native population, using a war dance to convince them that the best way to get what everyone wants is to clear out this phony before he marries Serefina and his men take over the town.

The Song and Dance: There's a lot to like here. For one thing, I'm glad they found the color in 2015 after it was lost for 80 years. The color copy currently on Tubi is stunning, a decent restoration with colors that really pop. For another, this is one of the most unique musicals I've ever seen. You just don't see a lot of movies, let alone musicals, that combine pirates (briefly), Native uprisings, swashbuckling heroics, big chorus numbers, bandits, mistaken identity, and a historical setting that doesn't often turn up outside of the Zorro franchise. The dancing genuinely is that good, especially Jonathan's solos. 

The Numbers: We open in Jonathan's Boston dance studio with his students doing awkward waltzing to a tinkling music box. Jonathan does a solo to an instrumental "Yankee Doodle" to show them how it's done. He literally dances for his life to prove that he's a dancing teacher on the noose platform as the mayor and jailer want to hang him just for some excitement. Serefina performs "Are You My Love?" outside Jonathan's door and in her room as they both prepare for the dancing lesson. Jonathan is so impressed with her flamenco solo to a Spanish-language song that he wonders why she needs to learn dance from him. 

He does teach her the waltz using his music box, but the moment he touches her waist, she thinks he's being improper, and he ends up back in jail. She finally works on it with her servant and realizes that it's dancing, not impropriety. He sings "When You're Dancing the Waltz" to her in a moonlit courtyard...and they're so lovely, everyone in the town joins in and turns it into a huge production number. Jonathan's "War Dance" is contrasted to the pious Spanish hymn the townspeople perform as they enter the church for Serefina and Don Balthazar's wedding. The move ends with another lavish, cape-flourishing chorus number to "When You're Dancing the Waltz." 

What I Don't Like: This can get a little too unique at times. It feels like a mish-mash of ideas someone just threw together that would look nice in color. Despite the title, the pirates appear for all of five minutes in the beginning of the movie. We have the townspeople continually insisting that Jonathan is a pirate, despite his protests to the contrary, Jonathan teaching the ladies to dance, and when Don Balthazar and his men show up in the second half. That would be enough for three normal historical musicals, and none of those stories really have much to do with one another. 

Not to mention, for a movie called Dancing Pirate, there could have been a lot more music. There are only two Rodgers and Hart songs, both of which are far from the team's best work, two major chorus numbers, and three solos, two for Jonathan, one for Serefina. There's also the simple fact that I can understand why Collins would only do a few more films after this, and only one with any kind of starring role. He is a wonderful dancer and is charming enough, but he's also kind of dull for a man whose dancing sparks a Native uprising.

The Big Finale: Interesting curiosity if you want to learn more about color and dance on the screen, but nothing you need to go out of your way for.

Home Media: It's in the public domain, and both color and black and white versions are easy to find. (The color version at Tubi is missing a few minutes, for some reason, but the copy is decent.)

DVD

Blu-Ray

Tubi - Color Version

Tubi- Black and White Version

Back to School Again - High School Hero

Monogram, 1946

Starring Freddie Stewart, June Preissler, Noel Neill, and Jackie Moran

Directed by Arthur Dreifuss

Music and Lyrics by various 

Let's go back to school with the Teen-Agers in this B-comedy. Drive-in fodder for teens goes back way further than the Beach Party films. Monogram created this series directly for this new breed of consumer. The war years gave teens a life of their own, with their own language, clothes styles, and culture, which exploded in the late 40's and 50's along with the population. This would be the third of four films in this series. We covered the first, Junior Prom, back in 2022. How does the football season at Whitney High look nowadays? Let's begin with that fateful game and find out...

The Story: Actually, Whitney's team is terrible. They lack a star player like Fairview's Jimmy Forrest (Jackie Moran) and keep losing to their rivals. Not only that, but the school's newspaper may shut down due to lack of circulation, and Professor Townley (Milton Kibbee) wants to replace the student performers with professionals at the school bazaar. Freddie goes to Jan Savitt (himself) and his singer Chi-Chi (Lita Baron) for help. Jan thinks he's there to be his next singer and convinces Chi-Chi to make him fall in love with her. 

Meanwhile, Freddie and his best friend Lee Roberts (Warren Mills) sees Freddie's girl Dodie (Preissler) knock every guy on the field over when she thinks he's two-timing her and convinces her to join the team and play in his place. This works until Dodie's reporter sister Betty (Neill) gets photos of her, of Freddie with Chi-Chi, and of the governor with all of them and reveals the deception. Now Dodie and all of the kids have to figure out how to win the big game against Fairview without Dodie, convince the governor (Pierre Watkin) that they mean no harm, and get them all back into that big student show, before they all end up expelled.

The Song and Dance: For all that the so-called "kids" are way too old for their roles, there's still a lot of talent to be found here. I do like that a girl ends up saving the football team and comes up with the idea that wins the game in a plot that pre-dates the college football comedy Necessary Roughness by almost 50 years. Preissler has way too much fun off and on the field, especially shoving all those guys aside to get to her man! Anne Rooney as the youngest Rodgers sister gets her own mildly amusing subplot spouting half-baked psychology theories after she falls for her psychology teacher (Leonard Penn). 

The Numbers: We open with "Fairview March" as Fairview High celebrates its big win over hapless Whitney and its big star Jimmy Forrest. Freddie Slack and his Orchestra play the jivin' instrumental "Southpaw Serenade" after two kids put a nickel in the jukebox and dream about him and his musicians. "Football Frolics" pits the girls against the boys in a mock dance football game. (Girls win, by the way.) Freddie sings "You're Just What I Crave" to Dodie when they're out on a date at the Teen Canteen. Chi-Chi sings and wiggles her hips in a glittery dress to "Mi Caballo" with Jan Savitt's band. The majorettes perform a brief march and toss the batons routine to "Whitney Victory March," which becomes a number for the football team when they use their dance moves to confuse Fairview. The film ends with a reprise of "Whitney Victor March" and "Fairview March" as both schools celebrate Whitney's win together in a last big chorus number at the bazaar.

What I Don't Like: Uh, yeah, this is about as cheap of a B-movie as you can get. None of the kids look remotely like high schoolers or football players. (I'm pretty sure Frankie Darro was pushing 30 by this point, though at least he has less to do in this movie than he did in Junior Prom.) The story is even skimpier than the student body elections in Junior Prom. The subplot with Chi-Chi just seems stuffed in to get a nightclub routine and a little more glamour than most teens could provide in there.

The Big Finale: Ehh, same deal. Recommended for a few catchy numbers if you need a way to pass an hour after school or background noise on while your kids are doing homework. 

Home Media: To my knowledge, the Teen-Agers films are currently streaming only.

Tubi

Happy Labor Day! - Wake Up and Live

20th Century Fox, 1937

Starring Jack Haley, Alice Faye, Ben Bernie, and Walter Winchell

Directed by Sidney Lanfield

Music by Harry Revel; Lyrics by Mack Gordon

We celebrate journalists, gossip columnists, and those who work on the radio to keep us entertained and informed this week as we head into Labor Day. Comic rivalries, real and fictional, abounded on radio in the 30's and 40's as people listened in to hear just how long two opposites could keep tossing quips at one another. In real life, orchestra leader Ben Bernie and gossip hound Walter Winchell were close friends, but they started up a fictional feud on the radio. Not only did it net them both more attention, but it got to be so huge, it outgrew the airwaves. Fox finally made this movie based on their ongoing feud not only to bolster them, but as a showcase for their newest singing star, Alice Faye. How does this farce about a nervous young singer who gets more help overcoming mic fright than he bargained for look nowadays? We open at the nightclub belonging to Ben Bernie (himself) and a barrage of mildly insulting quotes from his buddy Winchell (himself) on a poster outside, then move inside to find out...

The Story: Eddie Kane (Haley) and his partner Jean Roberts (Grace Bradley) arrive in New York to audition for the radio. Unfortunately, Eddie's rejected when he develops severe fear of the microphone. Jean forms her own act, and Eddie gets a job as an usher at the station. He befriends Alice Huntley (Faye), the host of the self-help show Wake Up and Live, in order to conquer his fear of the mics. 

One day while alone in a studio, he sings into what he thinks is a dead mic. Turns out this microphone is very much live...and Eddie's golden voice ends up going out over the airwaves. He's a sensation as everyone wants to know who this "Phantom Troubadour" is, especially Bernie and Winchell! Alice figures it out and tells the radio station she'll set up broadcasts of his voice for a bigger salary. Trouble is, first, Eddie and Alice fall for each other, then a lot of people who are a lot less pleasant than even dogged Winchell and Bernie get involved with trying to find this unknown singer, including Jean and her manager Gus Avery (Walter Catlett) and Eddie's sister and Winchell's secretary Patsy (Patsy Kelly) and Winchell's dour assistant Steve (Ned Sparks).

The Song and Dance: This is a lot more fun than you might think from the goofy premise. Haley's adorable as the sweet singer whose golden voice causes all the trouble, and Faye plays off him nicely as the motivational speaker whose kind encouragement hides a will of steel. Bernie and Winchell do get a few good quips in, naturally at each other's expense, and Patsy Kelly has nearly as much fun trying to help them figure out what's going on here. Revel and Gordon's music is lovely; "There's a Lull In My Life" became a jazz standard. 

The Numbers: We open at Bernie's club with an instrumental number featuring some nifty fast tap dancing from the Condos Brothers. We hear "Oh, But I'm Happy" the first time when Jean and Eddie attempt their audition and Eddie suffers from his attack of mic fright. Jean ends up singing "I'm Bubbling Over" with two other young ladies on her own at a nightclub. Alice performs the title song for the first time as theme song of her radio show. Ben Bernie and his male singers give us a commercial jingle for "Red Seal Malt" before the Condos Brothers return with another fast tap routine, this time sitting down. 

The song that Eddie inadvertently performs for the entire listening audience is the ballad "Never In a Million Years." Bernie trots out a masked singer to reprise "Never In a Million Years" on his show, but Winchell figures out it isn't the real deal almost immediately. Eddie sings "It's Swell of You" for Alice...which is when she realizes he's the Phantom Troubadour. Eddie reprises the title song with her as it goes out over Bernie's show. Eddie sings "Camptown Races" with the audience as Eddie brings the man next to him up to Winchell...who turns out to hardly be a singer. 

Joan Davis does a hilarious Spanish spoof number "I Love You Much Too Much Muchacha" at Bernie's club with the chorus, and then basically flings a partner around with a filmy scarf. Alice gets to introduce the big hit from this one in an attempt to get Eddie back, the gorgeous ballad "There's a Lull In My Life." Eddie finally reprises the title song when he manages to get into the club. The movie ends with Eddie and Alice briefly reprising "Never In a Million Years," Jean telling Gus that she's not really "Bubbling Over," and Patsy trying to charge Steve's batteries with "There's a Lull In My Life," and Bernie and Winchell finally singing "It's Swell of You." 

Trivia: Haley was dubbed by crooner Bobby Clark.

There was a semi-sequel also featuring Bernie and Winchell later in the year, Love and Hisses. 

What I Don't Like: First of all, why was Haley dubbed? He was a genuinely good singer. Second, as you may have noticed, the story is pretty silly, and not the strongest in the universe. It's also very topical. If you don't know who Bernie and Winchell were or know anything about their radio feud or old time radio in general, you might not get as much out of this. 

The Big Finale: For all of Winchell and Bernie's sniping at each other, this ended up being surprisingly adorable. Highly recommended for fans of Faye, Haley, old-time radio, or the big Fox musicals of the 30's and 40's. 

Home Media: Alas, the only place you can currently find this one is on YouTube. 

YouTube