Hard to believe I had never seen this movie.  Spencer Tracy plays real life Father Flanagan, who starts a school for homeless boys outside of Omaha, Nebraska.  Mickey Rooney is the toughest kid he's ever had to reform.  The movie was nominated for Best Picture and Tracy won Best Actor for this role.

I liked this movie but it was incredibly clichéd.  This is probably unfair because I'm sure it is the source of many clichés.  The real Boys Town is still going strong.  My brother probably already knows that it is the home of the World's Largest Ball of Stamps.  They also have a motto, "He ain't heavy, Father, he's m'brother", which was the inspiration of the hit song by the Hollies.  Neither the ball of stamps or the motto were in place in 1938.

Bank Holiday is a British film that tells the stories of various people traveling from London to spend a holiday weekend in the seaside town of Bexborough.  First is Catherine, a maternity nurse who has just had to break the news to Stephen that his wife died during childbirth.  She is going for an illicit romantic stay in a hotel with her boyfriend, Geoffrey.  Next is Doreen, going to compete in a beauty pageant, with friend Milly along for the trip.  Finally we follow working-class Arthur with his wife and three kids.  Catherine cannot get (understandably) morose Stephen out of her mind, and ends up greatly disappointing boyfriend Geoffrey.  Arthur spends all weekend ditching his wife and kids to go to the pub.  Doreen gives up her beauty pageant aspirations to console Geoffrey after Catherine returns to London early (to save Stephen from himself).

Sweethearts with Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald.  The operetta "Sweethearts" has been performing on Broadway for six years and still sells out every performance.  The biggest worry for producer Felix Lehman (Frank Morgan) is that he won't be able to hang on to his two stars, Gwen Marlowe (MacDonald) and Ernest Lane (Eddy).  Gwen and Ernest were married on the night of their first performance of "Sweethearts" and their marriage is as strong as the show.  They are very tired, however, of the radio broadcasts, charity performances, etc. scheduled by Felix and their showbiz relatives that eat up all their free time, and with the popularity of "Sweethearts" there is no end in sight.  When Hollywood comes calling, falsely promising lots of leisure time, they decide to quit the stage.  To prevent this, Felix and his writing team plot to cause a marital rift between Gwen and Ernest.  This works all too well and the two stars give up on Hollywood and perform in two separate road shows of "Sweethearts", each opposite the other's old understudy.  Eventually the truth outs and the couple reunites.

This film was in color!  It was the first all color feature for MGM, which was apparently the last major studio on the Technicolor bandwagon.  I found it quite distracting.  Also interesting was that Dorothy Parker co-wrote the screenplay.  "Sweethearts" was a real operetta by Victor Herbert, albeit from 1913, and most of the songs in the movie were actually from that show.

Familiar faces:  Ray Bolger (Scarecrow) has one song and dance number in wooden shoes.Gene and Kathleen Lockhart play two of the relatives.

Cool Times Square shot from the movie

At a boarding school for girls, scholarship student Natalie (Anne Shirley) is forced to snitch on popular girl Linda (Nan Grey) for staying out all night.  Linda's wealthy parents are summoned to the school and buy her out of expulsion with a promise to build a new library.  Linda's father meets and befriends Natalie, so he tries some shenanigans with identical corsages to build a friendship between the two girls.  His scheme backfires when Linda accuses Natalie of corsage theft.

Familiar faces: Natalie's beau is played by Noah Beery, Jr. (Rocky from "The Rockford Files"); Marjorie Main plays one of the teachers; and Ralph Bellamy is engaged to another teacher.

A wealthy aristocrat farmer (Melville Cooper) woos and weds a New York night club singer (Joan Crawford).  The family back home in Wisconsin is not very accepting of her.

As a movie this was not my favorite, but there were some interesting things in it.  The screenplay was co-written by Ogden Nash, better known for his light verse.  I did not notice any Ogden Nash-ian influences in the dialog.  There is a passing mention of Seabiscuit, who would run his famous match race against War Admiral in 1938.  The thing that caught my attention most, however, was in the opening scene.  Robert Young (playing Melville Cooper's brother) awakes from a sleeper berth in an airplane.  There is very little passenger air travel in the movies from MCMXXXVIII, so I was impressed with a plane that offers sleeper berths, something you don't see today.  The plane in the movie was the Flagship New York, which was a real plane flown by American Airlines.  It was a DST, or Douglas Sleeper Transport.  It could hold fourteen passengers.  A west coast to east coast flight would take over eighteen hours, but I imagine that the one in the movie was a Chicago to New York run.  American did run the Flagship New York on this trip but I don't see why it would take more than six hours.  Rich people need naps, I guess.

The Flagship New York





Familiar faces: Margaret Sullavan, Fay Bainter, Hattie McDaniel, Frank Albertson

Alice Faye, Joan Davis and Marjorie Weaver play Sally, Irene and Mary, three manicurists who are trying to break into show business.  Popular radio comedian Fred Allen plays their agent and Jimmy Durante is his eventual partner in producing a show.

There was an earlier (silent) movie with the same name that was Joan Crawford's breakout role.  Although this movie was nominally based on the same play as that one, the plot was apparently discarded and only the title kept.  In this one, Sally and her love interest Tommy each have a sugar daddy/mama willing to fund a show.  Sally's is an amorous Baron, Tommy's is a many-times-divorced gold digger played by Gypsy Rose Lee (as Louise Hovick).  For the show to go on Sally and Tommy must leave each other and promise to marry the money, but the other girls plot so save their romance.

A befuddled representative of the International Dance Exposition in Paris mistakes the tropical Club Balle (Think Bali) in New York for the American Academy of Ballet.  The club owners have just learned that despite playing to a packed house every night they are losing money hand over fist, so they take advantage of the confusion and accept the gig.  They pack up their entire night club act (along with the Schnickelfritz Band) and head to Paris.

This is the last of several "Gold Digger" Busby Berkeley musicals - the others star Dick Powell, this one stars Rudy Vallee. Rudy does a nice impression of Maurice Chevalier.  Besides Rudy Vallee, this movie stars Rosemary Lane (a Lane Sister).  It also has a full complement of some of my favorite character actors from MCMXXXVIII: Hugh Herbert ("hoo hoo!"), Allen Jenkins, Melville Cooper, and Edward Brophy.  The Schnickelfritz Band is like an earlier Spike Jones Band, playing crazy instruments or regular instruments in crazy ways.

Rudy Vallee doing Maurice Chevalier