Ben Blue Movies

This silent British comedy features at least seven vaudeville acts and was adapted from a popular stage musical that tells the tale of a shady nightclub proprietor who heads for Arcadia because he believes the jig's up and the cops are out to get him for running an illegal operation after closing time. Eventually he returns to re-create his club and win his wife back from a dishonest jockey. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Casting an envious eye towards the huge box-office take of Columbia's Grace Moore vehicles, Republic hoped to strike gold in a similar fashion by fashioning a screen property for Kansas-born Metropolitan Opera diva Marion Talley. As it turned out, Follow Your Heart was Talley's first and last film, but Republic at least deserved a gold star for effort. The star is cast as Marian Forrester, the daughter of onetime opera star Madame Bovard (Henrietta Crossman). Recalling the many heartbreaks and disappointments attending her own stardom, Mme. Bovard refuses to allow Marian to pursue a singing career. But with the surreptitious help of handsome Michael Williams (Michael Bartlett, another real-life singer) and bumbling but lovable voice teacher Henri Forrester (Nigel Bruce), Marian makes her Met debut, and her mother gracefully bows to the inevitable. Though there's plenty of "straight" singing throughout Follow Your Heart, the film's highlight is a burlesque of the "Sextet" from Lucia di Lammermoor. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Paramount's final "Big Broadcast" musical had perhaps the least exciting musical lineup of the series (Tito Guizar, The Shep Fields Orchestra, and opera singer Kirsten Flagstad are hardly household names today), but a slightly stronger storyline than the others, as well as a top-notch comic cast. This time out, most of the action takes place as sea, as S.B. Bellows (W.C. Fields) shows off his new invention: an ocean liner that can turn radio signals into electricity and part the waves at 100 miles per hour. He challenges another ship to a race while a number of music and comedy acts appear in the ship's showroom. Along with Fields, who performs several classic pool and golf routines, Martha Raye, Dorothy Lamour, and Ben Blue add to the laughs; Bob Hope made his feature debut here, and he even sings his future theme song, "Thanks for the Memories". ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

High, Wide and Handsome almost defies classification: Perhaps it's best referred to as a historical musical western comedy melodrama. Irene Dunne plays an itinerant circus performer who marries oilman Randolph Scott. The couple heads to Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859, where Scott is among the lucky prospectors who strikes oil. With no train service to the refineries, the townsfolk are obliged to build a pipeline, which is accomplished to the accompaniment of several rousing musical numbers by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein. The villainous element is represented by Alan Hale, who does his best to block the project to serve his own evil ends. Dunne's old circus friends come to the rescue with a herd of trained elephants! High Wide and Handsome confused too many filmgoers to make money in 1937; today it's regarded in some circles as a classic. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jack Benny had one of his first starring film roles in this breezy comedy with plenty of music. Benny plays Mac Brewster, an advertising man trying to hold on to his biggest client, a silver company run by Alan Townshend (Richard Arlen). Elsewhere in the office, Paula Sewell (Ida Lupino) longs to compete in the Artists and Models Ball and win the title of Queen. However, professional models are frowned upon at the Ball, and all entrants must be debutantes, which is two strikes against Paula; besides, snooty Cynthia Wentworth (Gail Patrick) looks to be a shoo-in to win. But Paula has a plan, and if it works she'll have won more than a crown at the end of the night. Comedy stars Ben Blue and Judy Canova highlight the supporting cast; the great Louis Armstrong performs a tune with Martha Raye. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

It's hard to go wrong with such stars as Bob Hope, Burns & Allen, Martha Raye and Edward Everett Horton, and College Swing doesn't-go wrong, that is. The film begins in 1738, when a pact is drawn up between the Alden family and a highly respected Colonial college: If any female member of the family can pass her college exams within a 200-year period, ownership of the institution will be turned over to her. Comes 1938, and the last of the Alden girls, giddy Gracie Alden (Gracie Allen, of course) hires glib-tongued tutor Bud Brady (Bob Hope) to help her pass her exams. She also tries to win over no-nonsense professor Hubert Dash (Edward Everett Horton), who has no intention of handing his college over to a blithering idiot like Gracie. Once she has inherited the place, however, Gracie turns it into a jumpin'-jivin' joint, complete with jitterbugging students, swing bands and remote radio broadcasts. Though George Burns' role is nearly nonexistent, he does get to indulge in his patented cross-talk with Allen. Others contributing to the fun are Ben Blue, Jerry Colonna, Betty Grable, and Grable's then-husband Jackie Coogan. Highlights include Allen's spirited Irish jig and her endearing song duet with Edward Everett Horton. College Swing is the sort of high-powered, all-star entertainment that is virtually impossible to reproduce today. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

For Me and My Gal, a leisurely period musical, represents the first on-screen dancing of MGM's new star Gene Kelly. Judy Garland plays a member of a vaudeville troupe consisting of herself, George Murphy, Ben Blue and Lucille Norman. She leaves the act to join up with Kelly, who promises to propel her to the big time. Two unsuccessful years later, Garland and Kelly are still struggling in the small time, while Murphy and his bunch are headliners. Kelly nearly throws Garland over for singer Marta Eggerth, but Judy remains loyal--at least until Kelly deliberately breaks his hand to avoid serving in World War I. Having lost her brother Richard Quine to the war, Garland denounces Kelly as a coward and walks out. Kelly redeems himself by joining an overseas entertainment troupe, saving several lives when he finds himself under attack on the front. Judy and Gene are at last reunited in Paris. A major break for both Gene Kelly and Judy Garland (who proved once and for all in this film that she was no longer just a "juvenile"), For Me and My Gal was based on a story by Howard Emmett Rogers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Storywise, Thousands Cheer is thin stuff indeed. Insouciant PFC Eddy Marsh (Gene Kelly) wants to put on a Big Show for his fellow serviceman. Along the way, Eddy falls in love with Kathryn Jones (Kathryn Grayson), the daughter of Colonel William Jones (John Boles). End of story. The principal selling angle of Thousands Cheer is the presence in the cast of virtually every musical talent on the MGM payroll: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Red Skelton, Eleanor Powell, Jose Iturbi, the Kay Kyser Orchestra, Bob Crosby and his Bobcats, the Benny Carter band, Ann Sothern, Lucille Ball, June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven?..the list goes on and on and on. Since Thousands Cheer was designed as a patriotic wartime morale-booster, it is indeed ironic that the film was written by Paul Jarrico and Richard Collins, both of whom would be blacklisted during the Red-baiting 1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The plot of the overinflated MGM musical Broadway Rhythm can be summed up briefly: Musical comedy producer Jonnie Demming (George Murphy) dismisses his vaudevillian dad Sam Demming (Charles Winninger) as old-fashioned. Jonnie signs Hollywood star Helen Hoyt (Ginny Simms) to a Broadway show, but she turns it down. Sam saves the day by dredging up an old script he'd done in summer stock-which, of course, Helen agrees to play. All of this can be forgotten, and in fact will be forgotten, once the film's parade of "guest stars" gets under way. Such stage and screen luminaries as Lena Horne, Ben Blue, Nancy Walker, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Hazel Scott and Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra make up for the narrative banalities with such musical numbers as Gershwin's "Somebody Loves Me" and Jerome Kern's "All the Things You Are." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Technicolor musical remake of the 1936 comedy classic Libeled Lady isn't quite up to the standards of the original, but on its own terms is quite entertaining. Van Johnson, Esther Williams, Lucille Ball and Keenan Wynn expertly assume the roles originally played by William Powell, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow and Spencer Tracy. Faced with a libel suit from socialite Connie Allenbury (Williams), newspaper editor Warren Haggerty (Wynn) cooks up a plan to beat Connie at her own game. To do this, he must rely upon the romantic chicanery of ex-employee Bill Stevens Chandler (Johnson), with Haggerty's fiancee Gladys Benton (Ball) caught in the middle. The comedy high point of the original Libeled Lady, in which William Powell is forced to demonstrate his (non-existent) prowess as a fisherman, is ably repeated in Easy to Wed when Van Johnson must prove his skills at duck-hunting. The songs aren't anything special, but Lucille Ball's superb comic performance is worth the admission price in itself. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This third film version of James Hagan's stage play One Sunday Afternoon was directed by Raoul Walsh, who helmed the second adaptation (1941's Strawberry Blonde). This time around, songs have been added to accommodate the talents of Dennis Morgan and Janis Paige. Morgan stars as turn-of-the-century dentist Biff Grimes, who has spent the last ten years regretting that he hadn't married Amy Lind (Dorothy Malone), the girl of his dreams. Biff also harbors a grudge against Amy's husband Hugo Barnstead (Don DeFore), who was instrumental in getting Biff sent to prison on a fraud charge. Unbeknownst to his ever-loving wife Virginia (Janis Paige), who has stood by him through thick and thin, Biff schemes to exact an awful revenge on the two-faced Barnstead-only to discover in the nick of time that he's been better off all along because he didn't wed the avaricious Amy. Though consistently pretty to look at, One Sunday Afternoon pales in comparision to the earlier movie adaptations of the Hagan play, especially Strawberry Blonde, which had the added benefit of Jimmy Cagney in the lead. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This holiday special features Old Blue Eyes and Ben Blue singing familiar songs. ~ All Movie Guide