Posted on 08/06/2008 5:20:24 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
“Alexander’s Ragtime Band” was played at the Roxy yesterday and at its finish the score stood: Irving Berlin, 26; Opposition, 0. Few sentimental gestures have been more expansive, few more lavishly produced than this motion picture tribute to Tin Pan Alley’s most famous lodger. With those twenty-six Berlin tunes at its disposal and with such assured song-pluggers as Alice Faye and Ether Merman to put them over, the picture simply rides roughshod over minor critical objection and demands recognition as the best musical show of the year.
Twentieth Century-Fox calls it an American cavalcade. Cavalcade of American jazz would be more like it. Story and score move off from the same starting line, the year 1911 when Alexander’s Ragtime Band was “the bes’ band in the land.” In no time at all Everybody’s Doin’ It – (Doing what? The Turkey trot!). There’s an affectionate reprise of “When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam’,” of the plaintive wartime song, “Oh how I Hate to Get Up in the Morning,” and so on, and on, right down to 1938 when a swing band is apt to be giving a concert in Carnegie Hall.
Call it jazz or ragtime or swing, it hasn’t changed so much through the years. Mr. Berlin has been in the groove fairly consistently. His early tunes seemed more melodic, easier to whistle or hum than the two sub-Berliners he turned out for the current show. The title number still is the hit song of the film. The point, if any, is that his music is remarkably age-resistant. The first few bars of “Say It With Music,” “Some Sunny Day,” Blue Skies,” “What’ll I Do?” and “Remember” are enough to set an audience humming or holding hands; the picture all comes back.
Possibly it is that age-resistant quality which has permitted Miss Faye and Tyrone Power to go through the film’s twenty-seven years (1911-38) without getting a gray hair or a wrinkle. Mr. Zanuck’s script writers set them in motion on the Barbary Coast, with Mr. Power as an ambitious band leader, Miss Faye as the hobble-skirted, button-shoed cabaret singer. They get together on “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” ride the bandwagon to success, undergo the usual musical comedy partings and reconciliations. Don Ameche stands by as the song writer and self-sacrificial best friend. Miss Merman rallies round to keep the score going when Miss Faye drops in her sound tracks.
Twenty-six musical numbers are a lot to crowd into a two-hour show and still leave space for anything else – plot, characterization or humor. But a compensating factor is the happy circumstance that many of Mr. Berlin’s songs have narrative or comic value, a circumstance which the script writers and Director Henry King have capitalized cleverly. Among them, to mention a few , are the turkey trot number with Wally Vernon and Dixie Dunbar leading a cotillion of elbow-wavers, and the stirring “We’re on Our Way to France” chorus, which is the most thrilling moment of the show.
So you have it, a long, elaborate, handsomely produced musical review, a pictorial trip down Memory Lane with one of this generation’s most competent ballad-makers. If we wanted to be tough about it, we could say it was overlong, a shade to elaborate, generally nonsensical in its plot. But those would be merely the routine observations about almost any musical show, and this one is not so bluntly to be dismissed. Mr. Berlin’s twenty-six are worth hearing again. Even though you may wonder how on earth Alice Faye manages to sing them with her lips wandering about the way they do.
Alexander was nominated for six Academy Awards. Irving Berlin won for best score.
I wish they would remake it...probably wouldn’t be a money maker but the music in DTS or Dolby Digital would sound fantastic!
YESTERDAY’S RESULTS
New York 6, Cleveland 1.
Boston 9, Detroit 3 (10 innings).
St. Louis 9, Philadelphia 2.
Washington at Chicago, rain.
American League
……………………..Won….Lost…Percentage…….Games Behind
N. Y ………………...60……31…….659………………….-
Cleve………………...55……33…….625………………….3 1/2
Boston……………….53……37…….589………………….6 1/2
Wash..…………….....49……48…….505…………………..14
Detroit.………………47……50…….485………………….16
Chic.…………………38……47…….447………………….19
Phila...……………….32……57…….360………………….27
St. L………………….30……61….....330………………….30
GAMES TODAY.
New York at Cleveland.
Boston at Detroit.
Philadelphia at St. Louis.
Washington at Chicago.
National League
YESTERDAY’S RESULTS
New York 5, Pittsburgh 3.
Cincinnati 4, Brooklyn 1.
St. Louis 3, Philadelphia 0.
Other clubs not scheduled.
……………………..Won….Lost…Percentage…….Games Behind
Pitts …………………59……35…….628………………….-
N. Y.………………...56……41…….577…………………..4 1/2
Chic.…………………53……42…….558…………………..6 1/2
Cincin.………………53……42…….558…………………..6 1/2
Boston ………………43…...49……..467………………….15
Bklyn ……………….44…...51……..463…………………..15 1/2
St. L………………....40…...54……..426………………….19
Phila…………………29……63……..313………………….29
GAMES TODAY
Pittsburgh at New York (3 P. M.).
Cincinnati at Brooklyn (2:30 P. M.).
Chicago at Boston.
St. Louis at Philadelphia.
I’m new on your ping list....but it’s great , thank you....my special interest is the on going debate in the US during this period about how we should deal with Hitler.......what history calls the Isolationist/Interventionist controversy...... I collect books from that era. EX “Is Tomorrow Hitler’s?” and “You can’t do business with Hitler”, etc,etc........I’m sure you’ve hit on this many times so I will sit back and enjoy your posts..thank you again.
“Alexander was nominated for six Academy Awards. Irving Berlin won for best score.”
Irving Berlin deserved to win a dozen Oscars at least, but from what I’ve heard he only ever won one, for White Christmas.
This review is spot on in saying that the music, and musical presentation, was the best part of the film. Alice Faye is spellbinding and then, of course, there was the young Ethel Merman. Quite a combination.
Irving Berlin was one of the very few composers who provided every note of music for the films he worked on and I’m pretty sure its safe to say that he had more films like that than anyone else. Apart from anything else, he had the clout to insist on it.
Over-hyped musical with nothing going for it besides the music. Weakest romantic triangle ever seen up to that time. Don Ameche steps aside, Tyrone Power steps in, then Power splits as if he prefers the battlefield, then Ameche marries the girl, then gives her up with a shrug when Power returns. The three then resurrect their night club act. Eww!
Not to mention those romantic lines like “Here’s for all the times I wanted to wring your neck!”
There was one cut I wish they’d taken back, a sudden closeup of Ethel Merman looking very manic. It was downright startling.
That issue is gaining steam as we move through 1938. It will reach a peak in the national attention over the next two months. I am going to be watching editorials and letters to the editor. In The Times, at least, the isolationist position hasn't gotten a lot of play.
Right you are. I erred. Alfred Newman won the Oscar for scoring the movie. With 26 Berlin songs performed I don't know how there was any time left for a score. I'll learn soon enough. I have it queued up on Netflix.
I'll watch it anyway as part of my anthropological study of the late thirties.
In that case, Afred Newman won for scoring Irving Berlin’s music. I’m pretty sure that every note in the film was written by him. I guess he won because he was working on the film itself, whereas Irving Berlin just provided the music.
Well, I finally got around to checking it out. I agree the plot is pretty weak. But not much more so than some of the Fred and Ginger musicals. Of course, Tyrone and Alice are not in the Fred and Ginger league. I thought the slightly spooky cab driver (John Carradine) was a nice feature. Also noteworthy was the way they condensed the troopship voyage overseas, the horrors of the World War, and the troopship voyage back home into about 45 seconds.
The music more than makes up for any plot weaknesses. The whole film is drenched in it. I adore the differences in style between Alice Faye and Ethel Merman. Alice is like gently flowing honey and Ethel is like a brass band. Both are wonderful in their own way.
Yep, I’m a NYer and that cab scene was weird by my lights. I’d have torn out of there if a cabbie talked to me like that. Are ya suuure ya don’t wanna hear...? Pffft!
However, that was then, and for then it was edgy and sophisticated. Reminiscent of a scene in Atlas Shrugged, too.
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