Swingin' Along

Most people would probably remember Peter Marshall best from his long tenure as host of The Hollywood Squares. However, he was a singer and actor, and had a nightclub comedy duo together with Tommy Noonan. They made a couple of forgettable movies together. One of those, Swingin' Along, has been in the FXM rotation for a couple of months now, and is going to be on again tomorrow morning at 4:45 AM.

Noonan is technically the lead here, playing Freddy, who is a bit of a failure in life in that he's never been able to finish anything he starts. As a result, he's reduced to delivering wedding cakes for his aunt Sophie (Connie Gilchrist), while he tries to write a song for a contest to find the best new song in San Francisco. He's come up with a hook courtesy of a door chime, but that's about it.

He tries to get a job at a club which is a hangout for a couple of chancers, including Duke (Marshall). He hears the hook and hears about the contest, and realizes there's a chance for him to make a quick buck, representing Freddy and getting him to finish writing the song. Of course, Duke is going to have to be a bit of a con artist too to get that done. For example, Freddy's piano gets repossessed, and Duke comes up with a scheme to get it back.

Along the way, Duke and Freddy run into Carol (Barbara Eden), who serves no real purpose in the movie other than to be some eye candy as Duke tries to woo her. Freddy has a former girlfriend who left him because of his failure to finish anything he started, and she shows up again in the final reel.

There's a reason why Marshall and Noonan aren't well remembered as a team, which is that their movies together aren't very good. Both characters here are intensely irritating, the plot is nowhere near as funny as it styles itself, with scenes involving a runaway piano and runaway sheet music both going on way too long. (Watch for Ted Knight with a bit part at the end of the sheet music scene.) It only runs 74 minutes and is padded out to get there, but even at that it feels way too long.

The highlight of the movie is cameos from a couple of popular musicians of the time, who again do nothing to drive the plot forward and bring the movie to a screeching halt with their songs -- and it says something about the movie that these songs are better than the rest of the movie. Ray Charles sings a song I didn't recognize; Bobby Vee sings the original version of "More Than I Can Say" (you might remember Leo Sayer's version from 1980); and pianist Roger Williams plays the winning song at the end of the movie complete with his trademark piano flourishes.

I don't think Swingin' Along has received a DVD release, and that's not much of a surprise.