Friday, April 22, 2022

Alexander's Ragtime Band minus the Irving Berlin tunes

Recently, I went through my DVDs again and decided to go back into the Alice Faye box set from which I already blogged about Rose of Washington Square. This time, I picked out The Great American Broadcast.

After a montage in the opening credit showing any number of people who were famous on radio back when the movie was released in the spring of 1941, we get transported back in time to 1919, which means just after World War I. Rix Martin (John Payne) was one of those flyboys in the war, and having returned and not having anything better to do in life after seeing something of the world, he's now working taking people up in the air and giving them an aerial tour of New York for the princely sum of $3. But he's at some sort of unofficial airfield, and a group of linemen has the right-of-way to put up new poles and telephone lines. This is a problem for Rix because the lines are too close to the runway for him to fly safely. His attempt to stop the linemen results in a fight that will cause him to lose his job.

However, when the linemen leave, there's still one up on a pole, that being Chuck Hadley (Jack Oakie). He has sympathy for Rix, so Rix takes Jack on his motorcycle back to Chuck's apartment. It rains along the way, so both are soaked through by the time the get back to Chuck's place, and Chuck gives Rix the time to dry off and a set of dry clothes. Chuck is into wireless technology, communicating the way ham radio operators did, at a time when this was still very much an experimental thing. Indeed, the first experimental voice-over-radio radio broadcasts from KDKA in Pittsburgh were still some time away. (Wikipedia says the first broadcasts began in 1919, although regular programming would begin with covering the presidential election in November 1920.) The new technology intrigues Rix, especially when it brings him into contact with Chuck's neighbor and girlfriend, Vicki Adams (Alice Faye).

Rix gets the idea to promote a sponsored entertainment broadcast from the roof of the apartment building, with Vicki, who has a fine voice, providing some singing, along with some professionals. But a thunderstorm comes the night of the broadcast, limiting its range. Still, Rix winds up falling in love with Vicki, along with seeing the possibility for radio to make a much bigger splash.

The only problem is radio's limited range. In the early days of radio, there was a thing known as DXing, or deliberately trying to pick up distant broadcasts. AM frequencies mean that under the right conditions, the radio waves can travel several hundred miles, but for intercontinental broadcasts, shorter wavelengths were needed, which would become short-wave radio (and indeed, in other parts of the world AM was called "medium wave"). But for the purposes of this movie, we really only need to know that weather and the relatively short distances radio waves traveled meant that national broadcasting across the 48 states was for the time being a technological limitation.

The best solution they could come up with at the time was broadcasting at higher power, but that of course costs money that Rix doesn't have. Ah, but Rix's fellow veteran Bruce (Cesar Romero) does have the money. However, he'd like a radio station of his own, seeing the possiblities, and would like Vicki to perform on his station, leading to the love triangle that was common for this sort of movie.

Rix, being in search of a good challenge and seeing he can't go any further in US radio as is, just up and leaves Vicki and heads off to South America, leaving Chuck to run the radio station. However, he gets the idea that long-distance telephone lines could be used to create a coast-to-coast hookup that really would allow for national broadcasts in almost real time. Now if he can just get Rix back from South America to learn what a chump he's been with Vicki before Vicki can run off to Reno and get a divorce in order to marry Bruce.

There are a lot of plot elements in The Great American Broadcast that are similar to what was in the other Fox musicals of the time: a look back at the America of the past, a love triangle that one person walks out of, the reunion at the end, and so on. So in such a musical, much of the strength of it lies with the music. Here, we get a series of songs by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon that, while competent, are certainly not up to the level of Irving Berlin who repacked his old songs for Fox in Alexander's Ragtime Band three years earlier.

That having been said, some of the musical numbers are quite good, thanks to the addition of the Ink Spots and the dancing Nicholas Brothers who show up as porters in a railway station (and, as far as I could tell, not on a radio broadcast in that number, which is why it doesn't matter that it wouldn't be suitable for radio). On the other hand, the Wiere Brothers, whom I don't think I'd heard of, do a skit on one of the radio shows as the Stradivarians, a piece that relies too much on visuals. Yes, we're watching a movie, but in the movie these people are supposed to be on radio where we can't see them!

Also of note is archival footage of the 1919 heavyweight title fight between Jack Dempsey and Jess Willard; in the movie Rix tries to promote radio by broadcasting this fight live. The grainy silent footage stands out as being of a clearly different film stock from the sound film.

The Great American Broadcast is the sort of movie that seems dated today, although watching it, I can see why the audiences of 1941, having been through an economic depression with entry into World War II lurking on the horizon, would want to watch something nostalgic and escapist. The Great American Broadcast certainly fits that bill.

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