Sing and Like It

Some time back TCM ran a morning with several of the films of 1930s comic actress Pert Kelton. Another one that I hadn't heard of was Sing and Like It. Since the synopsis sounded interesting enough, I as always decided to record it so I could eventually watch it and put up this post on the movie.

ZaSu Pitts plays Annie Snodgrass, a housewife married to Oswald (John Qualen, credited including his middle initial although it's unmistakeably his voice) who has a thing for amateur theater. And I definitely mean amateur, as these people are definitely not ready for the big time. Annie sings one of those sappy songs of the era about being thankful for your mother, and it's not just the insipid lyrics, but Annie's lousy vocal stylings that make the song truly a disaster.

However, passing by the theater where they're practicing, and hearing the voice, is Fenny Sylvester (Nat Pendleton). He's a gangster, meaning that he's got a fair amount of money, along with a lack of scruples about threatening violence to get his way. He hears the song, and for whatever odd reason -- the movie is a comedy, after all -- decides that he loves this song. Never mind that everybody around him like his second-in-command Toots McGuire (Ned Sparks) thinks Annie is terrible. Fenny is the boss, so he gets his way. And having heard Annie, he wants to do his good duty by putting her in a show.

Nothing less than the best will do for Fenny, and he's able to use those threats to get people like theater producer Frink (Edward Everett Horton) to help mount the stage show, despite Frink's obvious horror at hearing Annie's voice. There's also Fenny's girlfriend Ruby (that's Pert Kelton), who gets tasked with making Annie come across as a higher-class stage lady. But there's not all that much they can do to make this nice but thoroughly untalented woman a success.

So it's decided that the thing to do to give the show some oomph is to stage a publicity campaign involving Annie going missing, except that she won't really go missing because everybody who matters will know exactly where she is until she shows up in time for the big premiere. The only thing is, Annie gets kidnapped for real.

Sing and Like It was, I think, not conceived as anything more than a B movie. But considering the cast of very good supporting actors, they all take the material and run with it for all it's worth, making it surprisingly funny. Then again, considering the cast, it shouldn't be surprising that they're all adept at this sort of comedy. They'd all played the sorts of roles they've got here enough.