King of Burlesque (1936)

Director:

Sidney Lanfield

Writers:

Viña Delmar (story)
James Seymour (adaptation)

Release Date:

3 January 1936 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Musical

Tagline:

...Loaded to the brim with everything that goes for happiness, joy and laugher, more tunes, laffs, girls, fun and romance than you've seen in a dozen musical hits!

Plot:

Former burlesque producer moves into legitimate theatre and does well until he marries a socialite....

Plot Keywords:

Singer | Burlesque | Marriage Of Convenience | Unemployment | Widow

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar.

Cast

Warner Baxter	...	Kerry Bolton
Alice Faye	...	Pat Doran
Jack Oakie	...	Joe Cooney
Mona Barrie	...	Rosalind Cleve
Arline Judge	...	Connie
Dixie Dunbar	...	Marie
Gregory Ratoff	...	Kolpolpeck
Herbert Mundin	...	English Impresario
Fats Waller	...	Ben
Nick Long Jr.	...	Anthony Lamb
Kenny Baker	...	Arthur
Charles Quigley	...	Stanley Drake
Paxton Sisters	...	Specialty Dancers
Al Shaw	...	Lew Henkle (as Shaw)
Sam Lee	...	Gus Keefe (as Lee)

Runtime:

90 min (FMC Library Print)

Country:

USA

Language:

English | French

Colour:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Noiseless Recording)

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #1777) | USA:Passed (National Board of Review) | USA:TV-G (TV rating)

Company:

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Movie Connections:

Featured in Take It or Leave It (1944)

Soundtrack:

Alabamy Bound

Not A Waste of Time

It seems many other contributing members are hypercritical of older films. Most films made in the 1930s and 1940s weren't meant to be memorable, just enjoyed for a brief time and then to be forgotten. Now television has resurrected them so people can look at them again.

This film is typical of the era in which it was made. I did notice that it has some plot devices which re-appear in later 20th Century-Fox films (some of which also featured Alice Faye): The low-class man aspiring to high society and "a dame with class" repeated in "Hello Frisco Hello" and "Nob Hill", and Faye's getting passed up for another woman, then going off to London to be a big success on the stage there. Never let it be said that Darryl Zanuck didn't get mileage out of his story lines.

Here we see Faye early in her career as a Jean Harlow knock-off, with platinum blonde hair and pencil-thin eyebrows. Not too long after this film, her appearance was normalized and she began singing in a lower key which made her voice so much richer. I think she was responsible for a whole new trend for female singers. Gone was the high-pitched, nasal sound, popular in the 1920s and early 30s.

For fans of tap dancing, you can watch Dixie Dunbar, whose career never amounted to much, and also there is a nice performance by juvenile Gareth Joplin, on a level equal to that of any adult performer, but who evidently did not have much of a film career either.