On the Avenue

Alice Faye's movie career was just getting into high gear when she did this gem in 1937. The Irving Berlin score is among the best he ever wrote for the screen and Alice does well with Let's Go Slumming on Park Avenue and This Year's Kisses. The former is somewhat autobiographical for her as Alice Faye was brought up in Hell's Kitchen and she sings it against a Hell's Kitchen background.

In her early career at 20th Century Fox, Darryl Zanuck had a problem with finding someone who could sing opposite her. The only one available on the lot was Don Ameche. Zanuck's number one leading man, Tyrone Power, was non-musical. So Zanuck had to reach out to his former employer, Jack Warner, to borrow Dick Powell to play opposite Faye. Ironically Powell got the hit song out of this film with I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm.

The rest of the cast is top rate. Madeline Carroll plays a typical 1930s débutante and it's the antics of her family and actor-writer Dick Powell's satire of same that form the basis of the story. My two personal favorites of the supporting cast are George Barbier who always hits the right note as Madeline's perennially choleric father and Billy Gilbert who has a great bit as a diner owner.

Wonderful film, great entertainment.

Alice Faye's singing is a real plus for this movie and Dick Powell sounds pretty good as well. The story is pretty terrible and predictable, but there are lots of good character actors along to help save the day. The dancing is great throughout, really well done. But it's really the Ritz Brothers I wanted to comment on. Is it only me or are they really not that funny? They are great dancers but the skits they performed were for the most part too slap stick for me to find amusing. Overall this movie is well worth seeing and hearing - the singing and dancing is great.

"On the Avenue" is a highly underrated gem from the 30s and one of Alice Faye's best musicals at Fox. It is less well-known than Faye's other Fox musicals such as "Alexander's Ragtime Band", "That Night in Rio" and "Hello, Frisco, Hello". But "On the Avenue" has a taste and class of its own, not to mention lots of great and rollicking tunes including the memorable "Slumming on Park Avenue", "He Ain't Got Rhythm", "I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm", and "This Year's Kisses". Excellent stuff.

There are so many things to recommend this delightful film. The cast is top notch (Alice Faye is outstanding in her numbers and she brings real pathos to her role as the ignored but adoring admirer of Dick Powell), the story silly and witty in that charming mid 1930s screwball comedy style and the score by Irving Berlin is one of his very best. There isn't one dud song here and all were written to order for the film - astonishing facility.

However, I really rate this musical because of the way the numbers are filmed. One actually feels like one has been to the theatre to see a show and the staging is often remarkably elaborate.

For example, "The Girl on the Police Gazette" makes use of an amazing continuous revolving set (the soundstage must have been huge to accommodate this) and appears to have been filmed in almost a continuous take. Think of the rehearsal that must have taken!

The other reason to see it is the Ritz Brothers. I know that these zany comedians are an acquired taste and are often grating and irritating for modern audiences, but this is possibly their best vehicle and the closest we can get to seeing what they were really like in the theatre. Often referred to as a poor second rate alternative to the Marx Brothers, they were quite different in style and were really fabulous comedy dancers. The movies did them no favours at all in grounding their routines, forcing them to fit in with the plots of the films in which they appeared (consider their contributions to The Goldwyn Follies in 1938.....YUK!)

Here, however, they are purely a speciality and their musical contributions are terrific. The parody they do on "Let's Go Slumming" with Harry Ritz in drag, dressed in the identical outfit worn by Alice Faye only moments before, is just priceless.

I wish the print were in better shape but Fox has done the best it could with the surviving elements for the DVD release. Perhaps a Blu ray might improve definition further?

I also miss the trailer which appears to be lost. However I have an acetate of the very entertaining radio promotional trailer (12 minutes long), should the folks at Fox wish to include it on any future release.

Recommended viewing!

Glowingly photographed in B&W by Lucien Andriot on Zanuck's Twentieth Century Fox's lot, the blonde English beauty Madeline Carroll --best remembered for being handcuffed to Robert Donat in "The 39 Steps"-- never looked more enchanting. The film features some of Irving Berlin's best romantic ballads, foremost of which is the almost forgotten "You're Laughing At Me," which Ella Fitzgerald later revived in her classic 1958 album of The Irving Berlin Song Book. The great character comic Sig Ruman ("To Be or Not to Be") shows up as an over-weight trainer in gym clothes, and for the grand finale even gets to sing part of "Slumming on Park Avenue" in a German accent. Vastly entertaining plot if vastly silly. But who cares?