Something to Sing About (1937 film)
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| Something to Sing About | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Victor Schertzinger |
| Produced by | Zion Meyers |
| Written by | Victor Schertzinger Austin Parker |
| Starring | James Cagney Evelyn Daw Gene Lockhart |
| Distributed by | Grand National Pictures |
| Release date(s) | September 30, 1937 |
| Running time | 80 minutes |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Something to Sing About (1937) is the second and final film James Cagney made with Grand National Pictures (the first being Great Guy) before mending relations with and returning to Warner Bros.. It is one of the few films to showcase Cagney's singing and dancing talents. The film flopped in theaters, and caused the closing of Grand National Pictures, which had gone significantly overbudget in the production of this film.
When, at 80 years of age, Cagney vas asked which of his films -- outside of Yankee Doodle Dandy -- that he'd like to see again, this was the film he chose. Since the copyright on the film wasn't renewed in 1964, the film is now in the public domain.
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[edit] Plot
The story is a satire on the film industry's less desirable behavior. James Cagney plays Terry Rooney (his character's stage name, replacing Thaddeus McGillicuddy), a band leader in New York who gets a Hollywood offer. He leaves his fiancee and the band's soprano Rita Wyatt (Evelyn Daw) for Hollywood, where he soon finds himself at the hands of B. O. Regan (Gene Lockhart), a studio executive who sets a team of professionals to clean up and train Rooney into an actor. Regan, after struggling with another new talent who has quickly developed an uncontrollable ego, also secretly insists against anyone praising Rooney's work. While filming a shot of a bar fight, what is inteded to be a fake punch at Rooney hits him. A full fight with other actors breaks out, and Rooney leaves Hollywood to marry Wyatt, taking her on a cruise that ends in San Francisco.
While they are away, the film is completed and premiered; it is a huge hit. Everyone is searching for Rooney. When he is found in San Francisco, Regan flies out immediately with a contract. A clause of this contract requires Rooney remain single for its seven-year duration. Rooney and Wyatt agree to keep their relationship quiet, with Wyatt posing as Rooney's secretary.
Another film is begun, with Rooney acting alongside Stephanie Hajos (Mona Barrie). Studio publicist Hank Meyers (William Frawley) plants news that Rooney and Hajos are love interests. The combined stress of remaining a secret while Rooney has less and less time for her eventually drives Wyatt back to New York. Hajos finds out that Rooney is not only not interested in her but is married; the story breaks to the papers, and Rooney returns to Wyatt and their band in New York with a front-page article declaring his relationship with Hojas a hoax.
[edit] Ahead of its Time
Philip Ahn, a Korean-American actor who had nearly been rejected by director Lewis Milestone from Anything Goes the prior year because his English was too good, plays Ito, a Japanese man who wants to be an actor and has been relegated to being a man-servant, assigned here to Rooney. Ito has been forced by previous masters to speak with an accent and a minimum of English words. He reveals to Rooney that this is a pretense. Ito keeps the pretense up around others for most of the film, until he gets tired of being ordered around by Meyers and announces in impeccable English -- amidst a cast full of accents and casual pronunciations -- that he came to Hollywood to be an actor and not a servant, and that he was quitting.
[edit] Musical Numbers
The film had five songs and three dances. Cagney's dancing and singing open and close the film, and the opening number also incorporates singing from Rooney and Wyatt's bandmates as well as from Daw herself. Cagney also dances with vaudevillians Johnny Boyle and Harland Dixon, two of the major sources of inspiration for his dancing style, on the ship upon which Rooney and Wyatt honeymoon. Dance in the film is Cagney's style of vaudeville, tap, jigs, and semiballet.
[edit] References
- Cagney, James (1976). Cagney By Cagney. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 70. ISBN 0-385-04587-5.
- McCabe, John (1997). Cagney. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 155-8, 405. ISBN 0-679-44607-9.
