Cinevent Past Notes: SWINGIN ON A RAINBOW

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Richard M Roberts
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Cinevent Past Notes: SWINGIN ON A RAINBOW

Postby Richard M Roberts » Fri Jul 26, 2013 10:54 pm

SWINGIN’ ON A RAINBOW (Republic Pictures released September 1, 1945)

Director; William Beaudine, Producer: Armand Schaefer, Associate Producer: Edward J. White, Screenplay: John Grey, Story: Olive Cooper, Camera: Marcel LePicard, Editor: Fred Allen.

Cast: Jane Frazee, Brad Taylor (Stanley Brown), Harry Langdon, Minna Gombell, Amelita Ward, Tim Ryan, Paul Harvey, Wendell Niles, Richard Davies, Myrtle Talbot.


When we ran this at the 2007 Slapsticon, these were the notes that accompanied this film:

“Now for some big-time Langdon myth-busting. We’ve been getting flack all year for programming this one, but we’ve done it for one simple reason-----we’ve seen it.

Langdon myth: Harry’s last film was a sad bit-part in a cheap Republic musical called SWINGIN’ ON A RAINBOW in which he plays a minor character with little to do. Langdon suffered a cerebral hemorrhage on the set while rehearsing a musical number and died.

Langdon Truth: The film that Harry suffered the cerebral hemorrhage on was the Columbia short PISTOL PACKIN’ NITWITS with El Brendel, although the picture was pretty much completed at the time of Harry’s collapse and was released posthumously in 1945, Langdon had completed all of his work on SWINGIN’ ON A RAINBOW nearly one month before his death.

For years, SWINGIN’ ON A RAINBOW was nearly as unavailable as HEART TROUBLE, not released in any television packages since the 1950’s. Even the official Harry Langdon website asks, ”where is this film?” Most historians who talked about it had obviously not given it a look, one recent article referring to it as a western!

Well, SWINGIN’ ON A RAINBOW ain’t no western, but it is a very pleasant mid-budgeted Jane Frazee musical featuring Harry Langdon in not a minor, but a major supporting role. For the 3 or 4 here who care, Jane Frazee plays Lynn Ford, a budding songwriter from the Midwest who sends her songs to a New York radio show’s songwriting contest. When the program’s bandleader (Richard Davies) appropriates her song as his own, Lynn travels to New York to collect her winnings, and finds herself ripped off. Seeking revenge, she invades the bandleaders apartment while he’s on tour, and sets herself up as his songwriting partner while he’s in absentia.

“So where’s Harry Langdon in all of this?”, I hear you cry, well, Harry plays Chester Willouby, the assistant to the owner of the Radio Station (Paul Harvey) who hire Jane Frazee to write songs for them. Now this doesn’t sound like much of a part, but there’s a reason Harry’s third-billed in the picture. Obviously Director William Beaudine, an old friend of Langdon’s who had recently directed the comic in MISBEHAVING HUSBANDS (1940), SPOTLIGHT SCANDALS (1943), and HOT RHYTHM (1943), is not only letting Harry walk off with the picture, but telling him it’s his to steal! Beaudine gives Harry acres of breathing room, lots of exits and entrances in which to interject little Langdonisms, none of which move the plot one iota, but sure brighten things immeasurably.

And Harry is not playing his usual unworldly self. Chester Willouby is eccentric, but not stupid. Harry is handling dialogue more normally, but interjecting his comic mannerisms when the opportunity arises. He’s wearing the moustache again, but it works here, and points to a possible direction Langdon’s career might have taken had he lived, as a sort of Robert Benchley-like supporting comic. It’s a different, but entirely effective departure for him.

The rest of the film is no slouch either, it’s an enjoyable musical comedy, Jane Frazee and leading man Brad Taylor strike a pleasant mood in their battles towards songwriting and romance. Republic was building up Frazee as their version of Deanna Durbin, though less annoying, so they spend more than the average on one of their product and the film is peppered with comedy pros. Watch for Tim Ryan, Gertrude Astor, William Austin, George Davis, Eddie Kane, and Bert Roach in bit parts.

So you Langdon haters go to Hell, or at least bed, along with the closed-minded whose sensitive nerves can’t take anything the silent comics made after talkies came in. SWINGIN’ ON A RAINBOW is no lost classic, but it’s no embarrassment. It’s a pleasant and entertaining picture that’s as good a film for Harry to go out on than anything else he made in the forties (including PISTOL PACKIN’ NITWITS, which he really did go out on, and it’s not as bad as some say it is either. Maybe we’ll run that next year !). “


And after it ran at Slapsticon, the whines ceased and desisted, and it was a happy audience that emerged from the Spectrum Theater afterwards. And we did indeed run PISTOL PAKIN NITWITS the next year.



RICHARD M ROBERTS

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Re: Cinevent Past Notes: SWINGIN ON A RAINBOW

Postby Louie Despres » Sat Jul 27, 2013 10:18 am

"Swinging On A Rainbow" certainly was enjoyable when I saw it at Slapsticon, I'd like to see it again!


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