Almost fifty years before Dream Girls made its Broadway debut, Paramount put out this film about a band-leader and a trio of singers whom he takes under his wing and then gets a little too bossy about their private lives. One wonders if someone at Paramount noticed the resemblance.
Every Night At Eight is the title of the film and also the title of a radio show that the trio and the band-leader wind up with. The trio consists of Alice Faye, Frances Langford, and Patsy Kelly who are three girls with humdrum jobs, Faye and Kelly at a switchboard and Langford as a secretary. One day they wait for the boss to leave and decide to make a record on his Dictaphone machine. Unfortunately they're caught and fired.
Luckily they get a break on an amateur hour radio show with Walter Catlett in a spoof of the famous Major Edward Bowes Amateur Hour. On the bill that night is band-leader George Raft and his orchestra of unemployed musicians from the New Deal Civil Works Administration. By the way, Catlett's performance is devastating.
Raft won the Amateur Hour contest by default because Langford faints from lack of food. Still he recognizes a good thing when he sees it and signs the girls and gives them a name, The Swanee Sisters.
Unfortunately just like in Dream Girls he interferes a little too much in their personal lives. Still it all works out in the end, but I won't tell which of them he winds up with.
This is Alice Faye's first of two films that she did on loan out from Fox when she was with that studio. Alice gets a good song to sing entitled Speaking Confidentially, but in this film, she's overshadowed vocally by Frances Langford. Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields wrote most of the score for this film including the aforementioned song that Faye sang, but also from this score is I Feel A Song Coming On which the trio does and later Frances Langford sings the song most identified with her, I'm In The Mood For Love.
As you can see McHugh and Fields really out did themselves in the writing of the score of this film. Langford also sings another gem, this one written by Ted Fio Riot, Sam Lewis and Joseph Young entitled Then You've Never Been Blue. Were it not for the other two songs, this one would have been the hit of the film.
George Raft does nicely in a role that for once doesn't call for him to slug somebody. But the camera betrayed the poor man in this. Watch during the sequence of I Feel A Song Coming On as Raft is conducting the orchestra. He must have been wearing boots with Cuban heels that were two to two and half inches to give him extra height. I'm surprised neither he nor director Raoul Walsh noticed in the rushes and had it edited out.
Also in that number is an obbligato version by a black singer named James Miller who is in his one and only film. It's a good rendition and I do wonder what ever happened to him.
The best thing that Every Night At Eight has going for it is one of the best musical scores from the Thirties. And the wonderful stars who perform these numbers.
Every Night At Eight is the title of the film and also the title of a radio show that the trio and the band-leader wind up with. The trio consists of Alice Faye, Frances Langford, and Patsy Kelly who are three girls with humdrum jobs, Faye and Kelly at a switchboard and Langford as a secretary. One day they wait for the boss to leave and decide to make a record on his Dictaphone machine. Unfortunately they're caught and fired.
Luckily they get a break on an amateur hour radio show with Walter Catlett in a spoof of the famous Major Edward Bowes Amateur Hour. On the bill that night is band-leader George Raft and his orchestra of unemployed musicians from the New Deal Civil Works Administration. By the way, Catlett's performance is devastating.
Raft won the Amateur Hour contest by default because Langford faints from lack of food. Still he recognizes a good thing when he sees it and signs the girls and gives them a name, The Swanee Sisters.
Unfortunately just like in Dream Girls he interferes a little too much in their personal lives. Still it all works out in the end, but I won't tell which of them he winds up with.
This is Alice Faye's first of two films that she did on loan out from Fox when she was with that studio. Alice gets a good song to sing entitled Speaking Confidentially, but in this film, she's overshadowed vocally by Frances Langford. Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields wrote most of the score for this film including the aforementioned song that Faye sang, but also from this score is I Feel A Song Coming On which the trio does and later Frances Langford sings the song most identified with her, I'm In The Mood For Love.
As you can see McHugh and Fields really out did themselves in the writing of the score of this film. Langford also sings another gem, this one written by Ted Fio Riot, Sam Lewis and Joseph Young entitled Then You've Never Been Blue. Were it not for the other two songs, this one would have been the hit of the film.
George Raft does nicely in a role that for once doesn't call for him to slug somebody. But the camera betrayed the poor man in this. Watch during the sequence of I Feel A Song Coming On as Raft is conducting the orchestra. He must have been wearing boots with Cuban heels that were two to two and half inches to give him extra height. I'm surprised neither he nor director Raoul Walsh noticed in the rushes and had it edited out.
Also in that number is an obbligato version by a black singer named James Miller who is in his one and only film. It's a good rendition and I do wonder what ever happened to him.
The best thing that Every Night At Eight has going for it is one of the best musical scores from the Thirties. And the wonderful stars who perform these numbers.