...because it's an onstage parade of musical numbers supported by a minimal plot of backstage intrigues. Supervised, directed, and starring the revue master George White (though other hands are rumored to havre helped with the direction), it's a rousing, vulgar string of so-so songs and scantily clad chorus girls, who are also called on to introduce the acts, and barely can negotiate their way through that. The top draw is a young Alice Faye, in her debut, basically playing as she did for her first few years there, a Fox version of Jean Harlow. She has only one song but it's a corker, "Oh, You Nasty Man," and she's immediately likable. She also pines for Rudy Vallee, in uninspiring form, while other backstage love stories involve Dixie Dunbar, Adrienne Ames, Jimmy Durante, and a game Cliff Edwards. Exuberant bad taste is all over the place-ethnic jokes, blackface, cheap-Scotsman jokes, breast-feeding jokes, pansy jokes-and this is the sort of 1934 release that may have hastened the instigation of the Production Code. It's not exactly good, but White is an amiable stand-in for Kermit the Frog, and some very long production numbers (when WILL that dog number stop repeating choruses) are at least eyefuls.
Review of George White's Scandals
