And the Angels Sing

Plot

And The Angels Sing is an odd smorgasbord of musical-comedy and romance -- part screwball comedy, part backstage musical, part pop music showcase, and all of it actually a mash-up/remake of two earlier Paramount titles, Every Night At Eight (1935) and Sing You Sinners (1937) (which had also co-starred Fred MacMurray). Dorothy Lamour, Betty Hutton, Diana Lynn, and Mimi Chandler play, respectively, Nancy Angel, Bobby Angel, Josie Angel, and Patti Angel, the four daughters of widowered inventor/farmer "Pop" Angel (Raymond Walburn). All four daughters have ambitions as artists, writers etc. But they're only good at the one thing they've actually been trained to do, i.e. singing -- which they hate doing, especially together. The four desire independence from each other, but lack the means to achieve it, all of which wears on their loving but long-suffering father, who only wants to get enough money together to buy a small soybean farm. When Bobby ropes them into singing for a band led by Happy Marshall Fred MacMurray, the fur really begins to fly -- Happy puts the romantic moves on Nancy before he realizes she's part of the singing act he's booked; but it's Bobby whole managed to fall in love with him. And matters get even more complicated when the Angel sisters, presenting an act worthy of the Andrews Sisters, go over well with the audience. And that's before Happy is forced by circumstances to cheat the girls not only out of the $40 they earned, but the $190 that Bobby won. Misunderstanding and mistakes pile up on top of each other as the Angel sisters follow Happy to Brooklyn, get him tossed out of the club he's booked in, lose him his band, and reduce him and his partner Fuzzy Johnson (Eddie Foy, Jr.) to doing an embarrassing singing waiter act (for coins tossed to them), all in a quest to return the girls' money. In the process, the Angel sisters display loyalty and devotion to each other, and a strength in numbers and unity that's only undone by their own father. The music is entertaining, though the title song is only heard as an instrumental performed by Happy's band -- Betty Hutton's scatting is one highlight, and the Angel sisters' act is fun as well. Some of the better comic bits, apart from Raymond Walburn's blustery expressions of temper, include the backstage antics of Happy and his band; a great extended bit based on Brooklyn dialect featuring Dorothy Lamour and Frank Faylen (as Herman...er...Hoiman); and the slapstick bits involving the girls fending off various men. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Review

And The Angels Sing is the kind of movie that the major studios would only have issued during World War II -- work was hard, defense plant shifts were long, and people needed entertainment and weren't always too picky about how well put together the entertainment was. Not that And The Angels Sing is a bad movie -- it's just not terribly good, despite being thoroughly professional and possessed of several entertaining sections, some of them very effective. And there's even a script with some interesting notions, perhaps even a message of sorts, buried in its layers of misunderstanding and comedic deception -- the problem is that none of it really hangs together as a movie. For starters, there's Fred MacMurray as Happy Marshall, the bandleader whose good nature, mixed with a gambling habit he can't lick, combine to form the larcenous impulses in him that drive the plot but make the movie difficult to watch -- are we supposed to like this guy or not, one wonders, as his casual lies and deceptions mount up, admittedly in comical fashion, across the first half of the movie. The second half revolves around his mostly thwarted efforts to pay back what he owes the four Angel sisters, and their efforts to collect the money he owes them and, on the part of two of them (played by Dorothy Lamour and Betty Hutton) to sort out their rival feelings of attraction to him. And it's the Angel sisters that are the big stumbling block in the writing -- as portrayed by Hutton, Lamour, Diana Lynn, and Mimi Chandler, they resemble a broad caricature of the siblings in Four Daughters (or the musical remake, Young At Heart); they're four fiercely independent girls, in keeping with the wartime ethos; they're fiercely loyal to each other, whether browbeating their widowered father (Raymond Walburn) or defending against the unwanted or untoward advances of any man, ganging up on the latter with a level of team-work worthy of a wrestling tag-team (or Popeye's rambunctious nephews, when the slapstick starts). But they hate doing the one thing that they are good at professionally, which is singing together. And somehow, the script never pulls together that side of the story and the side dealing with Happy Marshall's machinations. Each half is funny, the Angel sisters' antics -- and especially Betty Hutton's musical/comedy contribution -- and Happy's interactions with the band, and especially his partner (Eddie Foy, Jr.). The script tries to make some points, about right and wrong and relationships, playing off of certain conventions and stereotypes of the period -- this is the middle of World War II, when most of the men of draft age were off fighting, so there's some humor at the expense of the eccentric, prissy Oliver (Frank Albertson), the would-be boyfriend of one of the sisters, and his invention, a mechanical potato-peeler. The script also seems to want to make a point about the limitations of female resourcefulness and independence -- the Angels do fine making their way, and defending themselves until, confronted by this fact about themselves, they turn on the man who loves them most (apart from their father) -- and their father sabotages their all-for-one defense. If the movie weren't such a confusing (and, yes, often enjoyable) mishmash of music and comedy, one might even suspect that the writers had some kind of a message. But in this case, the point seems to have mostly been to get a picture made and released -- though Paramount apparently thought so little of this movie, that it stayed in the vault for well over half-a-year after it was finished. Still, it has lots of fun moments, for lovers of slapstick, musical comedy, and Betty Hutton's talents, and Dorothy Lamour's Brooklyn-ese interlude with Herman (or, as he says, "Hoiman"), played by Frank Faylen, culminating with a painfully slapstick dance routine, is one of the highlights that makes this worth seeing. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Cast

• Dorothy Lamour - Nancy Angel
• Fred MacMurray - Happy Morgan
• Betty Hutton - Bobby Angel
• Diana Lynn - Josie Angel
• Mimi Chandler - Patti Angel

Raymond Walburn - Pop Angel; Eddie Foy, Jr. - Fuzzy Johnson; Frank Albertson - Oliver; Mikhail Rasumny - Schultz; Frank Faylen - Holman; George McKay - House Man; Harry Barris - Saxy; Perc Launders - Miller; Tom Kennedy - Potatoes; Erville Alderson - Mr. Littlefield; Sig Arno - Mr. Green; Leon Belasco - Waiter; Hillary Brooke - Polish bride; Jimmy Conlin - Messenger; William B. Davidson - Agent; Edgar Dearing - Man; Roland DuPree - Boy; Julie Gibson - Cigarette girl; Buddy Gorman - Messenger; Donald Kerr - Mickey; Victor Laplace - Ticket Taker; Arthur Loft - Stage manager; Matt McHugh - Doorman - 33 Club; Jack Norton - Drunk; Buster Phelps - Spud; Otto Reichow - Groom; Libby Taylor - Attendant; Douglas Fowley - Cafe Manager; Louise LaPlanche - Ticket taker; Tim Ryan - Stage door man

Credit

Hans Dreier - Art Director, Hal Pereira - Art Director, Daniel Dare - Choreography, Edith Head - Costume Designer, Claude Binyon - Director, George Marshall - Director, Edna Warren - Editor, Victor Young - Composer (Music Score), Victor Young - Musical Direction/Supervision, Johnny Burke - Songwriter, Jimmy Van Heusen - Songwriter, Wally Westmore - Makeup, Karl Struss - Cinematographer, E.D. Leshin - Producer, Ray Moyer - Set Designer, Claude Binyon - Screenwriter, Melvin Frank - Screenwriter, Norman Panama - Screenwriter

Previous:	And a Time to Heal (Film), And a Still, Small Voice (1918 Film)
Next:	And the Band Played On (1993 Film), And the Beat Goes On (2008 Film)