Main Cast: W.C. Fields, Martha Raye, Dorothy Lamour, Shirley Ross, Lynne Overman, Bob Hope
Release Year: 1937
Country: US
Run Time: 94 minutes
Plot
Paramount's final "Big Broadcast" musical had perhaps the least exciting musical lineup of the series (Tito Guizar, The Shep Fields Orchestra, and opera singer Kirsten Flagstad are hardly household names today), but a slightly stronger storyline than the others, as well as a top-notch comic cast. This time out, most of the action takes place as sea, as S.B. Bellows (W.C. Fields) shows off his new invention: an ocean liner that can turn radio signals into electricity and part the waves at 100 miles per hour. He challenges another ship to a race while a number of music and comedy acts appear in the ship's showroom. Along with Fields, who performs several classic pool and golf routines, Martha Raye, Dorothy Lamour, and Ben Blue add to the laughs; Bob Hope made his feature debut here, and he even sings his future theme song, "Thanks for the Memories". ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Released on DVD along with College Swing (1938), The Big Broadcast of 1938 is an expected hit and miss affair but with more misses than hits. Among the few highlights are W.C. Fields (no surprise there), who updates some of his oldest sketches and ad libs with accustomed abandon; Martha Raye all but knocking herself out in a jazzy production number; and, unintentionally, a chorus girl visibly stumbling on the steps in the grand finale, "The Waltz Lives On," a sure sign of a production running over budget and out of time. Bob Hope and Shirley Ross' crooning of the Oscar-winning "Thanks for the Memory" is anticlimactic, and the appearance of hefty Metropolitan opera diva Kirsten Flagstad performing Brünnhilde's battle cry from Die Walküre remains the singularly most bizarre addition to any lighthearted Hollywood musical. As for Hope's material -- well, the jokes were at least meant to be tired this time around. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
Hans Dreier - Art Director, Ernst Fegte - Art Director, Leon Schlesinger - Animator, LeRoy J. Prinz - Choreography, Edith Head - Costume Designer, Mitchell Leisen - Director, Chandler House - Editor, Edna Warren - Editor, Ralph Rainger - Composer (Music Score), Leo Robin - Composer (Music Score), Boris Morros - Musical Direction/Supervision, Tito Guizar - Songwriter, Ralph Rainger - Songwriter, Leo Robin - Songwriter, Harry A. Fischbeck - Cinematographer, Harlan Thompson - Producer, Gordon Jennings - Special Effects, Russel Crouse - Screenwriter, Walter de Leon - Screenwriter, Ken Englund - Screenwriter, Howard Lindsay - Screenwriter, Francis Martin - Screenwriter, Frederick Hazlitt Brennan - Short Story Author
The film was Hope's first feature film, and was the final film under Fields' long-running Paramount contract, before he moved to Universal Studios to make his final series of films. On 13 May2008, the New York Times reviewed a new DVD box set of Leisen titles, released by Universal, including Big Broadcast of 1938, which sadly is the only one of the Big Broadcast films to receive a VHS or DVD issue to date.
