Jam Session
                      
Director: Charles Barton
Year: 1944
Rating: 6.5
The plot of this film is so thin, you could fit it through a keyhole. And that's fine. More time for music and this is a Big Band celebration. It is 1944 and America is at war and Big Band was the soundtrack of the times. There are nine musical numbers squeezed into a 77-minute film. Some well-known bands and a few that have become obscure with time to all but the Big Band aficionados of the 1940s. But they are all great. It begins with Louis Armstrong singing I Can't Give You Anything but Love and a few others are Teddy Powell, Charlie Barnett and then the now obscure ones of Alvino Rey, Jan Garber, The Casa Loma Orchestra and the Pied Pipers. Among them are four terrific female singers - Peggy Mann, Nan Wynn (dubbed Rita Hayworth's singing in three films), the singer of I Lost My Sugar in Salt Lake City whose name I can't find and Jo Stafford with the Pied Pipers. Stafford is one of my favorite Big Bang female singers with her velvety voice. The Pied Pipers though long forgotten had a number of hits working with Tommy Dorsey and one with Frank Sinatra.




The plot if you can call it that is cute and charming thanks to Ann Miller. Miller was perhaps the best female tap dancer of her era - some might argue Eleanor Powell but both are great. As minor as this film is, she shines in it but only gets the big patriotic finale at the end to show her dancing skills. As Terry, she comes to Hollywood with a rave from her local town paper in Kansas for her dancing thinking this will get her in the door. It doesn't so she becomes a prostitute and sleeps her way into the business. No not really. She pretends to have secretarial skills and works for a newly hired writer who has to come up with a script that will showcase these bands. And he can't think of anything till he hits on the idea - supplied by Terry - of a small-town girl coming to Hollywood and having a tough time. So basically this movie. A little bit of humor, an ounce of romance and a whole lot of music. If Big Band music makes you squirm, this is not the movie for you! Otherwise, it is good fun.