Caroline Blues
Director: Leigh Jason
Year: 1944
Rating: 6.0
A war time musical
with Kay Kyser and his band. It is very light, old-fashioned with loads of
good music. The main purpose really seems to have been to sell war bonds.
Along with Kyser are Ann Miller and Victor Moore doing a Peter Sellers playing
seven family members of both sexes. Moore is always a treat. Though usually
not mentioned in talks of big band leaders, Kyser was very popular in the
1940s with a number of hits and a long running radio show. No idea what he
was like in real life, but the personality he projected on radio and his
five feature films was the genial uncle. He certainly was generous in sharing
the stage with his band members and many of them became well-known figures.
This has a paper thin plot as one might
expect. People didn't come for the plot. After touring army bases for six
weeks, the band is looking forward to a vacation, but Kyser is an easy touch
and is talked into a performance by Moore to have Kyser see his daughter
(Miller). The female vocalist, Georgia Carroll, is leaving the band to get
married and Miller wants to replace her by hook, crook or kootchi-koo. Kyser
and Carroll in real life were to be married the following year and stayed
that way.
The highlight of the film and it is a wow
is when the show has on a group of black performers in a six-minute number
of singing and dancing. It is astonishing. Harold of the Nicholson Brothers
is the headliner. I need to practice that flip, split and rise move for the
next time I go out dancing. June Richmond comes on to sing. Mister Beebee
is the title. Up on YouTube. In those days many of the Big Band musicals
had an all-black item number that never mixed with whites. Probably edited
out in the South. In this one the only other black actor is as a maid
- played by Dorothy Dandridge's mother, Ruby. 81 minutes.
