Pretty Good

Great Film overall

Excellent but underrated film

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Three young women get fired from their jobs, have no money or place to stay, and attempt to get on their feet again by entering a radio competition. They carry a nice tune, but after losing to 'Tops' Cardona (George Raft) and his orchestra, they join up with Tops and follow his somewhat stern direction in the hopes of advancing their careers.The three women are played by Alice Faye, Frances Langford, and Patsy Kelly, and while I enjoyed Kelly's pluck and Langford's singing, I have to say, the film was a little lacking in star power to put it over the top. Alice Faye is a bit like Jean Harlow lite, and Raft is not as effective here as in films like Scarface, though I did like the little bit of cool dancing he did while conducting at one point. Along those lines, in this film we get some banter, but it's banter-lite, most likely because the Hays Code was enforced as of the previous year.The plot is somewhat thin, but the film moves along pretty well in its 80 minutes. There are some cute amateur acts including an old woman who sings like a chicken, and it was nice to see African-American singer James Miller belt out "I Feel a Song Coming On". The real highlight, though, was Langford performing "I'm in the Mood for Love", and while the song has been covered countless times over the years, this was its first appearance. As a whole, the film is reasonably entertaining, though not very memorable.

...thus I'll give this one a six out of ten. If the plot had been more original it could merit an eight.Three girls (Alice Faye, Frances Langford, Patsy Kelly) work together in an office and get fired for using the boss' Dictaphone to make a record. They can't find any other jobs - this is still the Depression you know - and quickly run out of food and then out of rent money. Locked out of their own apartment, sitting on the rooming house steps, they see a sign advertising one hundred dollars for the winner of a radio contest. That will get them back into their room and buy food so off they go.The contest is hilarious, there is a very bad but dramatic trio, a bad singer in the operatic style, and even a woman singing while clucking like a chicken. Walter Catlett as the master of ceremonies is tailor made for the part. He's quite polite to all of the contestants right up to the time when he "gongs them" and cuts short their acts. Then in comes George Raft, as Tops Cordona with his orchestra consisting of pipe fitters, bricklayers, and carpenters. Tops is the conductor. They turn out to be quite good. Next, the girls are up, but Susan (Frances Langford) passes out from lack of food. They probably would have won, but with the act unfinished, the prize goes to Cordona and his band.Later the girls and Tops decide to team up - he names them "The Swanee Sisters" and has them fake southern accents. He promises that they will make lots of money and have lots of fun. He is half right. It turns out that Tops is a PR guy and salesman extraordinaire, as well as a good band leader. The problem is, he has the girls and the band going from show to show to the point that they have no time for fun. So, with an invitation to a swanky Park Avenue party, the girls run out on Tops, who has to do that night's show all alone. How does this all work out? Watch and find out. I'll just say that the girls find out that the upper crust is crustier than they imagined, and Tops finds out he is not tops without the girls doing vocals. The real conflict here is that Langford's character, Susan, is crazy for Tops, but all he seems to see in her is a singer for his band. That is the drama behind the film - there really is no other real conflict.With Alice Faye loaned out from Fox for her great musical presence and voice, and Patsy Kelly loaned from Hal Roach for her wisecracking abilities, this film has plenty of talent, plus it is rich in the atmosphere of old time radio. But if you see Raft as the headliner and expect some kind of crime drama or mystery, look elsewhere. What particularly surprised me was that the director of this film was Raoul Walsh, of whom Jack Warner once joked "Raoul's idea of a tender love scene is to burn down a whorehouse." Walsh adamantly believed the three greatest virtues of film were "action, action, and then action." So to look at those action films he made at WB from 1939 through 1949 and then look at this film, you would hardly recognize them as the product of the same director.Recommended for the music and the nostalgia of it all.

It didn't matter that most of Frances Langford's films were pretty forgettable, she made them memorable with her heavenly, sultry voice. Even though she had only appeared as herself in a couple of early musical shorts before "Every Night at Eight", she fitted in perfectly with veterans George Raft, Alice Faye and Patsy Kelly. Alice Faye was the female star although Langford was given the role of Susan, the quiet one, who only wants to settle down, marry and live in a house with a white picket fence - a sure sign that she is going to "get the guy" in the closing scene. And what a guy!!! George Raft actually looked as though he was having a lot of fun in this movie. He had all the right moves and seemed just itching to go into a dance routine - he actually did a few steps and turns when he was performing in the amateur hour segment. He had been one of the top dancers in New York in the 20s (that's what Fred Astaire said).For this movie he had to settle for being a band leader. He plays "Tops" Cardona - a dance band leader who is great and knows it!!! He and his band perform on an amateur hour and win by default when Susan, one of a trio of harmonizing singers, faints through lack of food. The girls manage to get through "Speaking Confidentially" and were certain to win. Also featured on the amateur program were Walter Catlett as the Master of Ceremonies and The Three Radio Rogues (called here Romeos) a novelty group who did impersonations of just about everything - radio serials, news reels and famous singers of the day (here they impersonate Dick Powell singing "Don't Say Goodnight" from "Wonder Bar") - in this movie they were ousted from the contest as professionals!!! Susan (after being revived with coffee) sings the soulful "Then You've Never Been Blue" - a song that Langford wrote herself.Alice Faye was going through her brassy Mae West period, (before 20th Century Fox softened her look) so she didn't have a lot to do but add her unique singing styling to the story. Patsy Kelly was fantastic, as usual, her witty wisecracks saved many a film - "he's just like a brother - especially to me"!!! As "The Swanee Sisters" they team up with Tops and his band and hit the big time. "I Feel a Song Coming On" is the film's highlight - there is harmonizing, torch singing (ala Miss Faye) and even a soulful rendition by a fabulous singer James Miller. Of course Susan, being the quiet one, has fallen for Tops - it seems he rubs everyone up the wrong way - everyone except Susan!! Fortunately she gets to sing "I'm In the Mood for Love" - a few times because Tops believes she isn't putting enough feeling into it. Her sultry, mellow, "out of this world" voice helped make this song a standard.Someone to watch for - Harry Barris, who in the 20s was part of a group called "3 Boys and a Piano" which evolved into the Rhythm Boys - one of the boys was Bing Crosby!! Harry plays Tops' livewire pianist, Harry!!Highly, Highly Recommended.

EVERY NIGHT AT EIGHT (Paramount, 1935), directed by Raoul Walsh, stars George Raft as a brash young band-leader named "Tops" Cardona in one of many musicals of the 1930s set in a radio station. Alice Faye, on loan from Fox Studios, billed second in the cast after Raft, appears platinum blonde with pencil eyelashes in the image of Jean Harlow, but with a personality all her own. Third billing goes to the wisecracking Patsy Kelly, while Frances Langford, in her movie debut, actually the central character, assumes fourth billing and the film's most notable songs. The story involves three singers who, after losing their jobs as switchboard operators, make the best of the situation by going on an amateur radio contest, hosted by the master of ceremonies (Walter Catlett). Before their turn to show their stuff, there's Henrietta (Florence Gill), a hen-faced woman whose specialty is singing like a chicken!; the Radio Rogues playing the Radio Romeos spoofing Dick Powell's "Don't Say Goodnight" from WONDER BAR (Warners,1934), and Tops Cordona and his band. Although the girls lose the prize money to Tops, they team up with him, and billed as "The Three Swanee Sisters," the girls soon become radio's singing sensation appearing on the air every night at eight. As time passes, Langford as Susan has fallen in love with the "all work and no play" Cardona (who is at times so full of himself), but fails to realize this until after the girls take a temporary walk out, but they come back in the end after he realizes he isn't any good without the girls vocalizing him, and save him from becoming "Flops" Cardona With the music and lyrics by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields, the songs are as follows: "Take It Easy" (sung by Alice Faye, Patsy Kelly and Frances Langford); "Don't Say Goodnight" (by Al Dubin and Harry Warren, sung by The Radio Rogues); "I Feel a Song Coming On" (instrumental band playing by George Raft); "Take It Easy" and "Speaking Confidentially" (Faye, Langford and Kelly); "Then You've Never Neen Blue" (a ballad written by Joe Young and Sam Lewis, sung by Frances Langford); "Take It Easy" (reprise); "I Feel a Song Coming On" (sung by Faye, Kelly, Langford/ solo by Faye/ James Miller/ chorus); "Every Night at Eight" (Faye, Kelly and Langford); "I'm in the Mood for Love," "I'm in the Mood for Love" (both sung by Langford); and "Every Night at Eight" (Faye, Kelly and Langford). During the production number of "I Feel a Song Coming On" there's a brief moment where Raft does some fancy dance steps while conducting the orchestra, something that couldn't be appreciated from the radio listening audience. EVERY NIGHT AT EIGHT, an agreeable 80 minute film, is very nostalgic look at old-time radio with fine cast, lively tunes and witty dialog. "I Feel a Song Coming On" and "I'm in the Mood for Love" are the biggest song plugs here, the latter being most associated with Langford. Rarely televised since the early 1980s, this is one of the many musicals from that era one can hope to be revived again. (**1/2)