BING ON FILM: WAIKIKI WEDDING - PART TWO

Before Bing made the film, he and wife Dixie Lee vacationed in Honolulu where he met band leader Harry Owens. Owens had composed the song “Sweet Leilani” for his daughter that was born around that time. The name “Leilani” means “flower of heaven”. Bing fell in love with the song and wanted to use the song in the film. Harry Owens was reluctant, but he eventually agreed. The movie producers did not want to use the song in the film either, but with Bing’s higher clout as one of Paramount’s biggest money makers, Bing smartly demanded that the song to be in the film. The song was a huge success. It was Bing’s first million selling song, and it also won the Oscar for Best Song in 1938 beating out such songs as the Gershwin’s “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” and Sammy Fain and Lew Brown’s great standard “That Old Feeling”. The rest of the songs in Waikiki Wedding were written by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger, whom as you know wrote many of Bing’s film songs of the time. The three songs other songs that Bing sang in the film included “In A Little Hula Heaven”, “Blue Hawaii”, and “Sweet Is The Word For You”. The song “Blue Hawaii” would remain popular through the years even to be revived later on by Elvis Presley. Personally, I think the most underrated song in the film was “Sweet Is The Word For You”. It was the great love song of the film, and the song should be remembered more.

The reviews were mostly positive for the film too:
Frank S. Nugent writing in The New York Times commented: "Regretting that he has but one voice to give, Bing Crosby is surrendering it cheerfully at the Paramount to the uses of the Hawaiian Board of Trade, the pineapple industry and sundry tourist agencies. His Waikiki Wedding places him in a welter of grass skirts, tropical sunsets, Martha Raye and a razorback pig called Walford...It is, at least, a workable idea for a musical comedy, even though the fabric has been stretched so far that it has burst in places...Mr. Crosby is still the pleasantest of our crooners and Miss Ross was all right, too."

 Variety had minor doubts about the songs. "A romantic picture, pure and simple, Waikiki Wedding should have no difficulty getting by anywhere. It’s saccharine celluloid, sugar coated by Bing Crosby’s and Shirley Ross’ crooning in a surefire palmetto setting. The prime possible box office deterrent with this pic is that it comes so soon after the release of Crosby’s Pennies from Heaven for Columbia, but this damper should not be drastic. While none of the songs here will hit the top performance brackets, they fit the picture’s theme and the voices of Crosby, Shirley Ross and Martha Raye. They should get at least a minor play on the air. . . (Crosby) also makes the best of his songs, a couple of them spotted in night sailboat scenes that are very well photographed and directed."

In my opinion, Waikiki Wedding was no grand masterpiece, but it is an example of Bing just being appealing in any role he is cast in. Bing’s role in this film is mostly as a lying publicity agent, but by the end of the 89 minute film I find myself rooting for Bing to get the girl. Some of the scenes are beautifully done and despite not being shot in color, the audience gets the feel of old Hawaii. This was the Hawaii of 1937, so I am sure it is much different now. As we all know Hawaii would be devastated four years later with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. However in 1937, Hawaii was a peaceful and beautiful oasis. It was easy to believe that Bing and Shirley Ross could fall in love here! It was joy to watch the movie, especially since the closest I will get to Hawaii this year is a trip to our community pool, It is nice to watch Waikiki Wedding and get the taste of the islands from Bing! If you have not watched this film do yourself a favor and put it on. As Bing would say “Aloha on the steel guitars!”

MY RATING: 9 OUT OF 10  

BING ON FILM: WAIKIKI WEDDING - PART ONE

Since I have been blessed with children, dreams of going to Hawaii have been placed on the back burner. I have never been there, but Bing was for his 1937 film Waikiki Wedding. Since most of you will be reading this in summer, I figured it was an appropriate film to review this time around. Waikiki Wedding was directed by Frank Tuttle, who worked with Bing extensively at Paramount in the 1930s. He directed Bing’s other 1930s films like: The Big Broadcast (1932), Here Is My Heart (1934), Two For Tonight (1935), Doctor Rhythm (1938), and Paris Honeymoon (1939). The usual Paramount stars of the 1930s appear with Bing in the film as well including Shirley Ross, Martha Raye, and Bob Burns. A rarity of movie productions during 1930s, the film was actually filmed on location between November of 1936 and February 1937.

The plot of Waikiki Wedding is slight but enjoyable. Bing plays Tony Marvin, a lazy man who works in publicity for the Imperial Pineapple Company. He is almost about to get fired when he comes up with the idea of a “Pineapple Girl” contest. The winner gets three weeks in Hawaii, and the winner’s every moment on the trip is meant to be reported to the press for publicity. The girl that wins, Georgia Smith (played by Shirley Ross), is extremely bored and ready to go home when a stranger gives her a black pearl to smuggle through customs. Bing offers Shirley his help, and they find out that the pearl is sacred and must be returned to a certain little island or a volcano will erupt and destroy the village. Bing takes Shirley on the trip to the island, and in the meantime begins to fall in love with her. In the long run, Shirley finds out that it was all a publicity stunt manufactured by the Imperial Pineapple Company. She returns to her hotel to find her father and fiancée waiting for her. Her fiancée wants to take her home to marry her. Bing meanwhile wants to destroy the articles that he had written for the publicity department, and he tells Shirley he wants to marry her. However, Shirley is still angry and tells Bing that she will return home with her father. Bing boards the ship and tries to rekindle his romance with Shirley by singing in the next state room to her. Shirley reports him, and he is kicked off the boat. Bing and Shirley are reunited after an old lady hired by Bing to pose as his mother visits Shirley and persuades her that it is Bing who she is meant to be with. So basically, Bing gets Shirley to fall in love with him by lying to her, and he wins her back the same way!

Regarding the cast, his love interest Shirley Ross was one of the underrated actresses of the 1930s. If you remember her, she duetted with Bob Hope on his breakthrough song “Thanks For The Memory” in Paramount’s The Big Broadcast Of 1938. However, Hollywood never knew what to do with Shirley. She mostly starred either opposite Bob Hope or Bing Crosby, and by the 1940s her career was in decline. She appeared opposite Bob Burns on his radio show in the mid-1940s, but retired soon after to take care of her ailing husband. She died unknown in 1975, but Bing and Bob reportedly sent a 5-foot tall cross with white carnations and a spray of red roses to her funeral. Bing and Shirley had great chemistry in the film, and when they sang “Blue Hawaii” together you believed they were falling for each other. The supporting cast was equally as good with Bob Burns (whom I never really cared for) and Martha Raye playing off each other well. Also rounding out the cast was familiar supporting performers like Leif Erikson, Grady Sutton, and a young Anthony Quinn....

TO BE CONTINUED...

SPOTLIGHT ON SHIRLEY ROSS

To anyone in 2016, if they hear the name Shirley Ross, I almost guarantee that 90% of the time - the person will say "Shirley Who?". Ross has been gone for over 40 years now, but she was such a treat to see in many movies of the 1930s, namely the ones she made with Bing Crosby. She appeared in 25 feature films between 1933 and 1945, including singing earlier and wholly different lyrics for the Rodgers and Hart song in Manhattan Melodrama (1934) that later became "Blue Moon."

Shirley Ross was born Bernice Maude Gaunt in Omaha, Nebraska on January 7, 1913, the elder of two daughters of Charles Burr Gaunt and Maude C. (née Ellis) Gaunt. Growing up in California, she attended Hollywood High School and UCLA, training as a classical pianist. By age 14, she was giving radio recitals and made her first vocal recordings at 20 with Gus Arnheims’s band. Here she attracted the notice of the up-and-coming songwriting duo Rodgers and Hart, who selected her to sell their latest offerings to MGM. One song, which was later re-written as "Blue Moon," led to a successful screen test in 1933 and then to a number of small parts in films that included Manhattan Melodrama with Clark Gable and William Powell in which, made up to look black, she sang "The Bad in Every Man," the original version of "Blue Moon," in a Harlem nightclub.

In 1936, MGM loaned her to Paramount, and she was paired with Ray Milland in The Big Broadcast of 1937. Although this was officially a leading role, the Big Broadcast format included a busy programme of musical comedy sketches with big-name performers who somewhat overshadowed her. But one press review declared that she had ‘one of the sweetest voices of any actress on the screen and predicted a big future for her. Paramount signed her to a five-year contract; meanwhile her introduction to the songwriting team of Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger would prove significant.

Her duet with Bing Crosby in Waikiki Wedding was a Robin-Rainger number titled "Blue Hawaii." Thus began a three-year period during which Ross was cast opposite either Crosby or Bob Hope on five occasions.

After a career interruption in the making of This Way Please with Buddy Rogers, when she walked off the job, alleging that Jack Benny's wife, Mary Livingstone, was trying to sabotage her scenes, she was cast opposite Hope in The Big Broadcast of 1938. Their duet, "Thanks for the Memory", became a huge hit and a defining moment for two careers headed in opposite directions – for Hope, a springboard to bigger and better things; for Ross, the pinnacle. It would prove to be her sole enduring claim to fame.

The duet's great success sparked spin-off movies with Bob Hope, Thanks for the Memory (1938) and another called Some Like It Hot (1939; later renamed Rhythm Romance to avoid confusion with the unrelated 1959 feature). Although Thanks for the Memory did produce another hit song, "Two Sleepy People", the films themselves made little impact, apparently reflecting Paramount’s declining interest in musical comedy. Although Ross would have been willing to play straight drama and had performed well in Prison Wife, Paramount relegated her to supporting roles in two minor romantic comedies, which did nothing for her career, even though one of them (Paris Honeymoon) teamed her once more with Crosby. Her extremely promising career suffered a steep decline and never recovered.

Although Ross knew that her understated appeal was better suited to the screen than the stage, she played the lead in Rodgers and Hart’s Broadway musical Higher and Higher (1940), featuring the song "It Never Entered My Mind." The show was a critical failure. After a few forgettable movies and some radio work, Ross increasingly attended to her terminally ill husband Ken Dolan, which became an early retirement.

Ross died from cancer on March 9, 1975.in Menlo Park, California, aged 62. As her married name, Bernice Dolan Blum, was not well known, her death was not widely publicized. But Hope, with whom she had an enduring real-life friendship, did not fail to commemorate her death. He and Crosby sent a 5-foot tall cross with white carnations and a spray of red roses to her funeral...

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: BING AND HIS LEADING LADIES

Bing Crosby had a clause in his contract that he would have approval over his leading ladies. Luckily he had a good eye for beauty because he surrounded himself with some of the most beautiful and talented women that were around during Hollywood's golden age - as these classic pictures clearly show...

CAROLE LOMBARD (1909-1942)

ANN BLYTH (BORN 1928)

SHIRLEY ROSS (1913-1975)

MARION DAVIES (1897-1961)

MIRIAM HOPKINS (1902-1972)

DEBBIE REYNOLDS (BORN 1932)

GUEST REVIEWER: PARIS HONEYMOON

Our excellent guest reviewer Bruce Kogan is back reviewing a long forgotten Bing film "Paris Honeymoon"...

Bing Crosby plays Lucky Lawton a cowboy millionaire who struck gold on his land and would be considered nouveau riche. He's about to marry a Countess played by Shirley Ross, but a hitch has gone through with her divorce. They both come over to Paris to try and straighten it out.

While there Crosby buys a castle from Akim Tamiroff in some unknown Balkan town called Pushtalnik. It's also time for Pushtalnik's Rose Festival and the Rose Queen traditionally resides in the castle. That would be Franciska Gaal and she arrives and Crosby has to get rid of her before Ross joins him in wedlock.

Now if you're already thinking this plot is silly, it is. But that's the kind of thing that was done in the 1930s in Hollywood. And it's the kind of story that Bing Crosby was often asked to carry on the strength of his popularity and charisma. He does this admirably with assist from some nice songs by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger.

 

Robin and Rainger were one hot songwriting team in Hollywood at that time. They were fresh off an Oscar in 1938 for Thanks for the Memory which became the beloved theme song of Crosby's Road picture partner Bob Hope. Not often remembered is that Hope introduced this song with Shirley Ross and also recorded it with her.

Shirley Ross was at home equally on Broadway as well as Hollywood, she probably shuttled back and forth so she never got really established in either. A good singer with a pleasant voice, the woman was destined to be a footnote in Hollywood history. She also introduced Blue Moon in Manhattan Melodrama, albeit with a different lyric and entitled The Bad in Every Man. Larry Hart changed the lyric and the song became a smash, but not for Shirley Ross.

 

Akim Tamiroff was a great addition to any film he was in. Here he plays Peter Karloca, mayor of Pushtalnik. Karloca spent some time in the United States, proudly studying our political methods in Chicago and adapting them to Pushtalnik. He and Ben Blue who plays the village idiot who turns the table on Tamiroff in the end, have some great scenes together and separately.

Robin and Rainger's score consists of The Funny Old Hills, a cowboy ballad that is a personal favorite of mine, I Have Eyes which he sings as a duet via telephone with Ross, You're A Sweet Little Headache which Bing expresses his feeling for Gaal tongue in cheek and finally Joobalai which is one of the few huge production numbers in 30s Bing Crosby film. Nice, but boy what Busby Berkeley could have done here.

 

Gaal was a continental cabaret entertainer who Cecil B. DeMille discovered and tried to make a star, just like his rival producer Sam Goldwyn tried with Anna Sten. Paris Honeymoon was one of only two other films she made before returning to Europe just in time for World War II.

There's another number, sort of. One night Bing and butler Edward Everett Horton try to spook Gaal from the castle. Bing plays a disembodied head who is rolled down the dark hallway singing, I Ain't Got Nobody for a couple of lines. When Decca released the Bing's Hollywood record series, they included a great jazz recording that Crosby made with Woody Herman's band a couple of years after Paris Honeymoon was out.

I can't forget Edward Everett Horton who's prissy stuffiness provided a great foil for many stars. At that time primarily known for his work with Fred Astaire, Horton and Bing work well together and it's a pity they didn't do more.

A few months after Paris Honeymoon was released, Europe was at war and that mythical village of Pushtalnik would have been caught up in it. But we Americans like our escapist entertainment and Paris Honeymoon certainly fills that bill...