Nessieldwi
Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.
FrogGlace
In other words,this film is a surreal ride.
Clarissa Mora
The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
rdoyle29
Alice Faye, Frances Langford and Patsy Kelly lose their jobs and can't afford to pay the rent. They enter an amateur contest at a local radio station as a singing trio, but lose to a big band lead by George Raft when Langford passes out mid-song due to lack of food. Raft asks them to join his band, and they become famous, which throws obstacles in the way of a romance between Raft and Langford. An engaging enough little trifle which is largely an excuse to include a lot of musical numbers, the highlight of which is a lady doing a song as a chicken.
jjnxn-1
Snappy musical is a study in proposed star building. While Alice Faye is top billed along with George Raft her role is secondary to Frances Langford who the studio was trying to build up. But while Frances sings like a angel she doesn't pop on screen in the way Alice does nor is she able to radiate a comic persona as Patsy Kelly, the other part of the singing trio, does. She's also hindered by some REALLY unfortunate styling in makeup and especially hair-dress. She eventually had a hugely successful music career and was an tireless touring entertainer during WWII who had a minor screen career in B pictures but never at the level that Alice Faye achieved.The story of the picture is a stock scenario for 30's musicals. Three plucky girlfriends who sing meet a brash scrapper who is trying to make it as a bandleader they join forces and before you know it they hit the Big Time but there is dissension in the ranks all set aright by the fade-out.
calvinnme
...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.
lugonian
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)
