Radio Parade of 1935
This follow-up to Radio Parade (1933) was an ambitious prestige effort for the British film industry, though it came after the craze for variety program musical showcases had died down. It offers a host of stars, many from rival mediums like radio and music hall — and at least one (Helen Chandler, Mina to Bela Lugosi’s Dracula) imported from Hollywood. A thin plot is designed to give turns the chance to perform their individual acts, plus a finale which pulls out all the stops (a couple of musical numbers in weird-looking colour) and edges the showbiz revue into mild science fiction. Dotty inventor Algernon Bird (Hugh E. Wright) has been loitering around the art deco citadel of the imaginary National Broadcasting Group – who are supposed to be on an equal footing with the BBC, who actually had a near-monopoly of the airwaves. He finally reveals that his big idea is erecting huge screens in public places which can receive colour television signals*.
Will Hay is top-billed as NGB chief William Garland, a wise, if comical authority figure with wavy hair. Garland doesn’t carry many of the jokes and has as much in common with the Master of Metropolis or the BBC’s Lord Reith as Hay’s usual bumbling schoolmasters or minor officials. Jimmie Clare (forgotten Clifford Mollison) is the smug lead, an ambitious if tactless juvenile from the overworked NBG complaints department who persuades Garland to make him director of the network to reverse a precipitous loss of audiences through droning, dull, worthy programming (a dig at Reith?) by staging a variety show. A running gag about rearranging files that spell out ‘COMPLAINTS’ to read ‘COMPLIMENTS’ sneaks in a subliminal crude gag as ‘OMPLIM’ is removed from ‘COMPLIMUNTS’ but we don’t quite see the word which emerges. NBG was then slang for ‘No Bloody Good’.
Stars of the day (Ted Ray, Ronald Frankeau, Claude Dampier, Stanelli, Beryl Orde) do their acts – in Frankau’s case, a valuable record of his unique brand of patter song – but then the story kicks in as a scheming music hall magnate (Alfred Drayton) prevents contracted attractions from working on the wireless, which makes Clare – assisted by Garland’s peppy daughter (Chandler) – recruit comics and musicians from the eccentric cleaning women, sound effects men and general layabouts who already work for the company. The climax, in which the music halls empty as people throng into public places to watch bigscreen colour TV for free is a remarkable prophecy of the set-up at 21st century concerts and sporting events, and Alberta Hunter’s song about people mistreating her because she’s black is remarkably liberal for the time (there’s also a nasty joke about Hitler made half a decade before it was fashionable). The songs are forgettable, much of the comedy is agonising and there isn’t really a plot – but it’s a fascinating artefact of its period, with nice art deco sets, a stuffy British approximation of Busby Berkeley’s choreographic style and some brittle charm.
*In the expensive flop Radioland Murders (1994), a similar character turns out to be the culprit.