The Paramount publicity department goes overboard to out-do rival MGM in their need to promote "more stars than there are in the tavern". This has an automatically dated concept with the radio series of the same name a basis for this comedy with occasional musical numbers that falls flatter than a happy hour drunk at 9 PM. It surrounds the titled bar and customers who frequent it, particularly the big idea seeker but lousy executioner of them, Victor Moore, the owner of a failing record company in debt needing to re-do the studio to bring the stars back in. This shell of a plot has Moore's daughter, Marjorie Reynolds, who happens to work in the switchboard department of Paramount, to get movie stars, still famous or now forgotten, to help them, and joining forces with recording studio employee Barry Sullivan to come to her father's aide. Along for the ride is Charles Cantor whose cartoon style voice begins to grate on the nerves after a while.
Taking some very familiar cliches and twisting them into glorious malapropisms ("Rome wasn't burnt in a day" for example), the script tries its best to be witty, but it ends up being just a 97 minute promotion for Paramount's contract players. Bing Crosby gets his usual snark in at the unseen Bob Hope, following up a scene where he is forced to hold a baby so a fan can get Dorothy Lamour's autograph, and Sullivan and Moore create havoc as they interrupt Paulette Goddard in the shower and Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in rehearsing "O.S.S." There's more havoc with Betty Hutton getting an odd type of massage. When Victor Moore storms into her room and Hutton asks "Who's he?", I couldn't help but shout out "Your father from Star Spangled Rhythm!" Betty's a good sport as she gets kneaded like a big piece of raw Italian bread.
Without any real explanation of how it happens, the benefit is there, literally taking up 46 minutes of screen time. The songs and sketches are a mixed bag, with a jazzy tap dance to "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" the highlight. Another features Hutton spoofing "Lady in the Dark" with her frenetic personality (and Billy DeWolfe as her psychoanalyst) that lands, but others seem to be old vaudeville sketches pulled out of the trunk, complete with mothballs and bandages.
A sketch with Ladd, Lake and Howard da Silva would have gotten groans in 1945 and would cause major protest a decade later. A sketch fictionalizing Crosby's life seems rather self-serving and desperate. It doesn't seem at all like any kind of benefit, but it is the kind that Hollywood had been doing since it learned to talk, sing and dance. By the time the stars get to a delicious parody of "Swingin' on a Star" (a lot better than anything that had come before), you may be swingin' on your remote, ready to hit the stop button, just like audiences might have been doing in 1945 with the theater doors. It truly is over an hour of desperation with only about ten minutes I ever want to sit through again.
Taking some very familiar cliches and twisting them into glorious malapropisms ("Rome wasn't burnt in a day" for example), the script tries its best to be witty, but it ends up being just a 97 minute promotion for Paramount's contract players. Bing Crosby gets his usual snark in at the unseen Bob Hope, following up a scene where he is forced to hold a baby so a fan can get Dorothy Lamour's autograph, and Sullivan and Moore create havoc as they interrupt Paulette Goddard in the shower and Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in rehearsing "O.S.S." There's more havoc with Betty Hutton getting an odd type of massage. When Victor Moore storms into her room and Hutton asks "Who's he?", I couldn't help but shout out "Your father from Star Spangled Rhythm!" Betty's a good sport as she gets kneaded like a big piece of raw Italian bread.
Without any real explanation of how it happens, the benefit is there, literally taking up 46 minutes of screen time. The songs and sketches are a mixed bag, with a jazzy tap dance to "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" the highlight. Another features Hutton spoofing "Lady in the Dark" with her frenetic personality (and Billy DeWolfe as her psychoanalyst) that lands, but others seem to be old vaudeville sketches pulled out of the trunk, complete with mothballs and bandages.
A sketch with Ladd, Lake and Howard da Silva would have gotten groans in 1945 and would cause major protest a decade later. A sketch fictionalizing Crosby's life seems rather self-serving and desperate. It doesn't seem at all like any kind of benefit, but it is the kind that Hollywood had been doing since it learned to talk, sing and dance. By the time the stars get to a delicious parody of "Swingin' on a Star" (a lot better than anything that had come before), you may be swingin' on your remote, ready to hit the stop button, just like audiences might have been doing in 1945 with the theater doors. It truly is over an hour of desperation with only about ten minutes I ever want to sit through again.