5/10
Pleasant If Minor Big Band Musical
23 June 2019
Leon Errol and his son, Richard David, have a two-act in the carnival. Leon decides the boy needs to get out on his own, and soon he's singing for Freddie Slack's orchestra, getting on like gangbusters with Grace McDonald, and Hollywood beckons. However, publicity man Walter Catlett has this story about how David is an aristocrat, not the son of a baggy-pants comic. He engineers a rift between David, his father and Miss McDonald, all without them knowing what's going on.

It's a variation of the usual show biz story in which an entertainer makes good and starts to high-hat his old friends. Leon is pretty good with a bit of pathos, and Catlett is so high-speed that he never seems to be in the least villainous as he busts things up. It's not a great movie, but it's fun to watch the old pros at work.

As for the youngsters, Richard David seems to have vanished into the thin air, and Grace McDonald got married at the end of the year, moved to Minneapolis, had three kids, and died shortly before her 55th wedding anniversary 1999 at the age of 81. Hers was a minor talent when it came to the movies, but it looks like she wound up doing what she wanted to for the rest of her life.
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