Paramount. Director Frank Tuttle; Screenplay George Marion Jr; Camera George Folsey
Stuart Erwin
Bing Crosby
George Burns
Gracie Allen
Leila Hyams
It's an all-star show with a flock of the biggest air favorites. Bing Crosby, Burns and Allen, Kate Smith, Boswell Sisters, Arthur Tracy (The Street Singer), Donald Novis, and the Vincent Lopez and Cab Calloway orchestras are as varied a galaxy of radio favorites as they are ether-renowned.
Crosby and Burns and Allen alone went to the Coast to participate in the actual production, having lines and parts, with the rest shot in the east and cut in for their specialties. While disjointed in action, the cutting in of the variety interludes is skillfully accomplished.
The film is a credit to Crosby as a screen juve possibility, although he has a decidedly dizzy and uncertain role which makes him misbehave as no human being does. George Burns with his serious-miened straighting for the dumbdora-ish Gracie Allen are a sock interlude in themselves as the station manager and dumb stenog, although it evolves into more or less a specialty routine.
The chief fault with Broadcast is that it's not a feature film but a succession of talking shorts. The story is rather childish.
(B&W) Extract of a review from 1932. Running time: 80 MIN.
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