Innocuous musical expansion of ROOM SERVICE, a one-room farce about a hustling producer fighting to keep his hotel room/office while he raises cash for a play. A big B’way hit under George Abbott in ‘36 with Eddie Albert, Sam Levene & Betty Field; converted into a so-so Marx Bros. vehicle in ‘38, now studded with a few tunes as Frank Sinatra’s second feature. The real leading role goes to George Murphy as the hassled play producer, while a wafer-thin Sinatra (positively swimming in a double-breasted suit*) plays the novice, but not so dumb playwright who winds up singing his way onto a B’way stage. Loud & fast when it means to be funny, its saving grace lies in a brace of pleasant, if not quite memorable Jule Styne/Sammy Cahn tunes. (Best are Sinatra’s ‘As Long as There’s Music’ and an off-the-wall Arabian Nights production ‘numbo’ for Murphy, ‘Ask the Madame.’) R.K.O.’s desperate tagline, ‘It’s Fun!,’ tells you all you need to know. (Presumably from the same R.K.O. publicity genius whose tagline for CITIZEN KANE was ‘It’s Terrific!’)
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Sinatra skedaddled to M-G-M after this, co-starring with Gene Kelly in ANCHORS AWEIGH/’45, a big commercial hit that camouflaged his bag-of-bones bod in a spiffy sailor uniform and applied ‘symmetricals’ to give him the illusion of a tush.
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