The Great American Broadcast (20th Century-Fox) is Darryl Zanuck's conception of how radio broadcasting was born. According to his version, it was sired by Jack Oakie in a thunderstorm on the roof of an abandoned sausage factory on the Jersey flats, with an assist from a barnstorming aviator (John Payne) and a nightclub singer (Alice Faye).
This unhistorical observation serves well enough for a peg on which to hang another musical from the Zanuck cradle of history. Its pattern is familiar; the three principals rehearsed it almost to the letter in Tin Pan Alley (TIME, Dec. 9). But this time it curdles.
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