Cinema: The New Pictures: Aug. 15, 1938

Alexander's Ragtime Band (Twentieth Century-Fox) is a two-hour, $2,000,000 collection of songs by Composer Irving Berlin, played and sung against the background of a conventional screen libretto.

Any effort to abridge the works of Berlin into a single picture is doomed to failure by the sheer magnitude of the task, but this one comes as close to success as could be expected. As the most expensive anthology ever compiled, as an outline of the history of U. S. jazz and as the soundtrack record of a noisy era, it is easily the best cinemusical...

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!