On Feb. 11, 1938, Paramount Pictures released The Big Broadcast of 1938, the third (and last) of its Big Broadcast variety anthologies and the only one in the series that has been released on VHS or DVD. The film marked Bob Hope’s feature debut and the final outing for W.C. Fields in his long-running Paramount studio contract, before he moved to Universal Studios for his last series of films. The film is also notable for debuting Hope’s signature song, the Oscar-winning “Thanks for the Memory,” which you can watch him and Shirley Ross perform below.
Produced for Paramount by Harlan Thompson, the creative team included Mitchell Leisen (direction), Walter DeLeon, Ken Englund, and Francis Martin (screenplay, from an adaptation by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse of an original story by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan), Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger (songs), Boris Morros (music direction), LeRoy Printz (choreography) Harry Fischbeck (cinematography), Chandler House and Ed Warren (editing), Hans Dreier and Ernst Fegté (art direction), A.E. Freudeman (set decoration), Edith Head (costumes), Gordon Jennings (special effects), and Gene Merritt, Don Johnson, and Charles Althouse (sound).
Leon Schlesinger, producer of the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons, directed the animated sequence that accompanied the instrumental song “This Little Ripple Had Rhythm,” conducted by Shep Fields, which you can watch below.
The cast included W.C. Fields (T.F. Bellows, S.B. Bellows), Martha Raye (Martha Bellows), Dorothy Lamour (Dorothy Wyndham), Shirley Ross (Cleo Fielding), Ben Blue (Mike), Bob Hope (Buzz Fielding), Grace Bradley (Grace Fielding), Leif Erikson (Bob Hayes), Lynne Overman (Scoop McPhail), Rufe Davis (Turnkey), Dorothy Howe (Joan Fielding), Lionel Pape (Englishman Lord Droopy), Russel Hicks (Capt. Stafford), and Patricia Wilder (Honey Chile), with specialty numbers performed by Kirsten Flagstad, Tito Guízar, and Shep Fields.
Fields, Ross and Hope
Most of the action takes place aboard T.F.’s new ocean liner, the S.S. Gigantic, which is in a “Race of the Ages” with its rival, the S.S. Colossal. Fields plays the conniving ship owner and his “nearly identical” brother S.B., whom T.F. had booked on the Colossal in hopes that his dimwitted sibling would sabotage that ship. Instead, S.B. shows up on the Gigantic, as does his unlucky daughter Martha, rescued from the shipwreck of her yacht, Hesperus V. Meanwhile, radio emcee Buzz Fielding introduces a series of musical acts for the pleasure of Gigantic’s passengers and his radio listeners, while juggling his fiancée Dorothy and three ex-wives who’ve come aboard.
In addition to “Thanks for the Memory” and “This Little Ripple Had Rhythm,” Rainger and Robin contributed the songs “Don’t Tell a Secret to a Rose” (sung by Tito Guízar), “You Took the Words Right out of My Heart” (sung by Dorothy Lamour), “The Waltz Lives On” (sung by Shirley Ross), and “Mama, That Moon Is Here Again” (sung by Martha Raye), which you can watch below. Incongruously amid these new songs, soprano Kirsten Flagstad offered “Brunnhilde’s Battle Cry,” from Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre, conducted by Wilfrid Pelletier.
Reviews were mixed for the film’s initial release. New York Times critic Frank S. Nugent wrote, “The hodgepodge revue being offered at the Paramount is all loose ends and tatters, not too good at its best and downright bad at its worst.” The Senior Scholastic described it as “a big cast with plenty of big names, but a big disappointment, except for W.C. Fields.” While the National Board of Review’s magazine found it to be “an amusing and lavish production” with good songs and excellent dancing. The film was nominated for AFI’s 2006 Greatest Movie Musicals list, while “Thanks for the Memory” was ranked #63 on AFI’s 2004 100 Years …100 Songs list.
Despite reviews, the public took to the pairing of Hope and Ross so well that the couple were teamed again in Thanks for the Memory (1939), where they sang “Two Sleepy People” by Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser, and for a third time in Some Like It Hot (1939), retitled Rhythm Romance, where they sang “The Lady’s in Love with You” by Burton Lane and Frank Loesser. Below is the pair singing “Two Sleepy People.”
https://youtu.be/25U-V-rCb0o