Starring Kay Kyser, Ann Miller, Victor Moore, Jeff Donnell, Howard Freeman
Directed by Leigh Jason
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
After returning home from a tiring tour entertaining servicemen, Kyser is convinced to postpone the band's vacation to perform a benefit for his hometown, while a new singer tries to get him to hire her.
The last feature film to star Kyser and his band, the picture teams them with the Columbia studio's musical star, Ann Miller, who sings, dances, and ends up a love interest for Kyser. The film interestingly casts her as a replacement for featured singer Georgia Carroll, explaining Carroll's retiring to marry a serviceman, when in reality she would marry Kyser. This is probably the slightest of the screen stories for Kyser and the band, rushing them from performance to performance, and the screenplay rather mean-spiritedly has Kyser pretend to be dying to get the band to rush to his side for another benefit. Much is tried to make comedy out of Victor Moore's appearance in the film, even having him appear as a variety of his character's relatives in a multiple composite sequence, but while he's always been an affable screen presence, he doesn't have the ability to really make this funny. The deadpan Ish Kabibble fares better, and is given the charming Miss Jeff Donnell as a girlfriend to play off of. The best part of the picture, the musical numbers, are great, and none better than a sequence staged on a replica of a Harlem street, featuring a crowd of black performers, fronted by the super-talented dancer Harold Nicholas.
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