Star Spangled Rhythm (1942)

The familiar Horror trope of the doppelgänger, applied here for comedic effect: The idea is that there is someone who looks exactly like you, and is always just one step ahead of you, ruining your life without you being able to do anything about it.

In this case, ‘Pop’ Webster (Victor Moore) a former Western actor, (once known as ‘Bronco Billy’,) now working as security at a movie studio, brags that he’s become the head of the studio overnight, never thinking the lie would ever come back and bite him in the ass.

The trouble is his enlisted son Johnny (Eddie Bracken) has brought a bunch of buddies on leave to meet Paramount starlets. Pop and Johnny’s fiancé (Betty Hutton) must take over the studio head’s (Walter Abel) office and pass as him and his secretary (among a whole bunch of additional roles) to fool the group of sailors, tour the facilities and avoid getting caught, but, mostly, to get a marriage proposal out of the scheme.

The films works really well with just this premise, and it really should have only been this; except the original premise was in reality an excuse to put an all-star cast musical film.

Unfortunately, while some of the musical numbers and comedy sketches manage to match the high energy levels of the premise, not all do. One highlight is an impromptu acrobatic act where Hutton attempts to climb over the studio wall with the help/hindrance of two passersby.

The film works well enough with the girl and her prospective father-in-law scrambling around the studio setting up their scheme step-by-step, but truly kicks into high gear when the (mostly) innocent studio head, whose life and career are being ruined by the duo, wrongly suspects internal studio politics, and (maybe quite rightly so) finds everyone’s fickle behavior perfectly matching expected behavior from other executives, thereby turning into a meta-textual commentary on the film industry, but more specifically on Paramount Studios.

With Hope, Crosby, MacMurray, Milland, Lamour, Goddard, Lake, Holloway, Powell, Ladd, DeMille, Sturges… etc. (Yes, they are all exactly who you think,) plus many, many more.

Uneven, (as I’ve mentioned,) but still quite good.