Trying to match up the individual 'Radio Rows' with their description here on IMDb takes a little bit of detective work, calling up each of the numbered titles and checking the credits to see who was in them. A couple of these I caught on Turner Classics didn't have numbers attached to them, so they all have the same title.
This one offers up a couple of familiar names, like Morton Downey, not listed as 'Senior' here because his more famous irritating son was only a toddler at the time. And then there was the young singer introduced as Baby Rose Marie, more like eleven or twelve years old, but bearing an uncanny resemblance to the actress who we came to know as Sally Rogers on "The Dick van Dyke Show' TV series. Looking up her stats here on IMDb I see she'll be ninety years old next year with yet another appearance in a film to be released in 2017! God bless her, still going strong!
Other than those two highlights though, there's not a lot to recommend here. These Radio Row programs took the unusual tack of featuring radio performers in a film short venue, and a lot of them didn't translate well. Another singer featured here was Harriet Lee, and a vocabulary challenged announcer named Roy Atwell who's gimmick went a little too long. There was also a guy named Frank Novak Jr, hailed as playing so many instruments that he was keeping 'thousands' of musicians out of work! I don't think so, his repertoire here included a squeezebox, trumpet, trombone and a xylophone with passable results.
So overall, the value here is whether you're interested in old time short subjects with a view of what passed for entertainment in the Thirties. Though most of the folks were talented, they wouldn't really stand out today, except of course for Rose Marie. Glad she made it!
This one offers up a couple of familiar names, like Morton Downey, not listed as 'Senior' here because his more famous irritating son was only a toddler at the time. And then there was the young singer introduced as Baby Rose Marie, more like eleven or twelve years old, but bearing an uncanny resemblance to the actress who we came to know as Sally Rogers on "The Dick van Dyke Show' TV series. Looking up her stats here on IMDb I see she'll be ninety years old next year with yet another appearance in a film to be released in 2017! God bless her, still going strong!
Other than those two highlights though, there's not a lot to recommend here. These Radio Row programs took the unusual tack of featuring radio performers in a film short venue, and a lot of them didn't translate well. Another singer featured here was Harriet Lee, and a vocabulary challenged announcer named Roy Atwell who's gimmick went a little too long. There was also a guy named Frank Novak Jr, hailed as playing so many instruments that he was keeping 'thousands' of musicians out of work! I don't think so, his repertoire here included a squeezebox, trumpet, trombone and a xylophone with passable results.
So overall, the value here is whether you're interested in old time short subjects with a view of what passed for entertainment in the Thirties. Though most of the folks were talented, they wouldn't really stand out today, except of course for Rose Marie. Glad she made it!