COLLEEN

US, 1936, 89 minutes, Black-and-white.
Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, Jack Oakie, Joan Blondell, F. Hugh Herbert, Louise Fazenda, Paul Draper, Marie Wilson.
Directed by Alfred E.Green.


Colleen is the lightest of light comedies, with songs and dance, from Warner Brothers in the mid-1930s. It is a star vehicle for Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, stars of many musicals at the studio at this time. It is also a comedy vehicle for Jack Oakie.

The plot is quite slight. Dick Powell portrays the enterprising business manager for his rather daffy uncle, F. Hugh Herbert, who contributed to the screenplay, whose behaviour is referred to in the film as “arrested development”. He is very wealthy, irresponsible, an eye for the women, ignoring his rather dipsomaniac wife, Louise Fazenda. When he visits his chocolate factory, and listens to the opinions of a young chocolate dipper, Minnie, Joan Blondell, he becomes infatuated, ringing her every night, planning to adopt her. He also installs her as dressmaker in an expensive department store where the accountant is Colleen, played by Ruby Keeler. The nephew doesn’t close down the store but becomes more romantically involved with Colleen – who is supposed to be the fiancee of Jack Oakie. But, he changes allegiances fairly quickly for Joan Blondell.

Love runs its course, not without difficulties, Colleen interpreting the business accountants’ closing down the store as the work of the nephew but, of course, it is not. She takes the payout and invests it in a store on a cruise ship. Jack Oakie and Joan Blondell also take a pay out.

Interspersed are a couple of songs for Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler (and not the greatest of singers) and some dance routines devised by Bobby Connelly in the Busby Berkely style, with Paul Draper as the principal name dancer, along with Ruby Keeler. And, there is a most elaborate fashion show, dozens of models and dozens dresses, beyond the power and finances of any department store. And it all culminates with a song and dance routine.

Director Alfred E. Green directed the Jolson story in the 1940s. But Ruby Keeler married Jolson at the age of 18, fallen out with him and wanted her name changed for the Evelyn Keyes character, Jolson’s wife, wanting nothing to do with him. And, at this time, Dick Powell was married to Joan Blondell.