KID NIGHTINGALE

As, 1938, 62 minutes, Black and white.
John Payne, Jane Wyman, Edward Brophy, Walter Catlett.
Directed by George Amy.

Kid Nightingale is a brief programmer from Warner Brothers in 1938. It runs just over an hour. It is something of a fantasy, but it grows on its audience and is quite entertaining in its way.

It is both a boxing and a musical film. It starts of off with the boxing, the two rival managers and their clashes, and their contact with a talent scout, Skip Davis, Walter Catlett doing his bungling, comedic thing. There are some amusing sequences where Skip tries out with a hopeless boxer, one of the entrepreneurs is continually taking bicarbonate of soda, and the other is a schemer.

When Skip, despondent, goes to a restaurant, he sees a singing waiter who becomes involved in a fight and uses his fists – and is sacked. Skip decides that this man is the next best thing, sells the waiters car so that they can travel to New York and Skip tries to persuade both entrepreneurs, is given the chance for the singer to demonstrate and, by chance, he does a knockout. The singing waiter is played by John Payne, at the beginning of his career, later to appear in Fox musicals and, in the 1950s, in many action features. He also comes across a pianist, played with enthusiasm by Jane Wyman.

A scheme is hatched whereby Payne is publicised as attractive to women who flock to his bouts. His opponents are generally losers or are paid to lose and the young man’s reputation spreads. However, the main thing he wants to do is to meet a singing impresario and have lessons so that he can sing opera. And Jane Wyman would like to have music lessons from the same instructor. To keep their boxer under control, the entrepreneurs get a wrestler who resembles the impresario to impersonate him, who has quite a way with words and persuasion, reassuring the boxer.

Ultimately, everybody is to make money when he loses a championship bout, but Jane Wyman gets the real impresario to attend the boxing match, commenting on the boxer’s rhythm and agility with his feet, but then notices the impersonator across the ring. There is some chaos when there is a mutual knockout but the singer is persuaded to stand up and wins, all the entrepreneurs losing money because they bet against him – but singing lessons are in the offing and, of course, romance.

A small comedy which is much more entertaining than it might sound.