Melody Parade [1943] [DVD]

Between the specialty dance numbers and silly comic relief from Irene Ryan (including her own musical number where she comically attempts to be a sultry Latina), there's not much room for a plot, although the writers try to stuff one in. It deals with busboy Eddie Quillan attempting to help his crush, hat check girl Mary Beth Hughes, get her singing career started. There keeps being delays in her big musical number getting onto the stage, but by the time it does, it's turned into a big patriotic number although by the script you wouldn't even know that there's a war going on.

Of course the big attraction for this will be the presence of the future granny from "Beverly Hillbillies" Irene Ryan dominating the film as a wealthy woman mangling up every conversation she gets into, for some reason not understanding it at all and going off on tangents that have nothing to do with what's being said. Her real life husband Tim Ryan co-stars in this as well, one of many times they worked together. Mantan Moreland is more lucky in the comic department as far as comedy is concerned, every conversation he's involved with having a wacky variation of the "shut my mouth and call me..." routine, each one funnier than the previous. The specialties are pretty derivative of the types of numbers that pop up in so many of these B Musical programmers, but for a Monogram film, it's pretty stylish. ~ Mark Waltz, IMDB.