About the only positive thing to say about Swing Your Lady is that it has some truly memorable musical numbers, including introducing the world to comedy troupe The Weaver Brothers and Elviry.
The troupe had been around in infancy since the 1910’s, becoming comedic headliners shortly after WWI with the vaudeville circuit. This would be their first foray into motion pictures. They would go on to appear in a dozen films throughout the 30’s and 40’s specializing in their own brand of Hillbilly music including their use of unique and novelty instruments. Swing Your Lady features this heavily with full musical numbers that stop the film entirely in its tracks yet offer the only moments really worth watching. They are entertaining in a way the rest of the film fails at entirely.
There is really very little to recommend in this film. The players are all generic stereotypes, a relic of the silent era. Louise Fazenda comes off particularly one note. She was primarily a silent film star who married producer Hal Wallis and even though she worked consistently until 1939 her main talents lay in the over exaggerations needed to play pantomime. Her portrayal of a hick female blacksmith is borderline offensive, painting her like the ultimate rube, complete with exaggerated southern drawl and three rural children. Likewise Nat Pendleton plays Joe so stupid as to be almost unbelievable. This characterization feels straight out of a farcical Vaudeville performance. If the whole film was set up like this it might play better but unfortunately not everyone here plays it up leaving things very uneven.
Bogart is playing his part mostly straight but it is apparent he is unhappy with this role. At this point in his career he was getting frustrated with the types of parts being offered to him, mostly gangster roles. By the mid 1940’s he would have the clout to turn down roles such as this but not so at this point. Consequently, he doesn’t quite know how to play in this type of a film, acting the straight man around a whole circus of over-exaggerating caricatures. So awkward was he in this film in later years he would refuse to even talk about it. Even at this point in his career this film was beneath him. He would follow it up with The Return of Doctor X, an even lower point in his early filmography.
In contrast to Bogart, Penny Singleton plays Cookie, a NYC girl and romantic interest to Ed. She is manic from the moment she steps out of the car in Missouri, jumping right into the hillbilly scene and stealing the show. She provides some truly fun dance numbers that are way better than the film they are in. Her maniacal energy practically reverberates from her every move and livens up every scene. She knows the type of film she’s in and takes advantage of it in ways Bogart doesn’t. She has some really swinging dance moves that are shown off to good use here, too, especially in a big elaborate dance number late in the film.
Swing Your Lady is an anomaly among Bogart’s oeuvre. The man wasn’t known for musical theater and, after the disastrous results of this one, he never went back to the genre. He made few comedies and even the worst of those doesn’t come close to the depths this one plummets to. There is little to recommend here aside from the music and Penny Singleton,and even that is sparse for such a short film.This film was listed amongst the fifty worse films of all time and, well It’s not that awful, it’s definitely no winner.
Release date: January 8, 1938
Running time: 77 minutes
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Louise Fazenda, Nat Pendleton, Penny Singleton
Directed by: Ray Enright
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