Swing and Sway with Danny Kaye

bkoganbing

I'm truly dating myself but back in the swing days there was a bandleader named Sammy Kaye who used that as his band's slogan. Otherwise my title would have been the tag line for this film.

It was only seven years earlier that the original film, Ball of Fire also came from the Sam Goldwyn Studio. In that one Gary Cooper was one of several professors who were putting together an encyclopedia. His specialty was linguistics and he selected Barbara Stanwyck to help in learn new slang terms.

Here it's a musical encyclopedia and Virginia Mayo stumbles into the lives of the sheltered professors putting this history together. They've led such a cloistered existence that the whole jazz era has passed them by. So Kaye in the Cooper role and another professor played by Benny Goodman with Mayo get some of the best to help them along.

A Song is Born is a pleasant although a previous reviewer is correct in saying that Danny Kaye is far more subdued than usual in this film. But anytime you can get Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Barnet, and Mel Powell together for a jam session, the film automatically becomes worthwhile.

This is for every fan of jazz in the world.

score 7/10

bkoganbing 18 December 2005

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1241254/