Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

We have a musical that starts well but then fades until you are finally glad that it has come to an end. The cast are fine when it comes to singing and dancing especially in the first half of the film – some great songs and sequences. However, the lead character as played by George Murphy isn't nice to his girlfriend Nancy Kelly from the start and so the audience aren't really on his side from the beginning. In fact, none of the relationships make sense – his other alliance with Constance Moore is totally confusing. She divorces him, then wants him back – it never makes sense. The film suffers because it chooses to follow this unrealistic love triangle story that would just never be there. Eddie Cantor and Joan Davis provide the comedy partnership and deliver their lines well, but you have to be a Cantor fan to enjoy his schtick.There are moments of humour and good songs but why perform "It Had to Be You" three times? It was good on the first occasion but then becomes corny. The film gets boring, I'm sad to say.

Another Leslie Halliwell favourite, this period musical follows the pattern of several others of its ilk – the career from obscurity to popularity, hitting the skids and the climb back to the top of a burlesque/vaudeville troupe (apparently, the former is deemed a low- grade art form and despised by the latter, but there is little to differentiate them in this film and elsewhere!). Incidentally, co-star George Murphy – whom the fall from grace hits the hardest here – had also featured in the very similar (also comparable quality-wise) FOR ME AND MY GAL (1942), where it was Gene Kelly who got on the wrong end of fame and fortune.The movie under review was actually instigated by comedian Eddie Cantor (who personally produced it): he had had a successful run of star vehicles with Samuel Goldwyn in the 1930s, followed by a couple of well- regarded efforts for other studios later on – Warners' star-studded THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS (1943) and this one, made over at RKO (its success even prompted a sequel, named after one of Cantor's best-known tunes i.e. IF YOU KNEW SUSIE {1948}). There is actually an autobiographical element to SHOW BUSINESS, since the character he plays obtains his greatest hit with Cantor's very own "Makin' Whoopee" (which inspired his 1930 star vehicle)! Also on hand is comedienne Joan Davis, whose initial disdain for Cantor grows into a true and almost protective love – frequently breaking the fourth wall to assure the viewer that she cannot help herself; their Cleopatra routine is a hoot!The film encompasses comedy, songs (notably the standard "It Had To Be You", sung – either alternately or concurrently – by Murphy and love interest Nancy Kelly), romance (the latter broken up by his former partner, in both senses of the word) and nostalgia and, while neither the classic Halliwell deems it to be (conversely, Leonard Maltin rated it a more modest **1/2) nor Cantor's most representative work (that would be ROMAN SCANDALS {1933}), there is no doubt that it offers solid entertainment throughout and, as stated in an after-credits title-card, was conceived primarily as wartime escapism for American audiences, be they at home or abroad fighting.

SHOW BUSINESS (1944) seems like a rather obscure old film, but it's surprisingly enjoyable. Nothing major, but it's a lot of fun.The movie is a breezy tale about entertainers on the old vaudeville circuit (~1910s) and it showcases some classic songs like "It Had To Be You", "Dinah", and "Makin' Whoopee".The cast may not be flashy, but they're a delight. The film is anchored by song and dance men George Murphy and Eddie Cantor. The two partners soon meet up with female showbiz duo Constance Moore and Joan Davis. There's singing, dancing, comedy bits, romance, and some dramatic beats along the way.(Interestingly, the principal cast all play characters sharing their first names.)I am not familiar with Joan Davis, but she's very funny as a wisecracking Eve Arden-type. Eddie Cantor plays the comedic sidekick role here, and I think I enjoyed him more than in his earlier starring vehicles. His comedy shtick is actually pretty sharp and he tones down some of his characteristic bug-eyed stuff. Cantor and Davis make an excellent comedy pair.Eddie Cantor seemed to be in his comfort zone, essentially playing himself, an old-time vaudevillian hopping up and down a stage. Cantor produced the film, which leads one to suspect he might have been retracing his own steps through the glory days of vaudeville. "Makin' Whoopee", sung by Cantor in the film, had actually been popularized by Cantor himself in a Florenz Ziegfeld production.Leading lady Constance Moore was not a typical fresh-faced beauty, but I thought she was lovely. She reminded me vaguely of other actresses but I'd never seen her in a film before. I'll have to keep an eye out for her.I had low expectations for this B-musical, but I was pleasantly surprised. Give it a look.

Any film that gets Eddie Cantor to revive Making Whoopee and I Don't Want To Get Well is one worth seeing even with the skimpy plot.Show Business is the story of a vaudeville act, how they got together and their trials and tribulations from the turn of the last century until the Twenties. It was right after talking pictures came in that vaudeville began slowly to decline.This was an era that Eddie Cantor knew well, it was the kind of Show Business he cut his performing teeth with before hitting the big time on Broadway in the Ziegfeld Follies. The quartet is Cantor, George Murphy, Constance Moore, and Joan Davis.Davis chases Cantor through out the film which is ironic because she got him in the real life. It was on this film that they had a discreet affair that was well known in performing circles, but the public never found out about lest Cantor's family image be ruined. Davis's comedy here and elsewhere was the physical sort of stuff that Lucille Ball so popularized on television. Davis too had her biggest success in her television series I Married Joan. She died way too young.Murphy and Moore have an on, off, and on again romance with Nancy Kelly doing her best to break them up. Murphy's big number is the old standard It Had To Be You which at the time was enjoying a revival with a best selling duet record by Dick Haymes and Helen Forrest.No original music for Show Business, just some good old standards. Unfortunately there is a blackface number that all four of the leads are involved in. Cantor did blackface though it never was THE centerpiece of his stage persona like it was for rival Al Jolson.Show Business is a pleasant afternoon's diversion about the days of vaudeville. And what days they were.