Playmates (1941)

(On Cable TV, April 2022) Alas, I’m getting to the end of the Kay Kyser filmography. Kyser was a most unlikely movie star – a bookish band leader who parlayed success as an entertaining radio show host into a short-lived but substantial movie career spanning thirteen titles (nine of them feature films) in merely six years, playing himself in all but one of those films. Kyser had a distinctive, almost underwhelming screen presence – an academician somehow presented as a leading man. One of Playmates’ biggest assets is how it plays on this dichotomy, overtly presenting Kyser as someone in need of acting lessons and positive news stories. The other asset of the film is his co-star – American acting legend John Barrymore in his last film, playing a bombastic caricature of himself as a puffed-up thespian reduced to giving acting lessons to Kyser. Their water-and-oil mixture powers much of the film as Barrymore chews scenery under Kyser’s amused stares. Additional entertainment comes both from Lupe Velez in her usual scene-stealing fiery persona and the usual Kyser acolytes (notably bowl-haired Ish Kabibble, accompanied by attractive Ginny Simms as his band’s assigned lead singer). But the more you know about the players involved, the more there’s a tragic undertone to Playmates – after all, both Barrymore and Velez would be dead a few years later (for different reasons) and Barrymore fans usually wince at the thought of his last film being spent playing second fiddle to Kyser and parodying his own tattered image. But on a surface level, Playmates does get a few laughs (as well as one impressive sequence, played completely straight, of Barrymore delivering the sole filmed version of his much-lauded rendition of Hamlet’s best-known soliloquy). It’s not high art, and it loses quite a bit of steam between the end of its first act and its conclusion, but it delivers what’s expected for Kyser fans and a certain kind of Barrymore devotee. For all of the finality of this being Barrymore’s last screen performance, I’m more concerned that I‘ve got only one more Kyser feature film to watch.