Garden of the Moon (1938)

(On Cable TV, May 2022) Director Busby Berkeley does (mostly) non-musical comedy in Garden of the Moon, a humdrum film showing the management of a nightclub by an unscrupulous owner dealing with a temperamental band leader. It’s amiable stuff, not all that funny nor all that musical: contrary to many Berkeley films, this one remains very sedate while it presents the nightclub band doing its thing. (But then again, this was Berkeley’s last musical for Warner Brothers – by that time, the musical genre in which he specialized was seen as expensive and on its way out. He’d get his revenge a few years later at other studios as the genre regained in popularity.)  Garden of the Moon is watchable without necessarily being good – the film’s most memorable moment comes very late in its running time, as the owner fakes death to keep his star signed up. That doesn’t make it unsatisfying, but only Berkeley completists will seek out this one.