The Singing Marine (1937)

(On Cable TV, December 2022) It took me far too long to notice Dick Powell. What makes him fascinating isn’t as much his individual roles as the overall arc of his career, as he transitioned from matinee idol roles requiring comic timing and a good signing voice to more hard-boiled characters in the film noir genre that made good use of his ability to deliver lines. (Later on, Powell further transitioned into directing and television producing.)  The Singing Marine is, obviously, a film from Powell’s first era: he plays a soldier with an unusually good voice who finds his military vocation sidetracked by show-business success. Much of the film’s dramatic arc has to do with his ego being inflated by showbiz before wizening up and returning to the armed forces. The Singing Marine is not that good or memorable a movie, but it does have its highlights and odd tangents as a piece of pre-WW2 propaganda, as a minor showcase for Busby Berkeley’s choreography, and obviously as Powell in his earliest persona. He’s pure charm and voice here and there’s really never any doubt that he’ll end up doing the right thing in the end. That probably explains why the film was a big box-office hit at the time… and is largely a curio these days.