You Can’t Have Everything **** (1937, Alice Faye, The Ritz Brothers, Don Ameche, Charles Winninger, Gypsy Rose Lee, Tony Martin) – Classic Movie Review 11,123

Director Norman Taurog’s 1937 all-time classic musical You Can’t Have Everything is an infectiously happy, bright and snazzy 20th Century Fox black and white film, in which starving playwright Judith ‘Judy’ Wells (Alice Faye), a descendant of Edgar Allan Poe and writer of serious plays, falls for easy-going, handsome Broadway insider George Macrae (Don Ameche), a playboy writer of musicals, over a stolen plate of pasta.

[Spoiler alert] He persuades his boss Sam Gordon (Charles Winninger) to buy her serious play North Winds and suggests ways of turning it into a musical comedy. Macrae’s former gal Lulu Riley (Louise Hovick, aka Gypsy Rose Lee, in her film debut) turns up and scares off Judy. But then Don ditches Gypsy and works Alice’s play up into a hit show.

Alice Faye and Don Ameche are delightful, as always, the character actors shine, and there is some room left for the Ritz Brothers (as themselves), orchestra leader Louis Prima and his band and Tip Tap & Toe (as specialty dancers in North Winds) to strut their stuff.

You Can’t Have Everything is first-rate escapist fun, with super songs by Harry Revel (music) and Mack Gordon (lyrics), especially the title tune, Danger Love at Work, Afraid to Dream, The Loveliness of You and Please Pardon Us We’re in Love, tremendously performed.

Also in the cast are Charles Winninger, Louise Hovick [Gypsy Rose Lee], Tony Martin, Arthur Treacher, Louis Prima, Wally Vernon, Jed Prouty, David Rubinoff [Rubinoff] as himself, Charles Coleman, Stanley Andrews, Phyllis Brooks, George Humbert, Dorothy Christy, Clara Blandick, Bill Elliott, Lynn Bari, Tyler Brooke, George Davis, Joan Davis, Margaret Fielding, Mary Gordon, Paul Hurst, Hank Mann, Inez Palange, Frank Puglia and Frank Yaconelli.

It is shot at 20th Century Fox Studios, 10201 Pico Blvd, Century City, Los Angeles. It is produced by Darryl F Zanuck.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,123

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