THE MOVIES OF KAY KYSER

Taken from the Kay Kyser website, this is a great rundown of the films that band leader Kay Kyser made. All of the band leaders of the time tried their hands at movies. Most of them were terrible actors, but at least Kyser had an image on radio than transferred nicely to movies...

1. THAT'S RIGHT-YOU'RE WRONG
(1939 RKO)
Kay Kyser Adolphe Menjou, Lucille Ball.

Kay and the band's radio show success brings a Hollywood movie offer in this movie-in-a-movie. It's fresh and entertaining with Menjou as the evil producer. Great songs, great energy. Ok, I'm biased.

2. YOU'LL FIND OUT
(1940 RKO)
Kay Kyser, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Peter Lorre, Helen Parrish, Dennis O'Keefe.

This, the 2nd KK film, is now a cult classic. People buy bootleg copies off EBAY all the time. But, a-ha! They're not restored copies. Kay and the band in a haunted house. Swing numbers one minute, Ish disappearing behind secret panels the next. The ONLY time (perk up, you experts) Karloff, Lugosi and Lorre appeared together in the same film. I love it, but Kay's a bit too over the top in first scene. Incredible songs! "Like The Fella Once Said", "You've Got Me This Way", "I'd Know You Anywhere", "One Track Mind", Ish's "Bad Humor Man (rumor has it that the song was to have been sung by the "3 Boogie Men"!! as print ads described them). A MUST for Halloween.

3. PLAYMATES
(1941 RKO)
Kay Kyser, John Barrymore, Lupe Velez, Ginny Simms.

Ginny gets co-star billing in her last film before leaving the band. Also known for being Barrymore's last film. (And yes, he did indeed read his lines off a sign or blackboard just off-camera). Publicity stunt goes awry, with Barrymore having to teach Kay to perform Shakespeare. Patsy Kelly, Peter Lind Hayes are memorable, JB cartoonish.

4. MY FAVORITE SPY
(1942 RKO)
Kay Kyser, Ellen Drew, Jane Wyman.

Not the Bob Hope film of the same name! Kay gets married and is drafted to become an American spy! Silly and funny. Gives you that goofy 40s feeling. Harry sings "Just Plain Lonesome", Sully sings "Got the Moon in My Pocket".


5. AROUND THE WORLD
(1943 RKO)
Kay Kyser, Joan Davis, Mischa Auer.

Kay and band fly around the world to entertain the troops. Band has now updated style to harder swing. Check out song "Roodle-ee-doo". Georgia Carroll and Harry Babbitt featured on "Candlelight and Wine".


6. SWING FEVER
(1943 MGM)
Kay Kyser, Marilyn Maxwell.

Kay plays Lowell Blackford, a hayseed composer in the big city w/ strange hypnotic power.. Gets mixed up w/ corrupt boxers and well, enough said. MGM had no clue what to do with him. Great posters, though! 

7. CAROLINA BLUES
(1944 Columbia)
Kay Kyser, Ann Miller, Victor Moore.

Kay and band can't stop turning down camp show requests even though they're overdue for a vacation. Moore trys to scam Kay into using Miller as singer when Georgia leaves band for matrimony. The last Kay Kyser feature. Rumor has it one was in development in 1949, but never appeared. Out of Kay's seven features, I rate this a seven.

Kay and his band also appeared in 2 other films:

Stage Door Canteen
(1943 UA) performing "A Rookie & His Rhythm".

Thousands Cheer
(1943 MGM) performing medley "I Dug a Ditch- Should I?". It's Kay and the gang in glorious color for the first (and only) time!

Kay and the band did several short subjects as well, the exact number not confirmed.

It should be noted that these were, in effect, pop movies of the time, and though they're certainly not Gone With The Wind, they are for the most part fun, funny and entertaining. It's also important to remember that the stories always revolved around Kay, unlike most bandleader's films of that time. For example, the two Glenn Miller movies, though entertaining, seldom feature Glenn for more than a line or two unless the band's performing...

SOURCE

SINGER SPOTLIGHT: HARRY BABBITT

 

Here is another wonderful article from The Geezer Music Club. This one is on vocalist Harry Babbitt. I had the pleasure of seeing Babbitt in concert in 1988. He was a wonderful entertainer even then. For more great articles from The Geezer Music Club, please see SOURCE

From Crooning To Cartoons – ‘Handsome’ Harry Babbitt Although our mental image of a big band era crooner is of a suave, velvet-voiced charmer who could purr into the microphone while the ladies swooned, it wasn’t always like that. Harry Babbitt, who could certainly fill the bill as a traditional crooner – his boss, bandleader Kay Kyser, usually introduced him as ‘Handsome Harry’ – was sometimes called upon for something a little different. Like doing Woody Woodpecker’s maniacal laugh.Kyser’s outfit could generate some solid music but it was also known for novelties, so when a special new song came along in the late 1940s Babbitt was enlisted to help. The St. Louis native had been with the band for a decade by then (minus a couple of years of WWII military service) and was an important part of the popular band’s many activities, including its numerous movie appearances.

He’d also sung on many of the hits, like “Who Wouldn’t Love You,” but he was just as good with whimsical songs like “Three Little Fishies.” So when “The Woody Woodpecker Song” came along he was ready to tackle it. Songstress Gloria Wood actually did most of the conventional singing in the song, but it was Babbitt’s crazy-sounding woodpecker laugh that sold it. The record became a best-seller for the band and led to the song’s use in later cartoons, which made it a part of every kid’s memories of those days. (Including mine.) As for Babbitt, he eventually built up quite a list of hit records with the band, with songs like “I’ll Get By,” and “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” among his best. But he also had a lot of fun with other novelty pieces like his best-seller “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth.” (Another record I remember being around our house.) By the 1960s he was ready for something else, and he spent a couple of decades in private business. However, when Kyser died in 1985 Babbitt bought the rights to his musical legacy and for many years led a reconstituted outfit on tour. He eventually retired for good and died at age 90 in 2004...

RIP: GEORGIA CARROLL

CHAPEL HILL -- Once a Hollywood star and model known for her incredible beauty, Georgia Carroll Kyser is being remembered in Chapel Hill for her devotion to her family, the historic preservation of Chapel Hill and being a passionate supporter of the arts.

Mrs. Kyser died Friday at the age of 91 in Chapel Hill.

The family has planned a memorial service for Jan. 30 at 3 p.m. at Gerrard Hall on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, followed by a reception next door at Memorial Hall.

Gerrard Hall has special meaning for the family, which expects the memorial to be a celebration of her life.

"My father started his orchestra there in the 1920s," said daughter Kimberly Kyser. "When he passed away, we had his memorial in the hall."

Mrs. Kyser's husband, Kay Kyser, was a big band leader in the 1930s and 1940s who later went on to become the honorary president of the Christian Science Church. He died in 1985.

Mr. and Mrs. Kyser, as individuals and as a couple, rose to fame and lived a glamorous life in Hollywood, traveling around the world, playing music and appearing in films.

Mrs. Kyser became locally famous in Dallas, Texas, as a child, and at the age of 16 she was the model for "The Spirit of Centennial Statue" at the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition. The statue still stands in front of the Dallas Women's Museum.

A year later, at the age of 17, she appeared for the first time on the cover of Redbook Magazine, with the headline, "The Rise of Georgia," and she went on to appear on the covers of Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal and reportedly eight more times on the cover of Redbook.

She was drop-dead gorgeous, said Ernest Dollar, director of the Chapel Hill Preservation Society, which Mrs. Kyser founded along with Ida Friday, whose husband, Bill Friday, became the president of the University of North Carolina.

"She held on to her beauty up until the day she died," Dollar said.

Mrs. Kyser was the featured vocalist with her husband's band, and also appeared in 14 films. Her friends included Lucille Ball, Jimmy Stewart, Dinah Shore, Alan Ladd, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Edgar Bergen and Jane Wyman.

But her life during the golden days of Hollywood took a sharp turn when her husband decided to quit the entertainment business in the early 1950s and move back to sleepy Chapel Hill, where he had attended the University of North Carolina.

"I wouldn't say it was love at first sight," said Kimberly Kyser. "She was very young and left a big scene. This was not what she signed up for."

"After the initial shock, I know she probably came to love it," Dollar said. "It was a wonderful town to raise her children, and I think she probably just fell in love with it."

The Kysers lived near the Fridays, and their children played, swam and grew up together, and the two women became close and dear friends, Dollar said.

Mrs. Kyser, who hadn't had a chance to go to college because her modeling career started at such a young age, decided to obtain a college degree in studio art after they moved to Chapel Hill, Kimberly Kyser said.

"She took one course at a time and finished," Kimberly Kyser said. "It took 20 years, but she did it."

The Kyser family traveled quite a bit, and when Mrs. Kyser saw the way the old European cities had preserved their old buildings and neighborhoods, she became interested in doing the same in Chapel Hill, according to her daughter.

In the 1970s, some people in town thought Chapel Hill looked old fashioned and needed to get rid of some of its old buildings and replace them with newer and more modern ones.

That's when Mrs. Kyser and Ida Friday became interested in saving novelist Betty Smith's house at the corner of East Rosemary and Hillsborough streets, and the two women founded and organized the Chapel Hill Preservation Society.

"I think Georgia founding the preservation society and being interested in Chapel Hill was her lasting gift to Chapel Hill," Dollar said.

Mrs. Kyser also supported the Carolina Performing Arts through the family's foundation and was passionate about the N.C. Symphony and the N.C. Ballet.

Known as "Mamo" by her five grandchildren and close friends, she had three daughters. Kimberly Kyser is a resident of Chapel Hill, and her youngest, Amanda, lives in Sag Harbor, N.Y. Carroll, her middle daughter, passed away in 1993.