Best Music Movies of 1942

Lovely Linda Mason has crooner Jim Hardy head over heels, but suave stepper Ted Hanover wants her for his new dance partner after femme fatale Lila Dixon gives him the brush. Jim's supper club—Holiday Inn—is the setting for the chase by Hanover and manager Danny Reed. The music's the thing.

An Argentine heiress thinks a penniless American dancer is her secret admirer.

Two vaudeville performers fall in love, but find their relationship tested by the arrival of WWI.

A café in Chicago, 1942. On a rainy night, veteran reporter Homer Howard tells an increasing audience the story of Roxie Hart and the crime she was judged for in 1927.

Two carefree castaways on a desert shore find an Arabian Nights city, where they compete for the luscious Princess Shalmar.

A pair of bus drivers accidentally steal their own bus. With the company issuing a warrant for their arrest, they tag along with a playboy on a boat trip that finds them on a tropical island, where a jewel thief has sinister plans for them.

Connie Ward is in seventh heaven when Gene Morrison's band rolls into town. She is swept off her feet by trumpeter Bill Abbot. After marrying him, she joins the band's tour and learns about life as an orchestra wife, weathering the catty attacks of the other band wives.

Dusty Gardner, and other Texas ranchers, are driving a herd of cattle to Abilene, Kansas along the Chisholm Trail. Desperate need of water takes them to the Turner ranch, where Belle Turner demands exorbitant prices for the water. Dusty learns that Belle is also trying to oust Mary Lee and Montana Smith from the trading post Mary operates. The sheriff sides with Belle following a fight between the two women. Belle knows there is artesian springs under the land the trading post occupies and intends to get the property by any means.

As foreman of a dude ranch, Gene has two problems. One is a guest, the spoiled daughter of a millioniare, and the other is the disgruntled ex-foreman that Gene replaced, now just a ranch hand. Gene eventually gets the daughter straightened out but has to fire the ex-foreman and this leads to trouble when he returns intent on revenge.

José Carioca, showing Donald Duck around South America and introducing him to the samba

A lavish period drama produced in 1942 by Lord Rank's G.H.W. Productions Ltd.

Broadway partners Vicky Lane and Dan Christy have a tiff over Christy's womanizing. Jealous Vicky takes up with her old flame and former dance partner, Victor Price, and Dan's career takes a nosedive. In hopes of rekindling their romance and getting Vicky back on the boards with him, Dan follows her to a ritzy resort in the Canadian Rockies, where she and Victor are about to open their new act. But things get complicated when Dan wakes after a bender to find that he's hired an outlandish Latin secretary, Rosita Murphy, which makes Vicky think he's just up to his old tricks again.

Shy sailor Casey Kirby suddenly becomes known as a sea wolf when his picture is taken with a famous actress. Things get complicated when bets are placed on his prowess with the ladies.

Little Delft, Michigan follows the customs of old-world Holland and is known for its Tulip Festival. The owner of the hotel insists that his seven daughters marry in order, from eldest to youngest.

Donald is visiting South America, where he is first overcome by altitude sickness. He spends some time in the picturesque market. Then he take a llama up into the mountains, with exciting results.

A young trumpeter rises through the jazz world and finds love.

Biopic chronicling the early life of gay nineties-era songwriter Paul Dresser as he outgrows his job as carnival entertainer and moves up into New York society, writing one hit song after another. Despite his egotistical behavior, he manages to woo and win Sally Elliott, one of the more popular songstresses of the day

American cowboy Goofy gets taken mysteriously to the Argentine pampas to learn the ways of the native gaucho.

Promoter Ann Porter decides to start her own Ice Show despite the efforts of ex-racketeer Duke Baldwin who owns a rival show. Jeff Stewart, a rich, suave young Broadwayite, falls in love with Ann and aids her in her fight against Baldwin.

Pop, a security guard at Paramount has told his son that he's the head of the studio. When his son arrives in Hollywood on shore leave with his buddies, Pop enlists the aid of the studio's dizzy switchboard operator in pulling off the charade. Things get more complicated when Pop agrees to put together a show for the Navy starring Paramount's top contract players.

With his sidekick Rusty, Jeff Harper sails to paradisiacal tropical isle Ahmi-Oni to bargain on behalf of his cattle baron father for land owned by transplanted Irishman Dennis O'Brien. But Jeff falls in love with O'Brien's daughter, Eileen, and even his father can't break them up after he arrives and himself falls under the spell of island splendor.

J. P. Courtney wants to update the music on the radio program he sponsors, but his wife, Agatha Courtney, is the final authority and addicted to the classics and won't allow him to replace Professor Bistell and his symphonic orchestra. Conspiring with his daughter Sue and her friends, Marvo the Great, the Andrews Sisters, Anne Payne and bandleader Woody Herman, they devise a sabotage plot that gets rid of Professor Bistell, and a new sound is soon heard on the program.

A man is pardoned from prison and returns to Santa Rita, CA to be with his family, but discovers his children have been told he's dead and his wife is in love with another man.

This package for comedy and the musical numbers has Luke Brown being drugged by the gangster operators of the swank Boathouse Inn; most notably Roxie a sexy pickpocket. Brown has information that Chow Brewster and his cousin have inherited $3,000,000. The owner of the Inn intends to keep Brown under wraps until they can drive Chow to suicide. He will then marry Chow's cousin before she finds out about her inheritance.

In this drama, an ex-vaudevillian dancer opens up a dance band agency and help street kids at the same time by hiring them to help out. Unfortunately, the local gang of hood's leader resists his attempts. More trouble ensues when the dancer helps a convict gain parole by hiring him. It later turns out that the ex-con is only interested in trying to use the agency as a front for extortion. Songs include the Oscar nominated "When There's a Breeze on Lake Louise," "Your Face Looks Familiar," "Heavenly, Isn't He?" "Let's Forget It," "You're Bad For Me," and "A Million Miles From Manhattan."

Marine James Murfin, is unaware of Icelandic customs. When he flirts with Katina her Icelandic family take his actions as a proposal of marriage to Katina. Desperately wanting out, James gets his buddy to help him.

Reporter Homer Smith accidently draws Marcia Warren into his mission to stop Nazis from bombing Allied Conwoys with robot-planes.

Ancestors of music videos, YANKEE DOODLER, ROSIE THE RIVETER, and DEAR ARABELLA were made during World War II for coin-operated jukebox devices found in restaurants, bars and train stations. On built-in glass screens, they projected 16mm films of artists performing popular tunes. These examples, although not in perfect condition, are time capsules of their era. William Frawley was a vaudevillian and musical comedy performer decades before he played Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy.

Nazi spies infiltrate a British film studio with the intention of sending coded messages in the films they produce.

College students attempt to solve a series of murders on campus while also trying to put together the school's big show.

Anita O'Day with Gene Krupa and His Orchestra perform "Let Me Off Uptown".

Balloon unit WAAFs catch German spies.

A grown-up Jane Withers is joined by a whole slew of former child stars in the lightweight Republic musical Johnny Doughboy. Withers capably essays the part of a teenaged movie star who tires of the spotlight and runs away from Hollywood. Adopting an alias, she joins "The Junior Victory Caravan", a group of youthful USO performers. She also pursues a romance with much-older playwright Henry Wilcoxon, only to be (deliberately) disillusioned by the man. Among the juvenile favorites making cameo appearances in Johnny Doughboy are Bobby Breen, Baby Sandy, Butch & Buddy, Cora Sue Collins, Robert Coogan (Jackie's brother) and ex-"Little Rascals" George "Spanky" McFarland and Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer.

Saved from a lynching party by a pair of young women, an itinerant cowpuncher signs on as a stagecoach guard to protect a shipment of gold.

Orphan prodigy singer runs away from her oppressive aunt and tricks a rural couple into adopting her.

A musical which begins with six men and a woman singing; then a dance number; finally, the six men and woman sing again.

The film tells the story of army recruits following basic training, with the Andrew Sisters attending USO dances. The film is a mixture of comedy and songs.

Cab Calloway performing his famous hit "Minnie the Moocher".

Tom Kenyon and his sidekick Pierre La Farge are hired by rancher Mike O'Day who, with his daughters Toni and Sugar, provides wild horses for the government remount station.

The Gay Parisian is an American short film produced in 1941 by Warner Bros. featuring the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo and directed by Jean Negulesco. The film is a screen adaptation, in Technicolor, of the 1938 ballet Gaîté Parisienne, choreographed by Léonide Massine to music by Jacques Offenbach. It was nominated for an Academy Award at the 14th Academy Awards for Best Short Subject (Two-Reel).

A short history of movie music is presented, from silent films accompanied by a single piano, to the elaborate song scores for musicals (with scenes from MGM's musicals) and background music for dramas. Conductor/composer

Two Marine sergeants (Victor McLaglen, Edmund Lowe) flirt with a cafe girl (Binnie Barnes) in San Diego, then find out she's a spy.

A popular band joins the army with the idea of putting on shows for troops overseas. During rehearsals, a battle erupts and the musicians must exchange their musical instruments for guns and fight.

Movietone News produced this short (two-minute) sing-along version of United States' national anthem featuring the popular chorus, "Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians." While the Star-Spangled Banner is sung, a patriotic montage of scenes appears in the background.

Bessie Cobb, cake decorator in the kitchen of one of Miami's swankier hotels, is the central figure in an elaborate scheme by Chick Patterson, bell captain, who believes he can not only enrich Bessie, but himself, his fiancée, and the kitchen's three screwball chefs, Chef Popodopolis, Chef Petrovich and Chef Barzumium. He plans to enter Bessie in the singing contest sponsored by band-leader Danny Marlowe for a large recording company looking for new talent.. Chick has a recording made of Bessie's voice and substitutes it for that of "Sugar" Caston, who is being sponsored by a big-time gangster and is set up to win. But members of a rival gang, out to get "Sugar", mistake Besiie for her.

The "Flyer" in question is William Marshall, a young man falsely accused of a crime. Escaping the clutches of the law, he becomes involved with several pretty young ladies. Marjorie Woodworth plays the girl who helps Marshall in his escape, pausing occasionally to participate in a some lively but forgettable musical numbers.

The Andrews Sisters headline this musical. They play the lead act at a popular nightclub. The trouble begins when they hire a few students from a financially foundering dance school for their newest production. One of the dancers, a rich young socialite, desperately wants to be in it too, but her prurient maiden aunts refuse to allow her to disgrace their family by becoming a common chorine. She and the club owner (who must have the aunt's permission because the girl is underage) try to convince them, but it's not easy.

By popular consensus, Allan Jones' best Universal mini-musical of the 1940s was the timely When Johnny Comes Marching Home. Jones is cast as war hero Johnny Kovacs, who wearies of the adulation heaped upon him and takes refuge under an assumed name in a theatrical boarding house. Here he befriends orchestra leader Phil Spitalny and his all-girl aggregation, including the inimitable Evelyn and Her Magic Violin. When Army officials trace Johnny to the boarding house, his new friends assume that he's a deserter and try to convince him to return to duty.

The process by which girls are chosen for chorus line members in movie musical is shown. Numbers from popular 1930s musicals are then presented. These include "Don't Say Goodnight" from Wonder Bar (1934); "Lullaby of Broadway" from Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935) ; "Shadow Waltz" from Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933); and "By a Waterfall" and "Shanghai Lil" from Footlight Parade (1933).