Every Night at Eight was one of the dozens of “Radio Contest/Singing Sisters” movies made in the ’30s. It has very little to recommend it. Directed by Raoul Walsh, a director I don’t like, its male lead is George Raft, an actor I detest. It tells the tired tale of a group of young working women who sing together looking for their break from an amateur contest on the “Huxley Mint Julep Hour.” They don’t win, but they are embraced by a dour bandleader (Raft), named “The Sewanee Sisters,” and become hits. Bandleader bullies them until they quit, until they return, and become hits.
There are a few interesting things that rise out of the miasma. The “Sisters” include Alice Faye, Frances Langford, and Patsy Kelly. They are wasted in the film, except for a few fine songs done by Langford. The songs are by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields, so there’s nothing wrong there. There’s a performance of “I Feel A Song Coming On” that’s both good and bad. It’s done as one of those hyper-white southern belles with parasols complemented by happy field darkies routines. Faye is basically phoning it in, but she’s followed by a rousing performance by James Miller (which is marred by the miserable spectacle of him singing in stylized prison stripes against the background of a cotton field).
The only real standout song is Langford singing what would become her signature song, “I’m in the Mood for Love.” A great song and a great version. She sings it twice.
Not to knock a great song, the film is so bad that its highlight is “The Chicken Song,” a wacked-out novelty number performed at the painfully stupid radio contest. Florence Gill apparently made a career out of doing it.
Cock-a-doodle do.