The National Barn Dance (1944)
This film gives a fictionalized version of how the popular real-life radio program of the title began.
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The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.
It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
As a boy of 10, I found this movie great fun when it opened in 1944 at the Lyric Theater in Spearman, Texas. The movie didn't have much plot, as I remember, just lots of music and homespun humor. The main thing was that it had all my little sister's and my favorites--like Pat Buttram, the Hoosier Hotshots, and best of all, Lulubelle and Scotty--from the "National Barn Dance" radio program. Our older sister--a teenager in 1944--thought this WLS-Chicago radio show was corny. I guess it was--and the movie, too--but we were always glad when big sis had a date on Saturday night so that we could hear Lulubelle and Scotty instead of having to listen to "Your Hit Parade." After we saw the "National Barn Dance" movie, the Saturday night battle over what to listen to raged even more violently than it had before.