Swing Parade of 1946



Swing Parade of 1946 is a Public Domain movie starring The Three Stooges and Gail Storm (later of My Little Margie fame). It tells the story of Carol Lawrence (Storm), a down-on-her-luck fledgling singer. One day, Carol - after several misunderstandings and after kitchen staffers Moe, Larry and Curly vouch for her - lands a job singing in Danny Warren's (Phil Regan) new nightclub. But Danny and his right-hand man, Moose are on the lookout for process servers sent by Danny's father (a newspaper man who considers the nightclub biz beneath Danny and a waste of time), looking to shut the place. Can Danny make a go of the place before his father can having him shut down? Will Danny and Carol act on their attraction to each other?

The movie also features musical numbers by Connee Boswell and the Louis Jordan and Will Osborne orchestras, as well as Storm herself singing "Stormy Weather."

It is available in its entirety in various places online and as a Riff Trax download.

Swing Parade of 1946 contains examples of the following tropes.

 * Billing Displacement: Make no mistake, this is a Three Stooges movie.
 * Mistaken for Servant: Carol (while trying to serve Danny with legal papers from his father) is waylaid by Danny's dance director, who thinks she's one of the dance girls.
 * Mistaken for Spies: Moe, Larry and Curly humiliate and eject the senior Mr. Warren after mistaking him for someone trying to serve a dispossession notice.
 * Non Indicative Title: There is no parade to be found, and the music in the movie isn't swing.
 * Poor Communication Kills: Inverted: After the encounter with Danny's dance director, Carol is so flustered and upset, that when she finally gets face to face with Danny, she hands him her own eviction notice, rather than the cease and desist order from his father. But Danny thinks she did it on purpose to try and tug at his heartstrings. In the end, she gets the audition she'd been turned away from earlier (because Moose thought she was trying to serve the papers she actually was trying to serve the second time she showed up).
 * Public Domain Feature Films
 * Worf Had the Flu: If Curly's performance seems a bit... off, it's because, at this point, Curly's health was on a downward slope, exacerbated by a stroke he'd had not a year earlier.