Review of Swing Hostess

Having watched some Soundies on YouTube that featured a stunning blonde vocalist named Martha Tilton, I looked at my 20 Movie Pack of musicals from Mill Creek Entertainment on DVD, searched the titles listed on there in this site, and found among them this movie that starred the Liltin' Miss Tilton! She plays aspiring singer Judy Alvin who lives in a boardinghouse with her best friend Marge O'Day (Iris Adrian who I first watched in Disney's 1965 version of That Darn Cat). Her rival is Phoebe (Betty Brodel, sister of Joan Leslie), who despite her awfulness somehow gets a contract courtesy of one Mr. Fralick (Harry Holman whom I recognized as the principal who's the last to jump in the gym pool in my favorite movie, It's a Wonderful Life). That contract is for bandleader Benny Jackson (Charles Collins) who missed some of the auditions...There's more to it than that in this 76-minute picture but I'll just say that I mostly enjoyed this except for some doubletalk between Tilton, Adrian, Collins, and another player in a restaurant scene in the middle (though I did like Ms. Adrian's comment about not speaking English in a previous phone scene) and Paul Porcasi's Spumoni character was dreadful. And the songs by Ray Evans, Jay Livingston, and Lewis Bellin were quite enjoyable especially that one song that Ms. Tilton sang beautifully and Ms. Brodel sang hilariously horribly. And many of the boardinghouse tenants were also funny. So see Swing Hostess if you're in the mood for a fluffy B-movie musical. P.S. I also loved that exchange between that waitress and Ms. Adrian about T-Bone steak and a salami sandwich. I wonder why she isn't in the IMDb cast list (I looked and she's not on the actual movie cast list either). And was Earl Bruce's Joe Sweeney character, who seems sweet to Ms. Tilton, supposed to be her love interest and his character ended up drafted because Bruce was? And is that why Collins as Jackson ended up kissing her at the end?