Ready, Willing and Able

A great deal of credited and uncredited writing talent went into this screenplay expansion of Richard Macaulay's Saturday Evening Post story about a songwriting duo in New York City who are promised show-money if they can get land a musical-comedy starlet from the London stage for their latest production, "Fair Lady" (!). Busy, friendly musical has some good wisecracking lines, but not enough star-power in the cast. Ruby Keeler has a rather inert role as a would-be performer who is hired for the lead by mistake, yet it's a part which doesn't allow her to shine (only to be a shrinking violet). Keeler does do a tap-dance routine on the keys of a huge typewriter, but the choreography is lax (despite netting an Oscar nomination!) and certainly isn't as imaginative as the set design. Real-life songwriting team Johnny Mercer and Richard Whiting contributed several songs, though the best of them ("Too Marvelous For Words") is sung ad nauseum. ** from ****