Fred and Burgess are overage college students and swing trumpeters Danny O'Neill and Hank Taylor, respectively, and that's the joke: they keep avoiding graduation so as to continue to rake in dough booking on-campus gigs. Still, it's a little hard to accept - Fred was old enough in 1941 to be two college students.

When Danny sees an old pal (Frank Melton) turn up with pretty Ellen Miller (Goddard) under his arm, she instantly falls for Danny, or so it seems. In one of the picture's few clever ideas, she passes under the table what he thinks is her phone number. Actually it's a summons to appear in court; she's a secretary for a collection agency.

With Hank equally enamored of Ellen, the troublesome pair instantly get her fired from her job so they can hire her on as their secretary manager. Later, when she's hired away by bandleader Artie Shaw (Artie Shaw), they create so many problems for her that she nearly loses that job, too. Part of the problem is that Danny and Hank want a shot at joining Shaw's band, but they're even more fiercely competitive over their careers than they are with Ellen and only end up pissing off the bandleader. Ellen eventually convinces rich and eccentric bottlecap magnate J. Lester Chisholm (Charles Butterworth) to finance a special concert headlined by Shaw, but Danny and Hank nearly wreck that, too.

In many of Astaire's musicals (and, for that matter, Gene Kelly's), he tries to win the girl by essentially pestering her to death, wearing her down to the point of stalking her until she finally gives in and sees what a swell guy he is. This is taken to the next level in Second Chrous. Danny and Hank are so insufferably juvenile that by the end you want to slug 'em. Oblivious to Ellen's position, they single-mindedly sabotage the other with no consideration of the consequences. Hank scribbles some off-key notes onto Danny's sheet music, ruining his audition with Shaw, while Danny knocks Hank right off the bandstand in the middle of his performance. If all the musicians in Shaw's band were anything like these two jokers, it's no wonder Shaw retired so suddenly at the peak of his powers, turning his back on show business forever.

(In truth, Second Chorus was indeed Shaw's last Hollywood film, partly because of his frustrations with director H.C. Potter. Potter kept arguing that Shaw was playing his character all wrong until Shaw, in utter frustration, reportedly stormed off the set yelling, "You idiot - I'm playing myself!")

The grating characterizations would be less an issue if Astaire had been allotted the number and size of musical numbers with which he had become accustomed. Instead, there's hardly any significant singing and dancing in the film at all. Astaire and Goddard do a pretty good duet of the Borne-Mercer "(I Ain't Hep To That Step But I'll) Dig It," but that's about it. The film is really more a vehicle for Shaw, though in the film we see less of him than Fred and Burgess pretending to play the trumpet (they're dubbed by Bobby Hackett and Billy Butterfield). In one scene Fred pretends to be Russian while singing Shaw's "Would You Like to Be the Love of My Life," but even here his voice is mostly dubbed by musical director (and, as it turned out, real-life Soviet spy) Boris Morros. I guess Fred should consider himself lucky they didn't get someone else to do his dancing, too.

Shaw's okay in what amounts to the fourth lead; he's certainly a better actor than any of the other bandleaders of the time, including Glenn Miller who concurrently starred in several Fox pictures. (One should try to catch The Fabulous Dorseys if only for the hysterically awful acting of Tommy and Jimmy.) Butterworth gives the film it's only real charm.

Video & Audio

Maybe Second Chorus really was mastered off the original 35mm camera negative - in 1984. Either this is a really, really old master, it was mastered off anachronistic equipment, or somebody simply did an awful job. In any case, the image is soft with details lost in a murky blur that's tapey gray throughout. The first reel is jittery and there's other damage here and there, but mostly it's the transfer rather than the condition of the film elements. Nighttime scenes come off especially bad; it's hard to make out what's going on in a couple of shots. The DVD is not subtitled, the sound is on the hissy side and there are no Extra Features

Parting Thoughts

Astaire regarded Second Chrous as the worst film of his career, and he may just be right. It's not awful, but terribly misguided. He and Burgess Meredith play irritating musicians that don't engender much sympathy, and Fred hardly gets to dance at all.

Film historian Stuart Galbraith IV's most recent essays appear in Criterion's new three-disc Seven Samurai DVD and BCI Eclipse's The Quiet Duel.