SOME LIKE IT HOT aka Rhythm Romance (1939) Bob Hope, Shirley Ross & Gene Krupa | Comedy | B&W

Some Like It Hot, reissued for television as Rhythm Romance, is a 1939 comedy film starring Bob Hope, Shirley Ross, and Gene Krupa. Directed by George Archainbaud, its screenplay was written by Wilkie C. Mahoney and Lewis R. Foster, based on the play The Great Magoo by Ben Hecht and Gene Fowler, which performed briefly on Broadway in 1932. The film was released the year before Road to Singapore converted theatre and radio star Hope into a huge movie box office draw. Legendary cinematographer Karl Struss filmed the movie.

The title of the film is taken from a nursery rhyme, and bears no relation to Billy Wilder's acclaimed 1959 comedy film Some Like It Hot starring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, and Tony Curtis.

SYNOPSIS
Nicky Nelson is a sidewalk entrepreneur who tries to lure passersby to see his friend Gene Krupa's band. As the strategy fails, he takes the musicians to a club, where he meets singer Lily Racquel. He takes advantage of her while pretending to help her, but love ultimately redeems him.

Nicky Nelson is a fast-talking sideshow barker with a wax-and-alive concession on Atlantic City's boardwalk. Even with the band of his friend, struggling musician Gene Krupa, playing on the sidewalk to attract the customers, "The Living Corpse" and other low-rent acts aren't enough to lure the seen-it-all boardwalk strollers, and the landlord closes the show in lieu of never-paid rent. Nicky, always promoting, goes to Stephen Hanratty, head of the pier's Dance Pavilion, to plug Krupa's band as an attraction, but Hanratty won't even listen to them. But, while there, he meets singer Lily Racquel, who knows he is a phoney but might have the ability to to talk a radio-station manager into giving her an audition. She gives him a ring to help finance the project; he promptly loses it in a crap-game.

CAST & CREW
Bob Hope as Nicky Nelson
Shirley Ross as Lily Racquet
Una Merkel as Flo Saunders
Gene Krupa as himself
Rufe Davis as Stoney
Bernard Nedell as Stephen Hanratty
Frank Sully as Sailor Burke
Bernadene Hayes as Miss Marble
Richard Denning as Mr. Weems

Directed by George Archainbaud
Written by Wilkie C. Mahoney, Lewis R. Foster
Based on The Great Magoo1932 play by Ben Hecht, Gene Fowler
Produced by William LeBaron
Cinematography Karl Struss
Edited by Edward Dmytryk
Music by Arthur Franklin
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date May 19, 1939
Running time 65 minutes
Country United States
Language English