Busby Berkley the great surrealist when it came to the film musical got a shot at directing this film which had a silly mistaken identity love story for a plot that probably no one ever cared about. This film is really all about Berkley and his visual imagination. Berkley's type of musical staging was becoming outdated by the 1940's but The Gang's All Here allowed Berkley to film the musical numbers with his usual crazy ideas this time with the added bonus of color.
Some of the results were truly amazing. The Carmen Miranda number "The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat" were loaded with sexual innuendo and the final number "The Polka Dot Ballet" in technicolor reached a new level in film surrealism.
One must mention the contribution of the lead, Alice Faye. She was one of 20th Century Fox's biggest stars and had a very pleasing singing voice. Faye kind of walks through the film frequently with a look of amusement. She's probably wondering what kind of crazy Berkley stuff she was mixed up in.
The film is a high point in the Hollywood musical and certainly is more than just some "camp classic."
The so called screenplay was by Walter Bullock, Harry Warren and Leo Robin a couple of pros wrote the music and lyrics. The film runs 103 minutes.
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