Tin Pan Alley on 16mm

(Walter Lang, US 1940, 94 min., 16mm) 

Twentieth Century-Fox mainstays Betty Grable and Alice Faye star in this film as performing sisters caught up with a pair of songwriters in the first decades of the century. Skeets Harrigan (John Payne) and Harry Calhoun (Jack Oakie) are struggling songwriters in Tin Pan Alley, New York City in 1915. When they convince Katie and Lily Blane (Faye and Grable, respectively) to debut one of their songs, their fortunes look up. But when success gets in the way of romance they part ways just before The Great War may separate them forever. Plenty of period songs appear in the film, including “America, I Love You.”