Born to Dance (1936)

Remember the first time you had a Long Island Ice Tea? How it’s lethal mix of vodka, tequila, rum, gin, and triple sec — each a potent shot on its own, masked with the right amount of sour mix and soda goes down so easily that you’re asking for another before you realize you’ve been spiked?

Born to Dance is like that, intoxicating hits of star talent in a feather-light yet thoroughly entertaining mix we’ve all seen before. Although basically the same cast from Broadway Melody of 1936, director Roy Del Ruth applies a double cliché of musicals. Gold diggers meet the Navy when sweet sailor Jimmy Stewart gets smitten with toothy tap queen Eleanor Powell. Rubber-limbed yokel Buddy Ebsen flails a dance or two while Frances Langford sings Cole Porter with a swingin’ sliding vocal range often accompanied by four glowing-throated sailors or a row of dashing chorus boys. Hilarious Una Merkel fires off zingers as the reluctant wife of Syd Silvers (who wrote the excellent script), a sailor whom she met at a dance contest just before he entered the Navy for four years. She’s practically in denial over their impetuous marriage, and never bothered to tell him that they have a child played by the eerily doll-like Juanita “Baby Jane” Quigley who gets her own share of funny one-liners.