User Reviews

. . . America's premier movie studio informs the nation shortly after the twin traumas of The Great Depression and World War Two. What problem, you may wonder, does SPREADIN' THE JAM suggest can be solved by getting drunk (with or without a little help from your "friends")? Being short on rent money or your mortgage payment, of course. As millions of U.S. citizens spread across America from coast-to-coast have scribbled atop the cardboard boxes in which they live, "When you're broke and you know it, beg some booze!" In Real Life, there NEVER has been a landlady who's promised "a year's free rent for everyone in my building if I can join in on your sloshed party for a minute or two!" But as the official propaganda arm of U.S. One Per Center Fat Cats, the movie studio releasing SPREADIN' THE JAM feels Duty Bound to toss in as much nefarious sadism as they can into all of their films--no matter how brief or obscure--in order to help their miserly gang of fiendish fans to bust a gut laughing. The state-controlled cinema output of Red Commie Russia is pretty sad, but such offal as SPREADIN' THE JAM intended for America's own oligarchical class is even more pathetic!

Unable to pay her rent, young singer Jan Clayton is evicted by her landlady, Helen Boyce, and ends up in a jam session with fellow musicians from the boarding house who are swingin' the jam around when the nasty landlady invades. Will she be swayed by the swing? Or will she reveal herself to be the old fuddy duddy she seems to be, and evict everybody else for disturbing her peace? Practically all sung in dialogue with rhythm, this one reel short is truly an entertaining mix a song and dance and is very reminiscent of some of the more inventive early musicals where plot was developed through song, disguised as poetry to music. Jan Clayton would go onto Broadway success with both Carousel and a revival of Show Boat, but this is a rare chance to see her on screen. Boyce, however steals the scene as the seemingly nasty landlady and really seems to be having a lot of fun. A forgotten gem of a musical short from MGM, this is one of the better musical shorts to come out of the swing years.