Best movies like Many Happy Returns
GIVE HER AWAY? OH NO! PAPA PAID TO GET RID OF HER!
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Many Happy Returns Starring Gracie Allen, George Burns, George Barbier, Joan Marsh, and more. If you liked Many Happy Returns then you may also like: Radio Stars on Parade, Jamboree, Kelly and Me, The Big Broadcast, Bottoms Up and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
Gracie Allen assumes the "management" of the shop owned by her papa Horatio Allen, turning it into a radio station and then an aviary---with the usual Gracie Allen logic---while distracted Papa is trying to get younger daughter, beauty contest winner Florence, married before she can head to Hollywood and get into the movies.
Many Happy Returns
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Kelly and Me
Failing vaudeville performer, Len, is taken under the wing of the German Shepherd wonder dog, Kelly, and a new act is born. Len hopes all his dreams are coming true when he finds himself in Hollywood ... but Kelly is the one in demand on the big screen.
The Big Broadcast
The top brass at a radio station believe their popular new star singer is paying more attention to his love life than to his career.
Bottoms Up
Promoter "Smoothie" King helps a pair of phonies con their way into a movie company. As Wanda heads toward stardom, she turns more and more from King toward the matinée idol. King must decide between his plans and her happiness.
Love on Toast
The plot concerns a female press agent who must select a "Mr. Manhattan" and "Miss Brooklyn" for an ad campaign mounted by a soup company. The Mr. Manhattan chosen is a singing soda jerk, who doesn't want to play along until he is given the honor of choosing his own Miss Brooklyn.
Sing and Be Happy
Rival advertising firms compete for a radio show's pickle manufacturing account.
Holiday Inn
Lovely Linda Mason has crooner Jim Hardy head over heels, but suave stepper Ted Hanover wants her for his new dance partner after fickle Lila Dixon gives him the brush. Jim's supper club, Holiday Inn, is the setting for the chase by Hanover and his manager.
It Can't Last Forever
Russ Matthews, a theatrical agent who is not above pulling off a hoax or two or more to further the career of his clients (and himself), and a newspaper gossip-columnist, Carol Wilson, get involved with gangsters when one of Larry's radio-program future-predicting cons gets out of hand.
We're Not Married!
A Justice of the Peace performed weddings a few days before his license was valid. A few years later five couples learn they have never been legally married.
Out of This World
An all-girl band hits paydirt—and mud—when they sign a male crooner and then sell five 25% shares of his contract.
Twenty Million Sweethearts
Unscrupulous agent Rush Blake makes singing waiter Buddy Clayton a big radio star while Peggy Cornell, who has lost her own radio show, helps Buddy.
Million Dollar Baby
A husband-and-wife vaudeville team disguise their young son as a girl so he can enter a contest run by a movie studio that's looking for "a new Shirley Temple".
Love and Hisses
As part of their public feud, Bandleader Bernie pretends a girl singer is no good so columnist Winchell promotes her in his column.
Eadie Was a Lady
In this amiable Columbia B musical, society girl Ann Miller escapes her Back Bay family by performing in the chorus line in a burlesque house. But trouble starts when her boss (William Wright) decides to build her up as a star. One of the many bread-and-butter Columbia productions graced by the contributions of Cole’s in-house dance studio. Cole dances behind Miller in “I’m Gonna See My Baby.” --Museum of Modern Art
Down Memory Lane
This film is a compilation, with narration by Steve Allen, of comedies from the old Mack Sennett silent studio. Sennett, himself, appears in a cameo at the end of the film.
Ella Cinders
Poor Ella Cinders is much abused by her evil step-mother and step-sisters. When she wins a local beauty contest she jumps at the chance to get out of her dead-end life and go to Hollywood, where she is promised a job in the movies. When she arrives in Hollywood, she discovers that the contest was a scam and the job non-existent. But through pluck, luck, and talent, she makes it in the movies anyway, and finds true love.
You Can't Have Everything
Starving playwright Judith Wells meets playboy writer of musicals, George Macrae, over a plate of stolen spaghetti. He persuades producer Sam Gordon to buy her ridiculous play "North Winds" just to improve his romantic chances, and even persuades her to sing in the sort of show she pretends to despise. But just when their romance is going well, Gordon's former flame Lulu reveals the ace up her sleeve...
One Hour Late
A secretary catches the eye of her amorous boss while her regular boyfriend keeps trying to propose marriage to her.
Rainbow Over Broadway
Ex-vaudeville performer Trixie makes a come-back, and threatens to thwart the ambitions of her song-writing step-children, Bob and Judy.
Broken Hearts of Hollywood
Virginia Perry, a former movie star, leaves her family and returns to Hollywood to make a comeback, but age has taken its toll and she is cast in small character roles. Meanwhile, her daughter, Betty Ann, has won a beauty contest, and heads for Hollywood. They end up in the same, film, with Mom playing her Mom. Marshall tries to take advantage of the naive Betty. Somebody gets shot. Somebody is put on trial.
Myrt and Marge
Myrt has a show chock full of talented performers that deserves to be on Broadway, but can't raise the necessary money. Jackson, a lecherous "producer", provides the money in order to get his hands on the show's pretty young star, Marge. Myrt teams up with Marge's boyfriend to try to thwart the randy producer and get the show to Broadway.
Star for a Night
Blind Mrs. Lind comes to American to visit her three children whom she thinks are successful.
The Gracie Allen Murder Case
The zany plot follows nitwit Gracie Allen trying to help master sleuth Philo Vance solve a murder.
Big Town Girl
When a department store songstress becomes a radio star she keeps her identity secret, as the "Masked Countess", because he estranged husband is a crook.
My Gal Loves Music
A sister act finds itself stranded and broke, and teams up with a medicine man who is promoting a child talent contest.
Thanks for Everything
Promoters set up a radio contest to find the average American and use him to sell food, apparel and notions. All goes well until he falls in love with a girl who upsets things.
Every Night at Eight
Three young girls working in an agency have build a singing trio. They want to "lease" the Dictaphone of their boss to make a record of their singing, but they are caught and fired. When they are not able to pay their rent any longer, they decide to try it on an amateur contest at a radio station.
Sing, Baby, Sing
The "Caliban-Ariel" romance of fiftysomething John Barrymore and teenager Elaine Barrie is spoofed in this delightful 20th Century Fox musical. Adolphe Menjou plays the Barrymore counterpart, a loose-living movie star with a penchant for wine, women, and more wine. Alice Faye plays a nightclub singer hungry for publicity. Her agent (Gregory Ratoff) arranges a "romance" between Faye and Menjou. Eventually Faye winds up with Michael Whalen, allowing Menjou to continue his blissful, bibulous bachelorhood. Sing, Baby, Sing represented the feature-film debut of the Ritz Brothers, who are in top form in their specialty numbers--and who are awarded a final curtain call after the "The End" title, just so the audience won't forget them (The same device was used to introduce British actor George Sanders in Fox's Lancer Spy [37]).
Slim Carter
Hughie Mack, a not so nice western singer, is discovered by Clover Doyle as the next movie cowboy hero. His name is changed to Slim Carter and a promotional buildup begins. Leo Gallaher, an orphan boy wins the contest to spend a month with Slim. Leo is a good influence on his cowboy hero. Clover sees the good and more in Slim. Montana Burriss is Slim's double.
Disc Jockey
National DJs help a promoter make an unknown girl a star, to prove the power of radio over TV.
Take It Big
Jack Haley plays Jack North, the nether end of a vaudeville horse act who inherits a western ranch. When he heads to the Great Outdoors to take possession, Jack winds up at the wrong place: a swanky dude ranch. He immediately begins running things, at it's quite a while before his error is discovered. By the time he shows up at his own ranch, he's up to his ears in unpaid debts-which naturally requires a fund-raising musical show as a bail-out. Harriet Hilliard handles the romantic portion of the proceedings, occasionally dueting with her real-life husband, bandleader Ozzie Nelson.
Swing, Sister, Swing
In this musical comedy, two star-struck small town kids head for the Big Apple and become famous for their jitterbug act. Their fame doesn't last long, but they had fun anyway. Songs include: "Baltimore Bubble," "Gingham Gown," "Just a Bore," "Wasn't It You," "Kaneski Waltz" (Frank Skinner, Charles Henderson).
Swingin' on a Rainbow
A young girl goes to New York to find a band leader who has stolen all the songs she wrote and is passing them off as his own.
Radio Stars on Parade
A Hollywood talent agency tries to avoid finacial ruin by getting its best clients on the air.