Best movies like The Big Broadcast of 1936

A musical meteor of songs, comedy and romance!

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Big Broadcast of 1936 Starring Jack Oakie, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Lyda Roberti, and more. If you liked The Big Broadcast of 1936 then you may also like: You're Telling Me, Variety Girl, WUSA, Wake Up and Live, Radio City Revels 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.

The wisp of a storyline involves two-bit radio station owner Spud Miller, who doubles as the station's sole announcer while his comic partner Smiley serves as the house crooner. On the verge of bankruptcy, Spud is receptive to the wacky notions of George and Gracie, who've just invented a television device which can pick up and transmit any signal, any time, anywhere.

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You're Telling Me

Hubert Abercrombie Gumm, a flighty, eccentric screwball acquires a job as an executive at a radio station at the insistence of his only-slightly less eccentric aunt Fannie Handley, who is married to one of the company owners. After mixing up the script pages to the various radio programs, Hubert sets out to get the name of a returning explorer on a contract for the radio station. Other than the title, this film has no connection at all to the 1934 W.C. Fields film of the same title even though some sources give the plot of the Fields' film as the plot of this film.

Variety Girl

Dozens of star and character-actor cameos and a message about the Variety Club (a show-business charity) are woven into a framework about two hopeful young ladies who come to Hollywood, exchange identities, and cause comic confusion (with slapstick interludes) throughout the Paramount studio.

WUSA

Rheinhardt, a cynical drifter, gets a job as an announcer for right-wing radio station WUSA in New Orleans. Rheinhardt is content to parrot WUSA's reactionary editorial stance on the air, even if he doesn't agree with it. Rheinhardt finds his cynical detachment challenged by a lady friend, Geraldine, and by Rainey, a neighbour and troubled idealist who becomes aware of WUSA's sinister, hidden purpose. And when events start spinning out of control, even Rheinhardt finds he must take a stand.

Wake Up and Live

Satire on radio, built around the supposed feud between bandleader Ben Bernie and journalist Walter Winchell.

Radio City Revels

A down-on-his-luck songwriter attempts to peddle musical compositions of a naive Arkansas hillbilly under his own name. Comedy.

Radio Stars on Parade

A Hollywood talent agency tries to avoid finacial ruin by getting its best clients on the air.

Reveille with Beverly

Beverly Ross, the switchboard operator at a local radio station, jumps at the chance to be the DJ for an early morning show before the soldiers at a nearby army camp assemble for reveille. Beverly, with her modern music, camp bulletins and chatter, is a hit with the soldiers. Beverly's younger brother and his two buddies are soldiers at the camp. The buddies vie for Beverly's attentions.

Risky Business

Radio commentator Dan Clifford takes desperate chances to save the life of a young girl who has been kidnapped.

The King of Marvin Gardens

Jason Staebler lives on the Boardwalk and fronts for the local mob in Atlantic City. He is a dreamer who asks his brother David, a radio personality from Philadelphia, to help him build a paradise on a Pacific Island, which might be just another of his pie-in-the-sky schemes. Inevitably, complications begin to pile up.

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.

The Fog

Strange things begin to occurs as a tiny California coastal town prepares to commemorate its centenary. Inanimate objects spring eerily to life; Rev. Malone stumbles upon a dark secret about the town's founding; radio announcer Stevie witnesses a mystical fire; and hitchhiker Elizabeth discovers the mutilated corpse of a fisherman. Then a mysterious iridescent fog descends upon the village, and more people start to die.

Talk Radio

A rude, contemptuous talk show host becomes overwhelmed by the hatred that surrounds his program just before it goes national.

Red Planet Mars

Husband-and-wife scientists (Peter Graves, Andrea King) pick up a pie-in-the-sky TV message supposedly from Mars.

Joe Palooka in the Big Fight

Gangsters frame Joe on a drunk charge and a murder rap so they can put their own fighter into a big event. Joe investigates in an attempt to prove his innocence.

Silent Movie

Aspiring filmmakers Mel Funn, Marty Eggs and Dom Bell go to a financially troubled studio with an idea for a silent movie. In an effort to make the movie more marketable, they attempt to recruit a number of big name stars to appear, while the studio's creditors attempt to thwart them.

Sing and Be Happy

Rival advertising firms compete for a radio show's pickle manufacturing account.

The Big Broadcast of 1937

A cream-of-the-crop gathering of 1930's radio stars, who lend themselves to a storyline about a failing radio station which needs to put on a huge ratings winner to have any chance of continued operation. An interesting mixture of the stars whose fame continued to grow, those who became bit players in show business history, and those who have been forgotten entirely, except at the Internet Movie Database of course!

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.

Outside Ozona

A widowed trucker (Robert Forster) fends off isolation in the company of a dog named Girl, two bickering sisters (Beth Ann Styne, Sherilyn Fenn) try to reconcile their differences and a down-and-out circus clown (Kevin Pollak) and his stripper girlfriend (Penelope Ann Miller) must fight the temptation of crime on the road. Their common companion is an angry disc jockey (Taj Mahal) at odds with a desperate boss (Meat Loaf). All these people will find their lives intertwined by the hand of fate. And before the night gives way to day, some will breathe their last breath... Outside Ozona.

One Hour Late

A secretary catches the eye of her amorous boss while her regular boyfriend keeps trying to propose marriage to her.

Partners in Time

Squire Skimp has a new plan to swindle the people of Pine Ridge. However, Lum has something more important on his mind. He has to tell a young engaged couple on the verge of breaking up the story of how the Jot 'em Down store first started (through flashbacks). Based on characters from the popular "Lum and Abner" radio program of the time.

Ask a Policeman

The mirthful adventures of Police-Sergeant Samuel Dudfoot and his two constables, Albert Brown and Jeremias Harbottle, who stage a fabricated crime-wave to save their jobs---and then find themselves involved in the real thing.

Many Happy Returns

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.

Larceny on the Air

A doctor working with the Bureau of Pure Foods and Drugs, uses radio broadcasts to expose fraudulent patent medicines.

Home in San Antone

Posing as unemployed musicians, Roy Acuff and his Smoky Mountain Boys, are being helped by Ted Gibson owner of the Harmony Inn in San Antonio, Texas. Gibson is impoverished because he keeps buying his kleptomaniac Uncle Zeke out of trouble, supports his Ma, and Grandpa. He wants to marry Jean Wallace, and doesn't know that Acuff and his musicians are traveling incognito for the radio show "Who Am I Helping?" If he guesses their identity, he wins $100,000.

Dark Signal

The spirit of a murdered girl returns with a message. Now a stranded woman must team up with the staff of a local station to solve the mystery of her death.

The Great American Broadcast

After WWI two men go into radio. Failure leads the wife of one to borrow money from another; she goes on, after separation, to stardom. A coast-to-coast radio program is set up to bring everyone back together.

Uncle Joe

A pretty Chicago teenager (Gale Storm), who's being courted by an older man, is sent by her worried parents to live with her uncle on his Iowa farm.

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.

Here Comes Carter

A radio commentator avenges an old wrong by blowing the whistle on Hollywood scandals

Crooner

Fame goes to a priggish singer's head and almost costs him his girlfriend.

You May Be Next!

Gangster tries to censor a crusading radio station by jamming its signal.

Love on the Air

When a radio host gets dumped by her boyfriend on-air and soon has her break up exposed even further by a shock jock, she needs to regain her confidence while working with the same man who humiliated her in front of his viewers.

Beautiful But Broke

Theatrical agent Waldo Main is inducted into the army, and turns his now clientless agency over to his secretary Dottie Duncan. Dottie decides to organize an all-girl orchestra to fill the void caused by so many orchestra members being called to service due to WWII, and joins struggling singers/songwriters Sally Richards and Sue Ford in this endeavor. Dottie's screwball schemes to get engagements for the group often lead to disaster.

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]).

The Christmas Promise

Nicole learns to deal with grief, with the help of her grandfather and a carpenter she hires to renovate the home that was once meant for her and her fiancé.

The Phantom Broadcast

A handsome radio singer has it all--fame, money, adoring fans--but what no one knows is that his accompanist, a hunchbacked piano player, is actually the voice behind the arrogant, abusive "singer"'s fame. The two men fall for the same girl, and when the singer turns up dead, suspicion falls upon his assistant and the girl.

Disc Jockey

National DJs help a promoter make an unknown girl a star, to prove the power of radio over TV.

Senorita from the West

Determined to become a radio singer, a young girl runs away from her family. She hooks up with a man who is actually the real voice of a famous radio crooner, who actually can't sing at all.

Feudin' Rhythm

Eddy Arnold, singing star of the Ace Lucky radio program gets involved when Ace's equipment for a television program is destroyed by a fire. Aces accepts the sponsorship of social-climber Lucille Upperworth, who tries to revamp the western/hillbilly music format to classical music.

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.

Rhythm Round-Up

Arriving in Arizona, the band members discover that the hotel is haunted and that it properly belongs to young Jimmy Benson (Curtis), the nephew of the previous owner. The "ghosts," however, turns out to be a trio of confidence men, Zeke Winslow (Guinn "Big Boy" Williams), Noah Jones (Raymond Hatton) and Slim Jensen Victor Potel, who are hoping to buy the place themselves.

Colorado Sunset

When his well-meaning sidekick (Smiley Burnette) buys a cow farm instead of a cattle ranch, singing cowpoke Gene Autry prepares to embrace the dairy business. But with a corrupt association bent on driving up milk prices, it's up to newly elected Sheriff Gene to clean up the mess. Country music icon Patsy Montana sings "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart," while radio crooners the Texas Rangers perform alongside Autry.

Falling for You

While planning a fundraising event, a small New England town’s radio station manager meets her match in a visiting businessman who can’t seem to see beyond the screen of his laptop computer, until she ropes him into participating in her bachelor bake-off to help save the station.

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