Going Places (1938)

Simply Perfect

Fantastic!

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

The acting in this movie is really good.

Powell is a sporting goods salesman who goes out to the track using a well known jockey's name trying to drum up business for their sporting goods by using and wearing those goods. But the imitation is too good. Anita Louise is the niece of a rich uncle who owns a stable of racehorses, and at first wants Powell to ride the wild horse, "Jeepers Creepers" in the Steeple chase, but then changes her mind and wants him to ride her own fast but tame horse, Lady Ellen. Powell's problem is that he takes a shine to the girl and just can't say no, but he is NOT a jockey! For the girl's sake he doesn't want to lose the race nor does he want to make a fool of himself and get trampled in the process. Louis Armstrong is the groom who can only calm the wild horse by playing "Jeepers Creepers" on his trumpet. Allan Jenkins is a gangster-type who has this inside information on the horse and is leaning on Powell to throw the race AND ride the wild horse, NOT the tamer fast horse Anita Louise wants Powell to ride. How will this turn out? Watch and find out, but first make a pot of coffee. It's a snoozer folks.On the positive side, there are some great tunes and Powell's charm and voice are usually enough to carry almost any film through. Plus there is the great Satchmo singing "Jeepers Creepers". However, the plot, point by point, is just so inane yet boring. Ray Enright directed this film, and I've noticed that he directed more than his share of dogs over at WB. I'm not sure if Warner Brothers gave Ray the dogs to direct because he was Ray Enright, or if the films were dogs because of the way he directed them. Let's just say that Ray Enright as director in the credit is usually not the mark of quality.My recommendation - if you are a Dick Powell completist and can keep your attention focused on Powell, his antics, and his singing, this is probably going to at least keep you awake. Otherwise, have it on hand if you ever have a severe case of insomnia, because "Going Places" is a film that goes nowhere.

All the pieces are there - great cast, good story. Dick Powell, Allen Jenkins, Ron Reagan, and the amazing Louis Armstrong. Too many musical numbers, maybe ? and that bit where they prance Alan Jenkins around the apartment while they sing "Oh what a horse was Charlie" .... that must have been someone's favorite bit. They should have given more screen time to Cora and Colonel Withering. They don't show this one very often on Turner Classics... either it's not up to snuff, or maybe it's a rights issue. Very similar plot to the Marx Brothers' "Day at the Races", which came out the year before. Dick Powell pretends to be famed sportsman Peter Randall, which backfires later in the film. The horse at the center of all the excitement will only go when he hears L. Armstrong belt out the "Jeepers Creepers", which incidentally was the song from Warren & Mercer nominated for an Oscar, the film's only nomination. Directed by Ray Enright, who had started with Mack Sennett, served in WW I, then returned to the industry to work at Warner Brothers.

Sporting goods salesman uses the alias of a lauded horse-jockey from Australia to infiltrate Georgian high society to help promote his employer...how soon do you think it will be before he's on a racehorse himself? Semi-musical farce with romantic interludes also features Louis Armstrong performing the Oscar-nominated "Jeepers Creepers" to an unbroken horse who appreciates good jazz. Some amusing complications in an otherwise overly-familiar script adapted from the play "The Hottentot" by Victor Mapes and William Collier--it took even more writers to come up with the screenplay! In the lead, Dick Powell has such an easy, unassuming nature, one tends to give the film greater compliments than it really deserves. Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer wrote the songs, all novelty numbers. ** from ****

GOING PLACES is a slight comedy about horse racing that features a terrific cast of supporting players, many of them like Walter Catlett and Thurston Hall some of the best characters actors ever seen on screen. Powell, in his pre-hardboiled detective days, plays a store clerk who poses as a jockey for promotional reasons among the horse set in Maryland. Catlett is his co-worker who poses as his valet. Much identify confusion and merriment ensue, with several musical interludes, the most memorable being Mr. Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong debuting the classic number, JEEPERS CREEPERS, which in the movie is the name of a cantankerous race horse the horse-shy Powell ends up riding. This sort of film and in some cases the exact same plot had been done before and would be done again many times, with better known names like Bob Hope, Abbott and Costello and The Marx Brothers. Horse racing was at its most popular in the 1930s and '40s, only to quickly decline in the TV era. The highlight of the movie is an amusing musical number called "Charlie the Horse" sung in four-part harmony by Powell, Catlett and two silly thugs who are pushing the horse-hating Powell to race. It may remind some of something out of GUYS AND DOLLS.