Take a Chance was based on the hit Broadway musical of the same name, though only one of the original songs, Eadie Was a Lady, has been retained. The thinnish plot involves the misadventures of a pair of pickpockets, played on Broadway by Jack Haley and Sid Silvers and on film by James Dunn and Cliff “Ukelele Ike” Edwards. Tired of fleecing the suckers in a travelling carnival, our heroes head to Broadway, where they get mixed up with gangsters.
Category: Musical
Marco Polo, the well known adventurer and merchant’s son from Venice in Italy, travels all through asia to find the great Khan. Once there he posesses his protection to merchandise between China and Europe but he prefers to seek out for more adventures.
Singing star Dixie Boy Johnson and his wife Caroline are jubilant over Dixie’s headlining a Broadway show and Caroline’s impending motherhood. On opening night, Caroline is rushed to the hospital and Dixie begs to leave the theater and join her, but producer Lew Dunn refuses. Caroline dies in childbirth and Dixie is shattered. He leaves the baby in the care of his friends, Lasses and Mae, and drops out of sight. Presumed dead, Dixie stays undercover and takes an assumed name, as a shipboard entertainer.
The infamous off-Broadway musical revue tackles the subject of sexuality, with skits by John Lennon, Samuel Beckett, Jules Feiffer and Sam Shepard, where one or more performers in either a state of undress, simulating sex, or both.
An ambitious girl who wants to be a cabaret star poses as “Zaza”, a French chanteuse, to get a job in a prestigious nightclub. Unfortunately, she finds herself in the middle of a dispute between Mike Kelly, the club’s Chicago-born owner, and a group of American gangsters bent on taking over the club. To put pressure on Kelly, the gangsters kidnap “Zaza”.
Five boys and a girl make up a gang and are fans of Beat bands, following them from concert to concert. Juli, fiancée of one of the boys, falls in love with a musician and travels to the countryside with him for a gig. The jealous fiancé and his friends go after them and the whole affair comes close to violence when suddenly the lover allows Juli to make her own choice. This noble gesture rekindles Juli’s true love for him.
Former dancing partners Kitty and Don, reunited after WWII, find love for one another as war widow Kitty attempts to maintain custody of her son from the boy’s wealthy grandmother.
Jancy Edwards works for Cambria Records and is managing the personal appearance tour of songster Billy Weber. While at a college, they hear a performance of a song that Billy wants. Janey meets with the composer, Grant Sanborn, who happens to also be the music instructor at the school. Jancy returns to the record company with a disc of Sanborn’s songs that he gave to her to play for her boss, Jason Ambrose. He is not interested in the kind of songs on the record, but likes Grant’s voice and wants to sign him to a contract. The story gets intersting when Grant only wants to sing folk songs and the record company wants him to sing popular songs.