The Vagabond Lover is a historic film as it was the first to showcase a current popular radio star as its lead. In 1929 Rudy Vallee was the number radio crooner in the country and as such brought a built in audience to the theaters. That he hadn't quite got down the technique of acting period, let alone film acting was incidental for this film with its very slight plot.
Rudy and his band The Connecticut Yankees play a second tier orchestra looking for a break. Rudy persuades them to break into the home of a noted leader and idol and audition even after he was rebuffed. When they're caught by the local constable Charles Sellon, they pretend the famous orchestra leader and his group and have to continue the deception right up to playing in a charity event organized by society grande dame Marie Dressler and her daughter Sally Blane. Of course it all works out in the end.
The film didn't launch Vallee as a movie idol, his his ascetic personality just didn't work for a leading man. This film was done for RKO and later Warner Brothers tried twice to make a leading man of him with Sweet Music and Golddiggers in Paris and failed.
The songs were taken from what Vallee had made popular on his radio program and they included such hits as A Little Kiss Each Morning and the title song. This was probably wise because I'm sure the producers knew this man was not an actor, yet. It would take Preston Sturges who cast Vallee in several of his films to make use of his unique personality and style in great series of character roles. After that curiously enough Vallee rarely sang in films, but still continued as a radio performer. By this time it was the Forties and people like Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, and Dick Haymes were crowding Vallee and earlier singers for public attention including Vallee's chief rival Bing Crosby.
If you like Rudy Vallee's singing as I do, by all means catch The Vagabond Lover, but realize you will not see the Rudy Vallee you might remember from later work.
