an Oscar nomination for his love song, "Now It Can Be Told", performed by Don Ameche in his best attempt at basso profundo. The Oscar nomination for Best Story for Berlin is egregious. There is no story. The film is really a collection of Irving Berlin's songs strung together with a wisp of a narrative involving Faye, Power and Ameche drifting in and out of each other's lives. Story can be summed up as a catalogue of ways Alice Faye and Tyrone Power can be kept apart before finally coming together in the final reel.

The film actually originated as a biography of Irving Berlin. In retrospect, it is perhaps a good thing that such a film had not been made considering that Berlin lived to be 101 yearsold, and in 1938, the best had yet to come. I am also not sure if Daryl Zanuck and Henry King would have been the best people for such a film. Elements of Berlin's early life suggest to me that he would have been better served at Warner Brothers with Raoul Walsh or Michael Curtiz at the helm. In an early scene, the camera hones in on Berlin's name as the composer on some sheet music of the title song. Faye, Power and Ameche find their first professional success performing "Alexander's Ragtime Band", but no mention is made of the guy who wrote the song. Powers plays the fictional Roger Grant, who after the title song is refered to as Alexander or Alec for the rest of the