The best Richard Denning’s music movies

Nicky Nelson is a fast-talking sideshow barker with a wax-and-alive concession on Atlantic City's boardwalk. Even with the band of his friend, struggling musician Gene Krupa, playing on the sidewalk to attract the customers, "The Living Corpse" and other low-rent acts aren't enough to lure the seen-it-all boardwalk strollers, and the landlord closes the show in lieu of never-paid rent. Nicky, always promoting, goes to Stephen Hanratty, head of the pier's Dance Pavilion, to plug Krupa's band as an attraction, but Hanratty won't even listen to them. But, while there, he meets singer Lily Racquel, who knows he is a phoney but might have the ability to to talk a radio-station manager into giving her an audition. She gives him a ring to help finance the project; he promptly loses it in a crap-game.

This comical campus romance showcases the fancy footwork of All-American basketball player Hank Luisetti while it tells the story of a dean's son who does his very best to become a good student. When he fails, he turns to playing basketball and befriends Luisetti, which makes him quite popular. This doesn't sit well with the dean, who wants academics to be more important than sports.

At Middleton College, controlled by rich donor Melton, only paying sports are allowed. But Freddie Frye, conniving student body president, has to get a letter in some sport to win back his girl Susie; he schemes to revive crew boat racing. Sinking boats, no money, and his own waistline stand in his way. Can they win the big race with State University?

After six years in jail Steve returns to claim a ranch left him in a will. The town is in the middle of a rough election masterminded by saloon owner Marie. Steve is soon on the side of the opposition candidate and his pretty daughter. The town's tough sheriff is on no-one's side, least of all Steve's

While searching the South Pacific for a missing aviator, Bob Mitchell and Jimmy Wallace are caught in a typhoon and crack up on an island, escaping unharmed with the aid of Tura, a beautiful jungle girl who is the only inhabitant of the island and is believed a goddess by the natives of the adjoining islands. The three are about to leave the island on a make-shift raft when a gang of savage tribesman land, headed by Kuasa, a half-mad potentate who informs them that all whites are his mortal enemies because an Englishwoman once spurned his love and he got his revenge by stealing her daughter, who is Tura.