You Can't Have Everything (1937, also known as Last Year's Kisses) was one of six films that Alice Faye made with Don Ameche at 20th Century-Fox. Both stars were among the studio's top box office draws during the Great Depression, and the studio rushed them into a series of quickly produced films to satisfy the audience demand. You Can't Have Everything was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and helmed by veteran director Norman Taurog. Actor, director and writer Gregory Ratoff wrote the original story, which was adapted for the screen by Harry Tugend, Jack Yellen and Karl Tunberg. It also featured songs by one of Hollywood's top composing teams of Mack Gordon and Harry Revel, who penned the title track, (which was later covered by several singers from Judy Garland to Doris Day), The Loveliness of You and Danger - Love at Work.

Shot on the Fox lot in West Los Angeles from April 22 until mid-June of 1937, You Can't Have Everything stars Faye as Judith Poe Wells, the author of an unproduced play who happens to be the great-granddaughter of horror writer Edgar Allan Poe. And, like her great-grandfather, she is nearly penniless, and unable to pay for a meal at an Italian restaurant. Another patron and fellow playwright, George Macrae (Don Ameche), offers to pay for her dinner, but she turns him down and sings with the restaurant's orchestra instead. While packing to go back to her hometown after her failure in New York City, Judy gets a surprise check and an option on her play. Unbeknownst to her, George asked his producer, Sam Gordon (Charles Winninger) to option the play out of pity. When the star of George's latest musical comedy, Evelyn Moore (Phyllis Brooks), quits the show, George asks Judy to take her place. Complications set in when George's ex-girlfriend Lulu (Louise Hovick, also known as striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, making her film debut) comes back to New York and tells George that they are actually married, having tied the knot while drunk. Also in the cast were The Ritz Brothers, English actor Arthur Treacher (who specialized in playing butlers and eventually founded a famous fish-n-chips chain in the United States), singer Tony Martin (who married Alice Faye shortly after production ended), Louis Prima and His Band, the violinist David Rubinoff, appearing as himself, and the famous specialty dancers, Tip, Tap and Toe.

Although The Ritz Brothers were well known in vaudeville and had worked under contract to Fox as a team, Darryl Zanuck had considered only using Jimmy Ritz in this picture, without his brothers Harry and Al, but Jimmy refused and Zanuck finally relented. Released on August 3, 1937, Variety called You Can't Have Everything "a wild and hilarious filmusical, one of the best of the series of this type which 20th Century-Fox has turned out. [...] Another backstage story and all the principals are familiar types of the theatre. [...] The Ritz Bros. sing and dance in their underwear; they disguise themselves as scrub women and do a routine in the YWCA; they do a good floor number with Louis Prima, and his band; and they give Hovick excellent support in some amusing blackouts."

SOURCES:
AFI|Catalog. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://catalog.afi.com/Film/7923-YOU-CAN'T-HAVE-EVERYTHING?sid=c086f662-ebed-4b0b-832b-f89161098914&sr=4.6817636&cp=1&pos=0
Mack Gordon. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://michaelfeinsteinsamericansongbook.org/songwriter.html?p=104
Motion Picture Herald. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/motionpictureher128unse_0498
Staff, V. (n.d.). You Can't Have Everything. Retrieved from https://variety.com/1936/film/reviews/you-can-t-have-everything-1200411285/

By Lorraine LoBianco