Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

st-shot Orson Welles once called Mickey Rooney the most talented person in Hollywood. The multi faceted Rooney could not only sing, act and dance but also played a variety of instruments. With Andy Hardy all grown up and his career on the rocks Rooney calls on his percussionist expertise to get his career beating again in The Strip.After being released from the hospital after the war Stanley Maxton heads for LA to get his career going again as a drummer. Getting into a car accident en-route he meets Sonny Johnson (James Craig ) a bookie who gives him a job taking bets. His desire is to drum though bring's him to Fluff's where he meets dancer/cigarette girl Jane (Sally Forrest) and takes on the job of the house drummer. Sonny visits the club and falls for Jane who in turn gravitates towards him and his abilities to further her career. When Sonny turns up dead Stanley is the prime suspect.Rooney looks amazingly adept and quite convincing behind the drum kit but his performance and the production itself isn't even worth a rim shot never mind a drum roll. Rooney is little more than Andy visits the land of vice with a handful of Louis Stone surrogates to guide him along the way. Rooney lacks the depth as an actor to bring any substance to Maxton. He is still the pining teen from the series. As fatale Sally Forrest is limber but her performance is timber.The film itself is a pasty noir where the technicians seemed to have forgotten to turn off some of the lights to exact mood and intent. It's more Dragnet than expressionist with the most interesting twists and dynamic, the relationship between Sonny and Jane ignored in favor of Mickey's brooding.The film's highlight albeit brief and truncated is the performing of Louis Armstrong's band at Fluff's with precious moments from trombonist Jack Teargarden and pianist Earl Fatha Hines giving excuse enough to avoid this stretch of bad road and turn on the Victrola to listen to these diamonds in the rough instead.

moonspinner55 Ex-serviceman, posing as an insurance salesman but actually working for a racketeer, allows a pretty but romantically-aloof waitress to talk him into taking the drummer's gig at the jazz club where she works; naturally, he thinks this means she loves him, but she's got eyes for his dapper former boss. "The Strip"--as in Hollywood's famous Sunset Strip--is, if nothing else, a flashback to Los Angeles in 1951, when wealthy mobsters ruled the underworld and nightclubs were packed with patrons just waiting for a hot drum solo. If it weren't for Joe Pasternak's production and Robert Surtees' cinematography, this MGM effort would easily pass for a b-movie. The script and characters are too thin to support the framing story about a shooting, while Mickey Rooney's hyper lead performance verges on camp. Rooney, playing a musician so clean-cut he actually leaves the lucrative 'dark side' for a life of hoped-for domesticity, is unconvincingly unfettered by drugs or booze--his vice is romance! The movie has no connection with reality, though the soloists (including Louis Armstrong and Vic Damone) are enjoyable. ** from ****

gary-444 These types off film were being hammered out weekly in the 1950's. Superficially, there is little to distinguish this from the rest. However as it progresses, there is much to admire and enjoy. I love the format of an a hour and a quarter running time. Long enough to tell a simple tale, but without any time for padding, every frame counts.Mickey Rooney is a fine character actor. One of the minor amusements here is watching a diminutive Rooney playing the lead, being dwarfed by everyone apart from his leading lady, Sally Forrest, who is probably the only actor on screen smaller than him! The premise of the loser/little guy who stands up for himself works well with several acutely observed scenes. The tragic denouement is a genuine surprise and is well told with clever editing keeping the tale skimming along at a brisk pace.The musical,and song and dance interludes provide pleasing pauses in the action resulting in a film that ultimately delivers because it works so conspicuously within it's boundaries, rather than trying to push them.

sol Mickey Rooney as discharged Korean War veteran Stanley Maxton not only gets a chance to act as a grown up out on his own in the big city of L.A the movie "The Strip" also showcases his ability to play the drums which he's very good at. The story in itself is more or less average with Stan getting in with the wrong crowd. later when he meets pretty Jane Tafford, Sally Forrest, as he was running from the L.A vice squad. Stan falls so madly in love with the "Fluff's" nightclub cigarette girl and part-time dancer that he quits his job working for local mobster Sonny Johnson, James Craig,to work full-time as a drummer with the Louie Armstrong band at the club. We already know before were even introduced to Stan that Jane is badly injured and dying in the hospital and Sonny is dead from a gunshot wound as the movie started. In a "Dragnet" like introduction we see a police car pull up at Jane's apartment in L.A finding her on the floor bleeding to death. Stan later picked up at his pad is taken to the police station and quizzed about both, Jane & Sonny's, shooting. The film then goes into a long flashback to how this whole tangled and deadly affair began. Stan wasn't too bright in his falling for Jane's obvious attempt to exploit his connections with big time mobster Sonny Johnson. Sonny promising to get Jane a screen test and a short-cut into the movies as an actress had the star-struck Jane fall for Sonny's line that he knows people in high places in Hollywood, hook line and sinker. Jane then dropped Stan who thought that she was in love with him like a hot potato. Sonny also wasn't that fond of Stan checking out on him to work for Fluff's and sent two of his goons to Stan's place to first talk him into coming back and later work him over for not being too cooperative. Stans later warning Jane about Sonny's involvement with the mob backfired when she went to have it out with him about his stringing her along and getting her nowhere in the movies which resulted in his being shot and killed and her ending up on life-support. At the police station Stan in another one of his hair brain attempts to get Jane to come back to him confessed to killing Sonny. It's then that he's told later by L.A police Detective Let. Bonnablo, Tom Powers, that she already confessed to the killing in a typed statement and didn't survive her injuries. Even there with him wanting to take the rap for Jane Stan ended up looking like a total jerk. What I thought was the biggest boner that Stan made in the movie, and he made a lot of them, was him not noticing how Edna, Kay Brown, another girl who worked at "Fluff's" was absolutely crazy about him and how he just shoved her off every time she tried to make the slightest attempt to talk and get friendly with him. Edna who for some reason was called "kid" by everyone in the film, I had to find out what her name was in the IMDb credits, was as pretty, if not more so, then Jane and much nicer and kinder to Stan. But as usual, like with everything else he did in the movie, Stan completely overlooked a good thing when he saw one by being blind to the feelings that she had for him. Even when she was right in front of Stan sweetly asking him for a date!