If there was one constant in old Hollywood, it was the fact that baseball pictures never did well at the box office. In 1930, the same thing could be said about musicals. Enter courageous MGM, who combined both genres in They Learned About Women. Add Gus Van and Joe Schenck, popular vaudeville headliners but novice dramatic actors, and they had a surefire bomb. The surprise, therefore, isn't that They Learned About Women failed at the box office -- it did in a major way -- but how illuminating the film proves today. The plot -- typical backstage hokum -- is drawn out, badly acted at times, and completely wastes the effervescent Bessie Love, whose self-sacrificial character is downright painful to behold. But the film remains a not-to-be-missed chance to see what vaudeville was all about. Van and Schenck were headliners, and also starred in the later Ziegfeld Follies. Irritating at first, they tend to grow on you and their numbers are startling to say the least. Specializing in comical dialect ballads, Van and Schenck perform their own "Dougherty Is the Name" and manage to offend both Jews and Irishmen. The same goes for "I'm an Old-fashioned Guy," an Italian ballad in which the incendiary slur "wop" is used several times. Meanwhile, "Harlem Madness," the film's main production number, is a curious mix of blackface and genuine African-American performers lead by the wonderful Nina Mae McKinney and a couple of amazing tap dancing children. It is all very energetically performed and certainly never dull. Audiences at the time stayed away in droves, however, but Joe Schenck was spared most of the embarrassment. The entertainer died at the young age of 39 shortly after the release of They Learned About Women.