Twenty Million Sweethearts
1934 film by Ray Enright

Twenty Million Sweethearts is a 1934 American Pre-Code musical comedy film directed by Ray Enright and starring Pat O'Brien, Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers, and the Mills Brothers. The film was remade in 1949 as My Dream Is Yours.
Plot
Agent Russell Edward "Rush" Blake is able to promote the singing tenor waiter Buddy Clayton as a major radio star, while Buddy's wife Peggy Cornell loses out. In the end, Peggy does not lose Buddy to his "twenty million sweethearts" – his female fans.
Cast
Pat O'Brien as Russell Edward "Rush" Blake
Dick Powell as Buddy Clayton
Ginger Rogers as Peggy Cornell
Ted Fio Rito as himself
Allen Jenkins as Uncle Pete
Grant Mitchell as Chester A. Sharpe
Joseph Cawthorn as Mr. Herbert "Herbie" Brokman
Joan Wheeler as Marge, the Receptionist
Henry O'Neill as Lemuel Tappan
Johnny Arthur as Norma Hanson's Secretary
The Mills Brothers as themselves
The Radio Rogues as themselves
George Chandler as Johnny Klinger, radio columnist (uncredited)
Music
The film features the well-known song "I'll String Along with You" by Harry Warren and Al Dubin.
Reception
The film was considered a box-office disappointment for Warner Bros. According to studio records, it earned $821,000 domestically and $392,000 overseas.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Twenty Million Sweethearts” as 1934 film by Ray Enright. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1934 film by Ray Enright. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12129881. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1934 and 1949.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Twenty Million Sweethearts” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.