[7] With unpaid actors and staff, the stage show Phantom Sweetheart seems doomed.

To complicate matters, the box-office revenue has been stolen and the leading lady refuses to appear.

Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times wrote that the film was "to be felicitated on the beauty of its pastel shades, which were obtained by the Technicolor process, but little praise can be accorded its story or to its raucous voices....It would have been better if this film had no story, and no sound, for it is like a clumsy person arrayed in Fifth Avenue finery.

"[10] The New York Herald Tribune declared it "the best thing the films have done in the way of transferring Broadway music shows to the screen and, even if the story is bad and the entire picture considerably in need of cutting it is an admirable and frequently handsome bit of cinema exploring.

"[11] John Mosher of The New Yorker wrote that the film was "completely undistinguished for wit, charm, or novelty, except that it is done in color.

(in black and white) was made available on manufactured-on-demand DVD by the Warner Archive Collection.