BROADWAY (1929)

In an opening montage of Manhattan's bustling streets, we see a gigantic, shiny-skinned and somewhat demonic looking man in a loincloth striding through Times Square, spilling champagne onto the street below. After more montage shots that slide right and left across the screen, we settle on the Paradise Club, a huge nightclub with a large Art Deco stage area that thrusts out among the patrons' tables. We meet the characters who are present tonight and whose storylines will intertwine. Roy is the club's lead singer and dancer who is backed by a bevy of chorus girls. One of them is Billie, whom Roy is sweet on and is grooming for an act they can take on the road (even though the act is just he and Billie, he tells her, "I can see our names in lights right now—Roy Lane and Company!"). But Billie has been hanging around with Steve, a bootlegger who works with the club's owner to keep the booze flowing. Steve is rich and slick, though his preferred way of addressing Billie is to say, "I love ya, little fella!" This, of course, causes the jealous Roy no end of irritation, to the point where he sends Billie a fake telegram, saying that her mother is sick, to stop her from going to a late night gold-diggers' party with Steve. Another chorus girl, the glum Pearl, has been seeing gangster Scar Edwards, who shows up to confront Steve for muscling in on his territory north of 125th Street. Steve solves the problem by shooting Scar in the back and dumping his body in a truck outside. As the production numbers on stage continue, cop Dan McCorn shows up and announces backstage that Scar's body was found not far from the club. Pearl faints, Steve plays dumb, and Dan hangs around, hoping Pearl will give him a lead in the killing. All these situations get resolved the next night with another murder (that the cop lets happen unpunished), a confession of love, and more stage numbers.

This early talkie musical based on a hit Broadway non-musical is more interesting than compelling. The stage set is fabulous, and the frequent swooping crane shots are impressive. The numbers themselves involve elaborate costumes, but the performances are static and repetitive; curtains open, Roy leads rows of chorus girls onto the stage, they perform perfunctorily and are presented in long shots that obscure the dancing (except for one close-up of Roy's feet as he tap dances), and then they all dance backwards offstage. It's difficult to care about the central couple, Roy (Glenn Tryon) and Billie (Merna Kennedy, both pictured at right). Tryon tries too hard, mostly mugging instead of building a character, and Kennedy comes off unsympathetically. Frankly, the predictable outcome of their story didn't much interest me. Evelyn Brent (Pearl, above left) and Robert Ellis (Steve) are much better. Contemporary critics praised the actor Thomas Jackson, Dan the cop, who played the part on stage a few years earlier, but I find his delivery artificial and portentous. The director, Paul Fejos, known for the somewhat experimental LONESOME, which I'll get around to later this month, saves his flashy moves for the opening montages and the crane shots of the club interior. I chuckled at a few lines of dialogue. Tryon whips the girls up as they head to the stage by saying, "Cut 'em deep and let 'em bleed!" He also notes his sophistication by claiming, "I'm no prude—I'm for white wines and beer." A chorus girl dismisses the yammering Tryon by saying, "Untie your shoe—your tongue's out!" There is some cute comic relief provided by an older chorus girl (she looks at least 50) and her drunk sugar daddy who stumbles around saying, "I think I'm married." The last number was shot in Technicolor, but in the current restored print, the only color visible is red. An important early talkie relic, for film buffs only. [DVD]