Broadway Melody of 1936 was the first of a series of Broadway Melody films that MGM made to match Busby Berkeley’s successful backstage Broadway series, which by 1936 had already delivered five films and had a sixth (Gold Diggers of 1937) in production. Despite their titles, the Broadway Melodies of ’36, ’38 and ’40 were only remotely related to the original Broadway Melody of 1929, a film that had achieved legendary status as the model for future talkie musicals. (The bona fide remake of the film, Two Girls on Broadway, was made in 1940, also by MGM, with Lana Turner in the lead, and George Murphy and Joan Blondell supporting.) They all shared a couple of core motifs, the struggle to stage a new musical variety show and backstage competitions between song-and-dance artists — punctuated by silly vaudeville routines.
By 1935 those motifs looked like they had been worn to a nubbin but they still had surprising staying power. MGM may have intended its first BROADWAY MELODY foray as a test. They assigned its direction to Roy Del Ruth, one of the most reliable (and best paid) of their contract directors, and the camera to their cinematographer-dean, Charles Rosher, one of the originators of MGM’s visually luxurious house style. On the other hand, they gave top billing to performers who were still unproven — Robert Taylor, Jack Benny, and Eleanor Powell. Broadway Melody of 1936 was the breakout film for all three.
Moss Hart, one of Broadway’s leading comic playwrights, was paid to provide the story — a story so lame, it feels like he concocted it on the train from New York to L.A. Hart’s biographer, Jared Brown, calls it “so inane it almost defies description.” (For all that, it was nominated for an Oscar in 1936.) Benny plays Bert Keeler, a gelatinous radio gossip columnist whose editor tasks him to dig up scandal instead of delivering celebrity birth notices. So Keeler confects a story that alleges a successful Broadway producer, Bob Gordon (Taylor), is being funded by a glamorous penthouse socialite, Lillian Brent (June Knight) — with insinuations of an amorous exchange. It’s not clear why this is such a scandalous arrangement, since it’s basically accurate (though the amorous part is one-way on Lillian Brent’s part). Still, Gordon takes offense and keeps punching Keeler in the mug. Meanwhile, Gordon, who is unsure whom to cast as his lead, is visited by his high-school sweetheart, Irene Foster (Powell), who coincidentally wants to make a career on the stage. It all leads to slow developing love, show-threatening jealousy from Lillian, Irene demonstrating her hoofer chops, and a new, now entirely fabricated rumor by Keeler: to wit, a famous French musical-hall actress, Arlette LaBelle (invented by Keeler and named after a cigar), is currently in the city and available. Complications ensue. The homespun Irene auditions for the starring role impersonating the nonexistent LaBelle, gets the part, gets her man, and dances lights-out in the show’s Ziegfeld-like finale. The end.
The plot is, of course, just filler — bloated, tedious filler. The point of it all is the music and dance, but despite some not uninteresting tunes by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed (who also wrote the tunes for the original Broadway Melody), their production is just as bloated and vacuous. Compare any opening Busby Berkeley routine with the supposedly spontaneous party dancing in Lillian’s penthouse. It was choreographed and directed by Dave Gould, whose standing was second only to Berkeley’s in Hollywood (and whose opening number in Folies Bergeres de Paris is one of my favorites). It won the short-lived “Dance Direction” Oscar in 1936, beating out Berkeley’s monumental “Lullaby of Broadway” and Astaire’s “Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails,” but the jerrybuilt flashdance strikes me as a tasteless bunch of cinematic and athletic tricks, more a track and field exhibition than a dance. I can’t find much commentary about it. I suspect that Gould was trying to build around Eleanor Powell’s toolkit, which had as much kitschified ballet and majorette prancing in it as the old Ziegfeld routines. (Powell designed her own dances.)
In 1936, screen dancers still had to prove their bona fides with tap dancing. MGM’s studio heads found the young Powell’s tap so impressive that she was bumped up from a small supporting role to top billing. We come to her via a sweet, goofy little routine by Buddy Ebsen (in his first screen role) and his sister Vera (in her first and last screen role) on the rooftop of Irene’s boarding house.
Irene is introduced as a pretty, modest, unglamorous girlfriend from Albany but when she joins Ted (Buddy Ebsen) and Sally (Vera Ebsen) she dances like a virtuoso ham on a Radio City stage.
Later, as Irene daydreams that she’s a star dancing to “You Are My Lucky Star,” Powell shows off her ballet training in one of the great displays of Hollywood kitsch, oh so “tasteful” and without a trace of “rhythm.” Powell was evidently going to bridge the gap between high-ballet and low-tap by doing a routine of each.
Powell wasn’t much of an actor but she has a couple of fine scenes impersonating the fictional LaBelle. This is my favorite Powell routine, and also my favorite of her scenes. Instead of the empty virtuosity of her usual showoff displays, her steps and attitudes are part of a very funny character. Like so many screwball heroines, Irene can miraculously transform herself from an innocent into something wild.
It’s just an interlude, though. When we get to the final showstopper, the full kitschfest is back on display. It begins with Frances Langford (who appears only to sing at the beginning and end of the film) singing “Broadway Rhythm,” a tune that has been covered and repurposed many times (most notably by Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain).
The capper is Powell’s signature hyper-energetic drum-major ballet-tap, exhibiting the same characterless big steps, attitudes, twirls, bends, and fixed smile that she will repeat for most of her career. Where is LaBelle?
On a side note, Del Ruth and Rosher use a lot of close-ups in the film, more than is usual for a comedy like this, I think. Since the characters are very flat and many of the actors are inexpressive — especially Taylor, Powell, and Benny — I wonder whether the use of so many close ups was a technique to draw attention away from their inflexibility. (It may sound weird to call Powell inflexible but I think it’s true. Compared to Astaire and Rogers, and even George Murphy, one of her frequent partners, her dancing seems pre-programmed with little regard for character changes.)
Even the clowns get close ups.
Bonus: There have been lots of versions of “Broadway Rhythm” over the years. I think the best is Judy Garland’s.
