Wonderland Burlesque: Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: All The World Is A Stage, Part 10 of 12

Thursday, June 20, 2024

Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: All The World Is A Stage, Part 10 of 12

Wonderland Burlesque's
Let's All Go To The Movies:
All The World Is A Stage
Part 10 of 12

This is the tenth of a twelve-part series of posts dealing with show business, be it the stage or soundstage.

Yes, show people, their tawdry little lives - in the theatre or movie studio - in all their glory, projected up there on the big screen, bigger than life; and they wouldn't have it any other way. For you see, they live for the stuff; the imitation glamor, the insufferable players, the exhausting rehearsals, and the oh-so important reviews - but above all else - they do it for the applause.

So hit the lights, for today, all the world is, indeed, a stage!

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Broadway

(1929)

A naive young dancer in a Broadway show innocently gets involved in backstage bootlegging and murder.

Adapted from the 1926 play of the same name by George Abbott and Philip Dunning, this drama was directed by Paul Fejos and stars Glenn Tryon, Evelyn Brent, Paul Porcasi, Robert Ellis, Merna Kennedy and Thomas E. Jackson.

This was Universal's first talking picture with Technicolor sequences.

Director Fejos designed the camera crane specifically for use on this film, allowing unusually fluid movement and access to nearly every conceivable angle, lending an enlivened the visual style to this film and others that followed.

Versions of both the silent version and the talking version of Broadway still exist, but the surviving talking version is incomplete; the color sequence at the end survives in color and in sound but the sound survives separately from the picture. The surviving color footage is from the silent version and has been synchronized to the surviving disc audio.

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Made On Broadway

(1933)

Jeff is the supreme press agent who has his own private club where the rich and powerful meet and drink for free. It is free until they need him and he charges a bundle. Jeff has power, influence and a beautiful ex-wife. Things change when Jeff saves Minnie after she jumps into the river. He gives her the full beauty treatment and a new name, Mona Martine. He also falls hard for her, but his advances are not returned. However, Mona ends up needing Jeff, and all his expertise, when she shoots her lover Ramon in her room.

This American pre-Code comedy was directed by Harry Beaumont and stars Robert Montgomery, Sally Eilers, Madge Evans, Eugene Pallette, C. Henry Gordon and Jean Parker.

Robert Montgomery and Sally Eilers

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Gold Diggers Of 1933

(1933)

Chorus girls Polly, Carol, and Trixie are ecstatic when they learn that Broadway producer Barney Hopkins is putting on a new show. He promises all of the girls parts in the new show and even hires their neighbor Brad Roberts, an unknown composer, to write some of the music. There's only one problem: he doesn't have the money to bankroll it all. That problem is solved when Brad turns out to be quite rich but he insists that he not perform. When opening night comes, the juvenile lead can't go on forcing Brad to take the stage. He's recognized, of course, and his upper-crust family wants him to quit. When he refuses, they tell him to end his relationship with Polly or face having his income cut off. When Brad's snobbish brother Lawrence mistakes Carol for Polly, the girls decide to have a bit of fun and teach him a lesson.

This American pre-Code musical was directed by Mervyn LeRoy with songs by Harry Warren and Al Dubin. The film's numbers were staged and choreographed by Busby Berkeley. It stars Warren William, Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, Ruby Keeler, and Dick Powell, with featured appearances by Guy Kibbee, Ned Sparks and Ginger Rogers.

Gold Diggers of 1933 was originally to be called High Life, and George Brent was an early casting choice for the role played by Warren William. It was also not originally supposed to be a musical, but with the success of the film 42nd Street, that changed everything.

During rehearsals of We're in the Money, Ginger Rogers began goofing around and singing in pig Latin. Studio executive Darryl F. Zanuck overheard her, and insisted she do it for real in the movie.

At 5:55 PM PST on March 10, 1933, the Long Beach earthquake hit southern California, measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale. When the earthquake hit, Busby Berkeley was filming the Shadow Waltz dance sequence on a sound stage on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank. The earthquake caused a blackout on the sound stage and short-circuited some of the neon-tubed violins. Berkeley was almost thrown from a camera boom and dangled by one hand until he could pull himself back up. Since many of the chorus girls in the dance number were on a 30-foot-high scaffold, Berkeley yelled for them to sit down and wait until the stage hands and technicians could open the sound stage doors and let in some light.

Cut from the release print was Ginger Rogers' version of I've Got to Sing a Torch Song (music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Al Dubin), warbled atop a white piano in a nightclub, where she can still be spotted briefly in a long shot of the orchestra. Ginger's prerecording still exists.

The My Forgotten Man number that serves as this film's finale is a rare example of an escapist 1930s musical actually acknowledging the deprivations suffered by most Americans during the Great Depression. Inspired by the Bonus Marchers who came to Washington, D.C., by the thousands to protest the broken promises made to veterans of World War I, the number serves as a statement of solidarity with the former soldiers' cause. It is also an early example of Warner studio executive Darryl F. Zanuck's well known liberal political beliefs.

They originally planned to end the film with the production number Petting in the Park, but after seeing the completed numbers, the studio added the politically charged My Forgotten Man at the end, pointing out that while the cast is 'in the money', many others in Depression-era America were not.

This film was shot with two separate units. Mervyn LeRoy's unit, which handled the non-musical parts of the story, worked on a 30-day schedule from February 16th through March 23rd, 1933. Busby Berkeley oversaw the shooting of the musical numbers between March 6th and April 13th. Sol Polito was the cinematographer for both units, with Sidney Hickox filling in for any schedule conflicts.

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Arizona To Broadway

(1933)

In the small town of Larrup, Arizona, con artist Smiley is traveling with cohorts Kingfish, Morris, and Ambrose. He persuades Lynn Martin, a traveling demonstrator of pancake-making, to accompany him to a carnival where Kingfish sells a large number of bottles of Bambo, an elixir. When a woman denounces Kingfish as a fake, Smiley, identifying himself as a medical inspector, conducts Kingfish safely through the angry crowd and grabs Lynn's purse on the way out. Later, on a train, Smiley meets Lynn again, and after he returns the purse, she explains that she is traveling to find the trail of three swindlers who talked her brother, a bank officer, into investing $20,000 belonging to an estate he was handling, and then disappeared with the money. Two of the crooks, a couple named Sandburg, are in New Orleans, while the other, Hubert Wayne, is promoting a new show in New York. Smiley offers to help after privately convincing his cohorts that once they "cheat the cheaters," they will keep the money themselves. In a New Orleans hotel, Kingfish, masquerading as a philandering Texas oilman, attracts the interest of the Sandburgs, who plan to trap him in a compromising position and then blackmail him. After a fight, however, Kingfish, Smiley and the others get away with the Sandburgs' half of the swindled bank funds and proceed to New York where Lynn, posing as a chorus girl, has caught Wayne's romantic interest. When she introduces Wayne to Kingfish, who this time masquerades as a British jam manufacturer, Wayne schemes to swindle Kingfish by persuading him to invest $10,000 in the show to match his own $10,000, which gangster Tommy Monk fronts for the swindle. Wayne then plans to appropriate Kingfish's money through a switch of envelopes. Suspecting the ruse, Smiley trains Kingfish to do his own envelope switch. Kingfish's switch works, but after Smiley leaves with the $20,000, Wayne and Tommy discover the trick and hold Lynn and Kingfish hostage. Kingfish reveals, to Lynn's dismay, Smiley's intention to keep the money. Gangster Tommy Monk takes over the show to make back his money and coerces stage stars Ned Flynn, Jimmy Dante and female impersonator Ray Best to perform. On opening night, Smiley is captured at the theater, but he is able to involve Tommy's rival, Rags Rigby. By imitating Tommy's voice, Smiley dares Rigby to come to the show. Rigby and his men respond to the challenge and start a massive fight in the theater. Smiley rescues Lynn and later, on another train, after he learns that Lynn no longer trusts him, reveals that he has already sent the money to her brother. The other three cohorts then decide to go straight. After planting her purse in Smiley's pocket, Lynn playfully accuses him of robbing her and they embrace.

This American pre-Code crime/romance was directed by James Tinling and stars James Dunn and Joan Bennett. It was made by Fox Film Corporation from a screenplay written by William M. Conselman and Henry Johnson.

The screenplay was reworked ten years later into Jitterbugs, one of Laurel and Hardy's features made at 20th Century Fox during the 1940s.

James Dunn and Joan Bennett

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Charlie Chan On Broadway

(1937)

Billie Bronson hides a package in the trunk of Charlie Chan aboard a New York-bound transatlantic liner. Chan and his number one son, Lee, are met at the pier by Inspector Nelson and two rival reporters, Joan Wendall and Speed Patton. Billie, having left the country hurriedly a year ago when sought as a material witness in a political scandal, has returned to "blow the lid off the town." She follows the Chans to their hotel and attempts to regain her package from the trunk, only to be interrupted by Lee. She then goes to the Hottentot Club, where 'candid-camera night' is in full swing, with Lee hot on her trail. Already present are reporters Joan and Speed. Billie is mysteriously murdered and Charlie is summoned from a police banquet in his honor to solve the crime. Present in the room with the body are club manager Johnny Burke; club dancer and Burke's girl-friend Marie Collins and the two reporters. While seeking a motive for the murder, a second killing is discovered in Charlie's hotel room - and now Billie's hidden package is missing! They come to realize that what Billie was hiding must have been her diary. Charlie neatly puts together a few scattered clues and names.......as the killer.