Chasing Rainbows

MGM, 1930
Starring Bessie Love, Charles King, Jack Benny, and Marie Dressler
Directed by Charles Reisner
Music by Milton Ager and others; Lyrics by Jack Yellen and others

The success of The Broadway Melody and On With the Show! ignited a tidal wave of musical films in late 1929 and early 1930 with backstage settings. Chasing Rainbows was one of MGM's direct follow-ups to Melody, with a lot of the same cast and and an even more dramatic story. Is it "Happy Days" for this road-show melodrama, or is this nothin' but the blues? Let's head to a small-town theater, where a touring version of the World War I-set musical Good-Bye Broadway is playing, and find out...

The Story: Eddie (Benny), the show's stage manager, is about ready to tear his hair out. The comedienne Bonnie (Dresser) and wardrobe mistress Polly (Polly Moran) are constantly fighting with one another. Terry Fay (King), half of a vaudeville dance pair, suddenly breaks down and marries the tempting Daphne Wayne (Nita Moran) one night, to the shock of his adoring partner Carlie Seymour (Love). She's already caught Daphne in the arms of romantic leading man Don Cordova (Eddie Phillips), but can't bring herself to tell Terry...until he finds out for himself...

The Song and Dance: Love and the supporting cast are the thing here. As she did in Melody, Love steps above and beyond everyone else with her expressive outbursts and smiling-through-the-tears performance. (Though I will admit that the sequence where she's laughing into near-hysteria when she finds out that Terry married Daphne was more scary than funny or sad.) Dressler and her frequent partner Moran have a great time with their sniping at each other, especially when they get drunk towards the end, and Jack Benny comes off much better with his quips here than he did hosting The Hollywood Revue of 1929. It's also nice that MGM tried to vary the setting a little and make this backstage at a second-rate touring show rather than at a glamorous big-city musical.

Favorite Number: "Happy Days are Here Again" can be heard over the credits as we see the train carrying the show chugging along. The first version of the ballad "Lucky Me, Lovable You" starts with Terry singing it to a slightly concerned Carlie, then them practicing it with the chorus. The second ramps up the melodrama when Terry performs it to a heartbroken Carlie after he's gotten married. Dressler claims that she's "Poor but Honest" to Benny when he tries for her.

Trivia: There was more to this film in 1930. Two long musical sequences in Technicolor, including the "Happy Days are Here Again" finale, were removed for a 1931 re-release, then lost in a vault fire at MGM in 1965. The Warner Archives DVD uses stills and text to explain what happened during these sequences.

What I Don't Like: I wish MGM transferred those sequences to black and white instead of cutting them! Among the losses were Dressler's second solo "My Dynamic Personality" and Love's big number with the chorus, "Everybody Tap." They might have helped to alleviate the fairly heavy and dull plot. Carlie is too good for second-rate road shows and for Terry using her as a doormat. His reaction to Daphne's treachery is so ridiculous, even Carlie calls him on it.

The Big Finale: Between the derivative plot and a big chunk of the movie being missing, it's hard to recommend this to anybody besides major fans of 20th century history or the early sound era.

Home Media: At the moment, it's only on DVD via the Warner Archives.

DVD