Starring Alice White, Charles Delaney, Fred Kohler, and Marion Byron
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Music and Lyrics by various
This was rising flapper ingénue Alice White's first sound film with dialogue, and it would be her biggest hit. Musicals and gangster and crime films were among the genres most enhanced by the arrival of sound pictures. The rhythms of tap dancers, wise guys, machine guns, and showdowns in the streets needed the sound to really enhance them. Warner Bros, who would later become known for their gangster films, put this one out after they bought White's home studio First National outright in 1929. How does this tale of a chorus girl who is courted by a gangster look today? Let's begin at a theatrical boarding house where our trio of "Broadway musketeers" are sleeping in and find out...
The Story: Florine Chanler (Byron), Delight "Dee" Foster (White), and Navarre King (Sally Eilers) are the "Broadway Musketeers," three chorus girls who don't need a sugar daddy to make their way in the world. Delight, however, has a fiancée, Billy Buvanny (Delaney), the stage manager of their current show. Delight attracts the attention of bootlegger and gambler Perc Gessant (Kohler), who offers her and her buddies a job at his high-class nightclub. Delight thinks Billy is fooling around with spoiled star Blossom Royal (Jocelyn Lee) and takes Perc up on the offer.
Perc is so crazy about Delight, he proposes to her. She, however, is still in love with Billy, but doesn't know how to turn Perc down. Even as they prepare for their wedding, he's fleecing a local gang who tried to use Delight to take him down. Delight has to figure out what she really wants...before the gang does it for her...
The Song and Dance: This nightclub melodrama gives us a hint of the gritty Warners Pre-Code gangster films to come. Kohler comes off best as the French Canadian crime boss who has enough charm to attract Delight and can still be menacing enough to take on the New York mobs. In fact, the gangster side of things is actually pretty interesting, frankly more than the musical doings. You genuinely want to see if the Big Apple card sharks can take this guy for a ride...and how Perc will get them back. The fact that Perc is such a decent guy makes it easier to understand why Delight can't decide between him and Billy, and why her girlfriends and landlady actually prefer Perc.
Favorite Number: "Jig Jig Jigaloo" is about as typical of a late 20's chorus routine as you can get, with White and the girls in scanty "native" costumes and neck-breaking feathered headdresses waving around stereotypical African masks and doing high kicks. The song is terrible, but the routine is definitely something else. "Wishing and Waiting for Love" is the opposite, a decent ballad set to a dull and clumsy girls and singer routine at the nightclub. "Broadway Baby Dolls" in the finale is somewhere in between - not quite so wild as "Jigaloo," but at least a little more interesting than "Wishing."
Trivia: A silent version came out a month after the sound movie, but it's now lost.
What I Don't Like: White does do a little better here than in Show Girl In Hollywood (and she certainly seems a little smarter), but she can still be too pouty and a bit bratty at times. Delaney's acting is even worse; frankly, he can be such a jerk, you understand why Delight would go for Perc. Byron and Eilers are supposed to be her best buddies for life, but they don't really have much to do besides squeal over her love life. Tom Dugan as Billy's best buddy Scotty overdoes his constant stuttering, to the point where it gets annoying after a while.
The Big Finale: The unique gangster story makes this a little better than Show Girl In Hollywood, but I still mainly recommend it for fans of White or the early talkie era.
Home Media: DVD only from the Warner Archives.
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