Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935)

Warner Bros had such a string of hits with the Gold Diggers movies they couldn’t get them out the door fast enough! MGM fired back with this reunion of hit-makers Arthur Freed & Nacio Herb Brown who had won the Oscar in 1929 with Broadway Melody, the world’s first cinema musical. The Broadway Melody sequels steal shamelessly from Busby Berkeley’s genius, combining stage tricks and camera magic with eyepopping choreography and hummable tunes, but they differ in three important ways: you actually LIKE the characters in the MGM movies, the Gold Diggers musicals star Dick Powell — Melody features Eleanor Powell, and the Melodies take the even numbered years (’36, ‘38, 40) while the Gold Diggers take the odd (33, 35, 37).

Jack Benny writes a hardcore gossip column for the daily rag. Too bad for a young Broadway producer (played by dreamy Robert Taylor) and his careful wooing of a wealthy widow and former gold digger (June Knight) They just happen to be seen together on a rooftop nightclub across the street (in an athletic dance number with pop-up furniture I Think You’re Foolin’). Benny surmises she’s invested in his next show to land a starring role and prints it in his column. In return Taylor socks Benny in the jaw which starts an unlikely revenge hoax where Benny is going to invent a big French star LaBelle Arlette purely through publicity then convince Taylor that she must star in his show!

Enter highschool sweetheart Eleanor Powell who wants to rekindle her romance with Taylor, or at least get a part in his show. Next to being his girlfriend, Powell wants nothing less than a starring role on Broadway which she imagines in an ethereal dream ballet with mirrored tutus, glittery baubled willow trees, and a frozen neon fountain. Taylor refuses to let a nice girl get involved in showbiz and sends her packing back to Albany. But with the help of Taylor’s spunky secretary, Powell will assume the identity of Arlette as an outrageous diva who tap dances in a cape and berates hapless musicians who can’t keep up with her lightning feet.

Typical of MGM there are no bad guys. Everyone is displayed to their talents and love conquers all. Rather than wait for opening night to unmask Arlette, Powell crashes a publicity dinner in a sequined top hat and tails singing Broadway Rhythm. The finale is almost post, but so cheerful and congratulating it’s as if an epilogue has replaced the last few pages of the script. In the Gold Diggers films the closing numbers are dark, often abstract — taking place in a Broadway spacewarp black hole of infinite size, and they weave a moral that was probably lacking in the rest of the film. Here the effect is similar, we are removed from the play and our girl-next-door ingenue has become the wizened narrator.

However, unlike Gold Diggers of 1935 where the finale Lullaby of Broadway collapses in nihilistic self-destruction, Broadway Rhythm explodes in a fireworks display of sequins, marching bands, tap solos in the spotlight, and Irene Powell’s rows upon rows of dazzlingly white teeth. No wonder Gene Kelly remade this moment as a movie-within-the-movie homage for Singing in The Rain. It stands apart from the rest of the film, as an un-ironic celebration of sparkle and limelight.