Broadway Melody of 1936 **** (1935, Jack Benny, Eleanor Powell, Robert Taylor, June Knight, Sid Silvers, Buddy Ebsen, Vilma Ebsen, Una Merkel, Frances Langford) – Classic Movie Review 3625

It took MGM quite a while to come up with a sequel to their 1929 Best Picture Oscar-winning  box-office smash, The Broadway Melody, but here finally, six years later in 1935, it is. However, they certainly made sure that the second Broadway Melody movie is packed with sparkle, vitality and glamour. And it was another Oscar winner, too.

Robert Taylor plays Bob Gordon, a young Broadway producer who is having trouble with a couple of waspish gossip columnists (Jack Benny and Sid Silvers). Gordon is staging a new Broadway show and gets an offer of money by young widow Lillian Brent (June Knight) provided she can dance in it. Newspaperman Bert Keeler writes about this mischievously in his column. Dazzling tap dancer Irene Forster (Eleanor Powell) also tries for the show’s leading role…

The bright songs, again as in 1929 with music and lyrics by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed, include ‘Broadway Rhythm’, ‘I’ve Got a Feelin’ You’re Foolin’ and ‘You Are My Lucky Star’. And again they are great, but perhaps it is Benny’s comic antics and Eleanor Powell’s awesome toe-tapping dance routines that are the movie’s real show-stoppers. Dance director Dave Gould won an Oscar for the smashing ‘I’ve Got a Feelin’ You’re Foolin’ number, while the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and original story writer Moss Hart was Oscar nominated too.

Also in the cast are Una Merkel, Vilma Ebsen and Buddy Ebsen (in their film debut), Nick Long Jnr, Robert Wildhack, Paul Harvey, and Frances Langford and Harry Stockwell (as themselves).

The film is directed by Roy Del Ruth and written by Harry W Conn, Moss Hart, Jack McGowan and Sid Silvers.

Eleanor Powell with Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed.

It is Powell’s first leading role and first film for MGM. She appeared in the next two Broadway Melody movies, Broadway Melody of 1938 and Broadway Melody of 1940. Her singing is dubbed by Marjorie Lane but she recorded ‘You Are My Lucky Star’ with Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra.

Ann Miller claimed it rescued MGM from bankruptcy.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3625
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