Broadway Bad (1933)

Sadly Over-hyped

Powerful

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This very little known pre-code is quite a find. While it is a bit creaky it also pretty amazing. I stumbled upon it while searching for a decent print of another PD film ( The Hitler Gang 1944). As I am always on a quest to see Warner Brothers material (I estimate I have seen every WB "A" of the Classic Era and 70% of the "B"s still known to exist) I read the cast with growing excitement:Joan Blondell Ricardo Cortez Ginger Rogers Donald CrispHas to be Warners! So I got it and when the credits rolled I was astounded to learn that this 1933 cast of WB contract players was somehow loaned to (William) Fox Pictures! It is going to be another of my quests to find out how this came about. There was certainly no love lost between Jack Warner and William Fox (for that matter between anyone and Fox) Production values at Fox weren't on par with Warners and it shows in this picture. That would change just a few years later when Warners brilliant Production Chief Darryl F. Zanuck, having had JL try to pull a fast one on him defected and partnered with Fox which then became 20th Century-Fox). On to the picture in question. If you are a Joan Blondell fan you will love her here. Instead of a brassy sidekick she gets to be the romantic lead for probably the only time in her career (and to the earlier reviewer who reviles her, you Sir, are an ass). Ricardo Cortez, who had been born Jakob Krantz came to Hollywood in the '20's a Warners poor mans Valentino. He survived well into the sound era and was one of WB early leading men in talkies. He would later play hard and evil men (See Wonderbar 1934 if you can find it). Here he is perfectly cast as a wealthy wooer (and user) of beautiful women, but who turns out to have a heart of gold.Ginger Rogers is also, as usual, good as Joans sidekick just before her own breakout role in "42nd Street" Donald Crisp is seen only briefly in a forgettable role through no fault of his own. The rest of the cast is adequate and for some reason IMDb lists Victor Jory in the cast, which has to be a mistake.Summation? It's the best pre-code sizzler Warner Brothers never made. What I like to call a"Nugget".

"Broadway Bad" was the last film Ginger Rogers made before finding direction with her career with "42nd Street" (1933). Before then she had been drifting along, getting noticed but mostly in quickies. After she portrayed the role of "Anytime Annie" it seemed studios suddenly knew what to do with her. In this film she portrays "Flip" Daley, pal of Toni (short for Antoinette) Landers (Joan Blondell). Can it be possible there is someone in the world who feels such a strong dislike for Joan Blondell - I can't believe it!!! From the start of her career she was popular with both the critics and the public, usually playing happy go lucky chorus girls.Tony Landers is the new chorine on the block. She is a fresh kid from the country who has caught Craig Cutting's (Ricardo Cortez) eye. The rest of the chorus line is pretty jealous - including Aileen (Adrienne Ames) an old girlfriend of Craig's. When Tony stops off to see her high school sweetheart, Bob (Allen Vincent), her friend, Flip, gets worried when she stays out all night. A few months later Bob is giving her the air and she finds out she is pregnant. I wonder if "the marriage" may have been put in to appease the censors. It was very awkwardly explained I felt. Bob finally tracks her down to Cutting's penthouse and they have a showdown - when she, in turn, goes to Bob's house it is to find that he is going away on a cruise and will not listen to her. Bob divorces Tony and names Craig Cutting as co - respondent. Aileen turns up occasionally with witty and "cutting" remarks.Several years later Tony is a big star and is squirreling money away so she can retire with "the big fella" - her little son (adorable Ronnie Cosby). She renews acquaintance with Cutting who is disappointed at her now mercenary attitude. Bill, the low life, also turns up again (like a bad penny), he is desperate for money and sees a way to blackmail Tony. She keeps two residences - one on Park Avenue, the other in the name of Bixby, where her little boy lives. Bob is convinced he is the father - but is he???? She goes to Cutting and tells him the whole story but before she and the "big fella" can sail for Paris, Bob kidnaps the little boy. There is a trial to determine whether Tony is a fit mother and Donald Crisp is a surprise face as the prosecuting lawyer. The ending is a surprise but not to viewers of pre-code films.Ricardo Cortez is quite the nicest person in the film but the most interesting is the beautiful Adrienne Ames. Why wasn't she a bigger star?? Ginger Rogers, for all her billing, doesn't have very much of a part - is there anything more annoying than a film about chorus girls with no musical numbers!!!! Ginger was seen in a couple of lovely dancing outfits - but not on the stage, only in the dressing room!!! The song that Tony partly sings, "Forget the Past", is a blatant re-working of Kate Smith's big hit of the time - "Twenty Million People".

This movie's a very entertaining little Pre-Code picture.I'll ***SPOILER ALERT *** this, even though the previous poster didn't:The father was Bob. She just didn't want to lose custody of the baby to that lowlife (if upper-crust) creep, so she lied about it. After all, Bob had been trying to blackmail her prior to discovering the kid, so that makes her justified in doing whatever she must do to keep the child out of his clutches.And Blondell's terrific in this picture, as she was in just about every other movie she ever made. She had a down-to-earth, likable quality that always served her characters.

I saw 'Broadway Bad' in May of this year, at the Cinevent festival in Columbus, Ohio. If I hadn't been attending the festival anyway, I would never have bothered to see this movie, as it stars an actress whom I loathe: Joan Blondell. Always cheap, vulgar, squawk-voiced and unattractive, Blondell is in her usual mode here. She manages to look a bit different this time round, but only because this movie was made at Fox (Blondell's usual studio was Warners) ... so the lighting, costumes, hairstyles and general ambiance are a change of pace for her. The storyline - concerned with morals, reputations and sexual hypocrisy - is something more typical of Warners than of Fox.Blondell plays a chorus girl named Tony. (Is that short for Anthony?) In the 1930s, chorus girls were generally perceived to be of low virtue (and some of them certainly did fit that description), but we're given to understand that Tony is a good girl for all her brassy behaviour. She gets a proposition from playboy Craig, who is wealthy in his own right, but she turns him down to marry Bob, who's even wealthier but only because he's the scion of a prominent family.Apparently, Tony is genuinely in love with Bob (rather than gold-digging his folks' money), yet she remains friendly with Craig. When Bob catches Tony with Craig once too often, he divorces her. In order to obtain the divorce, Bob's father's lawyers ruin Tony's reputation.As she's now been branded as a bad girl, Tony decides to cash in on it. She straight away becomes a Broadway star by trading in on the public perception that she's a slut. (Oh, so that's how it works!)I forgot to tell you about the baby ... I mean, the scriptwriters forgot to tell you about the baby. All through this argle-bargle, Tony has secretly had a baby. Apparently she was with some other man before Craig and Bob. We never do find out who this man was, nor the precise nature of Tony's relationship with him - were they married? is he dead? - nor anything that would enable us to decide how much of our sympathy Tony deserves.Bob's rich parents find out about the baby, and they assume that Bob is the father. They sue Tony to acquire custody of the child. The courtroom scenes degenerate into soap opera. Expect some big revelations that you really won't care about.Ginger Rogers is quite good as Tony's friend, a chorus girl named Flip Daily. (She must be an acrobat.) I would rather have seen this movie with Ginger Rogers in the lead, as she was vastly more talented than Blondell and certainly easier on the eyes and the eardrums than Blondell ever was. I'll rate 'Broadway Bad' 4 out of 10, mostly for its proficient photography and efficient direction by the underrated Sidney Lanfield. There are some good supporting performances. Rogers is excellent, as is Ricardo Cortez as the semi-caddish Craig. (Over the course of his career, Cortez made an interesting and graceful transition from shiekish leading man to cynical hero to amoral cad to outright villain: at this point, he was in his early cad phase.) Joan Blondell, as usual, stinks. The lighting on the Fox sound stages doesn't conceal Blondell's facial moles as well as the lighting at Warners did.