Broadway Thru a Keyhole

An interesting musical curio featuring some legendary names like Texas Guinan and the late Russ Columbo. Columbo shows promise as a cowardly crooner but he's only in the last half of the film. The stars are Paul Kelly and the lovely Constance Cummings who showed great unfulfilled promise as a musical comedy star. The Film is infamous as the reason for Al Jolson punching co-writer Walter Winchell. Jolson thought the story was too closely based on the real life adventures of his wife Ruby Keeler and her gangster pals.

The only reason to see "Broadway Thru A Keyhole", is because for perhaps the one and only time you can see Russ Columbo, Texas Guinan and Blossom Seeley in the same movie. They were all famous in their own right for other things than motion pictures, but here they are. All downhill after that, as the story is a pedestrian love triangle between Paul Kelly and Columbo, and with Constance Cummings as the hypotenuse. It was supposedly fashioned after the lives of Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler and a gangster, but that doesn't make it a better or a more interesting story.

The music was written by the team of Bert Gordon/Harry Revel but the songs are not good ones and none became a standard. This was the biggest letdown when watching the movie, even more so than the uninspired screenplay. I guess the only thing to recommend it is the novelty of the appearance of the three stars in the same picture. The title is merely a tantalizing come-on for a small return.

Manhattan mobster Frank Rocci (Paul Kelly) helps out a childhood friend by getting her sister Joan Whelan (Constance Cummings) a job as a chorine in Tex Kaley's (Texas Guinan) nightclub and quickly falls in love with her. He buys the place so's he can showcase Joan in a Max Mefoofski (Gregory Ratoff) revue which makes her a star and out of gratitude, she agrees to marry him. Before the wedding can take place, however, rival racketeer Tim Crowley (C. Henry Gordon) makes an attempt on Rocci's life so he shuffles Joan off to Miami with her motherly girlfriend Sybil Smith (Blossom Seely) and both gals promptly fall in love: Joan with crooner Clark Brian (radio heartthrob Russ Columbo) and Sybil with his busom buddy, the none-too-bright Peanuts Dinwiddie (Hobart Cavanaugh). Rocci gets wind of it and orders Joan back to New York and Clark, hot on her heels, humbly asks Rocci for Joan's hand. The tough-guy touchingly gives his consent but when Crowley's gang kidnaps the bride on her wedding day, bloodshed, sacrifice, and hope lie ahead...

Broadway reporter-at-large Walter Winchell's saga of song, dance, danger, and romance so closely resembled the real life love triangle between entertainer Al Jolson, hoofer Ruby Keeler, and racketeer Johnny "Irish" Costello that Jolson punched Winchell out when he saw him at a Hollywood Legion prize fight, causing the columnist to sue for $500,000. The Fox film (a Darryl Zanuck Production) opens with a POV peek thru a keyhole that becomes a montage of the Great White Way (called "The Stem" at the time) where the underworld really can meet the elite. There's plenty of musical numbers on display and a couple of them are fairly inventive including tuxedo-clad songstress Frances Williams' rousing rendition of "Doin' The Uptown Lowdown" and a Busby Berkeley-style number with hoola hoops and crotch shots. There's also a romantic duet by handsome Russ Columbo and pretty little Constance Cummings, who's later seen in a transparent dress. Since it's Pre-Code, Connie's in step-ins a lot, too, and un-PC moments include a typical-for-the-time gay stereotype and derogatory slang for Jews. There's quite a bit of double intendre gender-bending going on as well- bits include Seely, dressed in a man's suit and fedora, puffs on a cigar and kisses her gangster boyfriend (after which the guy wipes his mouth) and handsome milquetoast Russ Columbo (he nearly swoons over a cut to his finger) has a too close relationship with his pal Dinwiddie, predicting the one shared by John Hodiak & Wendell Cory in DESERT FURY over a decade later.

As this film shows, silent leading man Lowell Sherman quickly became a capable director at the advent of talkies and he remained so until his untimely death in December, 1934. The British-born Constance Cummings was a popular leading lady for a couple of years in the early '30s and in addition to a top-notch supporting cast, the Broadway luminaries on hand included notorious "Queen Of The Speakeasies" Texas Guinan, the Sophie Tucker-ish Blossom Seely, singer/dancer Frances Williams, Eddie Foy, Jr., Abe Lyman & His Orchestra, and Winchell himself. Young Lucille Ball has a bit as a Miami Beach golddigger as does Ann Sothern & Susan Fleming (soon-to-be Mrs. Harpo Marx) as chorines. Lots of fun!

In his all too short career, this turned out to be the first of only two feature films that starred crooner Russ Columbo. Until his accidental death in 1934, Columbo was the main singing rival of Bing Crosby. But where as Crosby was singing far more than ballads even that early in his career, Columbo's small output of recordings were strictly syrupy love songs which he certainly did very well.

The plot of Broadway Through a Keyhole is nothing original, your typical backstage show business story so popular in the 1930s. But it's good to see talents like Eddie Foy, Jr., Constance Cummings, Blossom Seeley and Texas Guinan doing their thing. Paul Kelly is his usual competent self as the gangster rival of Russ's for Constance Cummings. But if you can see the film, the main reason to see it and why it ought to be preserved is as a showcase for Russ Columbo.

Columbo's commercial records, done mostly for RCA Victor, are love songs. He has two numbers in Broadway Through a Keyhole, You're My Past, Present, and Future which is a nice Harry Revel-Mack Gordon ballad which he never commercially recorded. He also sings a duet with Constance Cummings titled I Love You Pizzicato which displays a nice comic touch.

Russ Columbo only recorded about 30 sides commercially from 1930 to 1932. A contractual dispute kept him out of the recording studio until August 31, 1934 where he recorded four sides under a new contract for Brunswick records. On September 2, 1934 he was shot to death in a freak accident involving an antique cap and ball dueling pistol.

Columbo was no great actor in this film, but that's not to say that he might not have become one as Crosby did or Crosby's main rival Frank Sinatra. The Sinatra you see in Higher and Higher, his first feature film part, was no great actor either, not like he later became.

See the film if you can and speculate for yourself about the unfinished talent that was Russ Columbo.

"Broadway Through a Keyhole" is an infrequently rewarding B musical, made for Fox before it became known as 20th Century Fox. I never heard of it before but since it is a Fox musical it aroused my interest and I had to see it.

It is directed by Lowell Sherman ("Morning Glory", "She Done Him Wrong") and written by the famous radio announcer and gossip columnist Walter Winchell.

Constance Cummings is the center of the picture as Joan Whelan, the gifted dancer at Texas Guinan's famous Broadway night club. Ms. Cummings displays a certain depth and innocence to her character and really makes fall in love with her. Joan is being promoted by the pompous gangster Frank Rocci in order to woo her, but things get really interesting when Joan becomes infatuated with one of the nightclub's band leader Clark (Russ Columbo).

Not a classic but "Broadway" is very enjoyable for its cast and musical numbers. Look for a young Ann Southern as one of the burlesque dancers.