The Belle of Broadway

I watched "The Belle of Broadway" (1926) with Betty Compson, Herbert Rawlinson, Edith Yorke, Armand Kaliz, Tom Ricketts, and others. Well, talk about stretching credulity to the breaking point - and utterly enjoying it! This is it! First of all, let me congratulate the release of this particular print. It's not only pristine, but it will fool some who may think this is a modern film simply being shot as a silent. It's so clean as to be the single finest example of a restored film I've ever seen. If it's not restored, then the print from which it was taken is as if it were new! This one begins in Paris in 1896. Madame Adele, long the Belle of Broadway, is now the star of Paris, and is doing her most famous play, "Madame Du Barry". It's a smash hit. But - there's the Count Raoul de Palma in the audience. He throws her a bouquet of flowers - with a bracelet in it - a very expensive bracelet... Instead of making it all the way to Madame on stage at the end of the show, the flowers are interrupted in the orchestra pit by her jealous husband who reaches and catches them. (He sits in the orchestra pit every night, it would seem, simply to halt such proceedings...) The husband suspects something. He goes to her room when he gets home and takes their son. Fast forward thirty years. Son shows up in Paris. It's raining. Friend from NY (in military uniform) comes over and sits down at a bistro table outside with son. All of a sudden a girl nearly stumbles in the rain and gets her shoe caught in the mud. Son and girl meet. He walks her home. She won't give her name. He tells her his, though. She explains to Madame Adele, now long past her prime and too old to get any parts on stage, but living in the same place as the girl, she met a man who brought her home. Of course, Madame Adele hasn't seen her son since he was taken...

Now comes the stretch...

Madame Adele brings out her old costume from "Du Barry". Of course it fits the girl like a glove. Indeed, the girl (Betty Compson) looks EXACTLY like Madame Adele did all those years ago!! Long story short: Betty Compson revives the play "Du Barry" and is a success - but, wait: there's lots more... Compson is claiming she's Adele with lots and lots of plastic surgery!! NOW, the movie begins...

WOW! It's a fun romp. Absolute nonsense, and I couldn't stop watching. Great fun, with fine actors and actresses showing us why they were stars. They still are! By the way, I'll always laugh whenever I see Tom Ricketts. He plays Compson's manager in this one. But he played the old, old, old butler in "After the Thin Man", and he was hilarious. Here he's half-way serious, and he seems like a different person. Fine old character actor.

This was released a couple of weeks ago, and it's available through Amazon. If you want to see the silent age come alive again, here you go!

The youth culture of the postwar flapper era overlapped during the early 1920s with the possibility raised of artificial rejuvenation after Serge Voronoff transplanted a monkey gland into a human subject on 12 June 1920. Gertrude Atherton's controversial novel 'Black Oxen' (1923) about a woman revitalized by hormone treatments based on Atherton's own experience was filmed the same year that it was published; and 'The Belle of Broadway' rode on the wave of that interest in the possibilities of eternal youth with a nod towards two other means of rejuvenation: plastic surgery and - in a storyline about showbiz that anticipates 'Evergreen' (1934) and 'Fedora' (1978) - impersonation.

This unaffectedly charming trifle benefits from excellent performances from both Betty Compson as the youthful 1890s stage star Madame Adele and her 1920s doppelgänger Marie Duval, and Edith Yorke as Adele at sixty; when Adele ages on screen you still feel as if you're watching the same woman.

One of a number of implications that at the time was presented as whimsy but now seems rather titillating is that Compson is supposedly playing a woman in her 60s whose youthful carapace renders her capable of seeking the company of men considerably more youthful than the toothless collection of contemporary admirers who are now plainly far too old for her. The Oedipal implications of the immediate rapport between Adele and her long-lost son Paul (played by Herbert Rawlinson) are headed off by the makeup and costume departments who make Ms Yorke look far older than she really would thirty years later by dressing her like Whistler's Mother. If the older Adele had resembled some of the sexy sexagenarian women who are now such a visible feature of the 2010s, the relationship that developed between them might have been closer than even pre-Code Hollywood could have countenanced.

Once upon a time, Betty Compson was the toast of the theater, her Dubarry filling the theater and attracting all the rakes. Her husband took their son and fled. Decades have passed since then, and the booking agents are no longer interested in who she has become in the meantime, Edith Yorke.

When her son, Herbert Rawlinson comes to Paris, he knows nothing of his mother. However, he is much taken with the beautiful young Betty Compson, who lives in the same cheap theatrical boarding house as Miss Yorke. When Betty tries on the dress for the role of Dubarry, it fits her perfectly -- surprise! -- and she is indistinguishable from Miss Compson. So they hatch a plan: they will present Miss Compson as the same woman, only having undergone massive plastic surgery. The producers are fooled, the public is fooled, and the stage door Johnnies, now old and wearing immense mustaches, pay court to her.

In other words, it's the usual nonsensical plot and how do the youngsters get together, when people think Rawlison is dating his own mother? Well, Harry O. Hoyt directs ably, Miss Compson is beautiful, the guys playing old duffers, and Armand Kaliz, as the rake who wanted Miss Compson in their youths wants her again, for that necessary conflict. For a one-hour second feature, it moves at a good clip, and there is a lovely shot early on, when Rawlinson and Miss Compson meet in a misty, rainy Paris.

This is something you rarely get to see - a silent film in terrific shape by perpetual poverty row Columbia. Betty Compson plays Adele, a great star of the Paris theatre whose specialty is playing Madame du Barry. Men flock to her performance every night, not just because of her acting, but because they adore her, always sending her presents. Her husband gets jealous, takes their son Paul, and runs away with him, and she never hears from them again or knows where they went.

The decades pass, and a sixty year old Adele (Edith Yorke) is tramping through the theatrical booking offices trying to get a job, but no go. The manager of one of the houses says that if she looked like she did when she was younger he would make her famous again as Du Barry. Back at the theatrical boarding house where she lives, Adele befriends a young woman (Compson in a dual role as Marie). Marie has youth and talent but no reputation. Adele has talent and reputation but no youth. Maybe they can help each other out? So Marie agrees to claim she is the rejuvenated (through plastic surgery) Adele, and instantly becomes a star, not only to help herself but to get money for the now penniless Adele to live on.

The men who flocked to Adele before have not lost their ardor, in spite of their now old geezer status. But the years have been kind to Adele's most aggressive suitor, Count Raoul de Parma. And he is suspicious of this new improved Adele.

Further complications? Adele's actual son has returned to Paris and finds Marie/Adele charming. Remember her son has no idea of who his mother is and she has no idea of who he is. Odd that Adele and one of her old friends go to great lengths to teach Marie Adele's acting style, but don't bother to tell her the details of Adele's past so she will be ready for questions from the people who knew her back in the day. Oedipal complications ensue.

This film had a very good score added to it, and I don't know if the tinting was original or not, but it added a very nice touch to the viewing experience. Every frame in the Sony restoration is clear, but a frame will skip here and there. I'd recommend this one, since, although Betty Compson was the hardest working film actress in the transitional year of 1929, there aren't many of her silent films that survive.

By the way this film has nothing to do with Broadway. The entire story plays out in Paris and it is absolutely charming.

If you wonder why anybody would believe that a sixty year old woman could basically be made young again, the idea of rejuvenation was quite the rage during the 1920s, including the discredited "goat gland" treatments that allegedly could restore youthful energy. But it's mainly just a plot device to send the viewer into a world of whimsy.