Moonlight and Pretzels

This ghastly Universal musical released in August 1933 is their answer to Warner's Busby Berkeley blockbusters. Consider this release pattern; from WB: Jan '33 42nd St; May 33 Gold Diggers '33; in August comes this: Universal's copy: MOONLIGHT AND PRETZELS then Sept 33 WB's FOOTLIGHT PARADE. In M&P dance director Bobby Connolly has slavishly and clumsily copied two of the best Busby Berkeley numbers from Gold diggers of 33: their "Pettin In The Park" becomes "Get Up And Go To Work" here, and their "Remember My Forgotten Man" becomes here "Dusty Shoes". In the midst of all this is basically unattractive actors with bad teeth staring and smiling at each other in between muttering 'Gee that's swell'. Dim small town gal Sally loves rubber faced songplugger George who makes good on Broadway. Boring cross eyed Sally goes to NY and gets into his show in an attempt to make him come home and drone with her in dusty-ville. However, sassy Elsie played by terrific Lillian Miles who looks a lot like Alice Faye or Ginger Rogers sings up a storm and assists getting the lame show refinanced by Leo Carillo, the Spanish actor who here plays a Greek and a-talks-a-lika-dat. Stomping dance numbers with unrehearsed chorines in out of step routines and yelling lyrics are the topper to this mash of songs romance and 1933 drama. I was so perplexed by the title and what relevance it had to do with anything or anyone or any part of any show ever, except the bit where for no reason they dressed up in Tyrolean alpine outfits and yelled Moonlight And Pretzels ! at each other while swilling beer and munching on hot dogs. It is all so awful as to be mesmerizing. In fact so compelling I forgot what it was about and simply stared in disbelief. At one stage Elsie and George sit under a paper moon and identify it so but do not sing "it's only a paper moon" like they are about to but don't. All you can focus upon is how terrible their teeth are. They don not seem to be clean or fit in their mouths. Somehow Sally has a bent head. She is supposed to be the Ruby Keeler gal but here looks like Ruby after a stroke instead. Her eyes do not close at the same time. George is supposed to look like Dick Powell but actually could be mistaken for George Formby... or worse, Kenny Baker in fat-face makeup. . MOONLIGHT AND PRETZELS is a depression era knockoff of Warner snazziness and here looks like a budget suburban musical society version of 42nd St. The song where the husband and wife get up to go to work has a mad interlude where chorus girls on a satin bed-clock attempt some BB kaleidoscope.... in another number filmed in front of a curtain (!) 25 out of step chorines simply wave their arms about as they march back and forth and get mangled in some half figure-eight. It is so nutty as to be with 100 grimaces by the 99 minute mark. I of course loved it. Oh, and there's even dashounds. On leashes.

After watching "Moonlight and Pretzels" you'll probably understand why Universal was known for its horror films and not its musicals in the 1930's.

This has to be one of the most unusual musicals ever made, mainly due to several bizarre songs that have to be heard to be believed! There's an entire production number about getting up and going to work. Or how about the 1929 stock market crash set to music? And let's not forget the title tune "Moonlight and Pretzels" complete with flowing beer and wiener dogs.

The plot line is simple: songwriter hits it big on Broadway, decides to turn producer, then fights the money men to keep control of his show. Add a little love story and the plot is complete. If you've seen Warner's "42nd Street" you've seen it already.

The film was actually shot at New York's Astoria Studios by Universal cameraman Karl Freund, better remembered for "The Mummy" and "Mad Love." Leo Carillo gets top billing, but he doesn't even show up until the movie is half over. The only recognizable face to today's viewers would be William Frawley (Fred Mertz on "I Love Lucy") and he appears in a supporting role. Mary Brian and Roger Pryor star in the leading roles, but both have been nearly forgotten.

This one is difficult to see, not having been shown on television since the late 1950's. But if you ever run across a screening of "Moonlight and Pretzels" enjoy it for what it is: a strange musical morsel from Universal's early years.

On the surface, this is a Laemmle era Universal attempt to capture the magic of the Busby Berkeley musicals over at Warner Brothers made the same year. But look deeper, and it is actually much more done with much less.

In a small town, songwriter George Dwight (Roger Pryor) meets and teams up with music store owner Sally Upton (Mary Brian) with George composing and performing his songs in her store, upping foot traffic, boosting sales, and ultimately saving the business. Then George gets a letter from a music publishing business in New York, and off he goes, pledging to write. But he never does.

It's not that George gets a big head, he's just busy and he is a success, eventually leading to him putting on his own Broadway show, "Moonlight and Pretzels". Sally decides to come to New York and find George herself, but he initially doesn't even remember her, even when she shows up as a chorine in one of his numbers. Complications ensue.

This thing is an original. You can't say that Pryor and Brian are just standing in for Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler over at Warner Brothers, because the situation is much more complex than just a couple of kids in a show falling in love. And the story throws every Depression era backstager plot device in the book into the script, and yet it all works - crooked businessmen out to cheat George, the big time gambler where easy comes and easy goes, the girl from the sticks who gets a big head, the fast talking wise cracking stagehands, and Bobby Watson as the rather effete dance director.

The numbers are originals and the music memorable. Bobby Connolly is obviously copying Berkeley's style, and the musical finale is much like the Forgotten Man number in 42nd street, but then Berkeley's numbers could be described as numbers shot at angles in such a way that could never be done on a stage. This finale actually has newsreel footage in it! Well I guess that is no crazier than Winnie Shaw's face being transformed into the island of Manhattan in Golddiggers of 1935.

I'd recommend it.. It is certainly one of a kind among the second wave of early sound musicals.

Shot in just eighteen days at the old Astoria studio in New York, the title remains familiar today from Karl Freund's brief run of 30's directorial credits bookended by 'The Mummy' in 1932 and 'Mad Love' in 1935, and from Roger Pryor's entry in Halliwell and Katz. But the film itself remains absent from Maltin.

Fresh from Broadway, the perpetually smiling Pryor resembles a young, fresh-faced Milton Berle and slinky-eyed blonde Lillian Miles (who to perform "Are You Makin' Any Money?" wears one of those incredible early 30's spray-on wet-look black dresses they now seem incapable of authentically recreating even in films set during that era) resembles the worldlier Alice Faye in her early peroxide persona. (In smaller roles William Frawley looks not a day younger than when he and Freund were reunited twenty years later on the set of 'I Love Lucy'; while Bobby Watson is more recognisable here as the bespectacled diction coach in the "Moses Supposes" number in 'Singin' in the Rain' than from his intervening years spent playing Hitler.)

Dance director Bobby Connolly does wonders on an obviously tiny sound stage, while Freund still manages a few visual flourishes on his tight schedule and shoestring budget. The musical finale "Dusty Shoes" is a straight rip-off of "My Forgotten Man", but embellished with interesting (and no doubt cheap) actuality footage before arriving at a far more upbeat conclusion than its acclaimed predecessor.

The film did good business.

This is a cheap, shabby rip-off of 'Gold diggers of 1933' which lacks the fun, the charm and the smiles of the original. It's very disappointing.

The predictable and lugubrious story limps along without any surprises or excitement, occasionally punctuated only by some terribly amateurish song and dance numbers. Those real Busby Berkeley numbers in the WB movies or even in the earlier Eddie Cantor films don't look that difficult to copy but this shows that they clearly were. Berkley would probably be considered a voyeur these days but like great artists throughout history, his spectacles were primarily his way of celebrating the sexiness of beautiful young women. The routines in this film completely lack any of that innocent eroticism, we just get cardboard cut-out showgirls doing their steps.

Besides the tiresome story, the lacklustre musical numbers, the instantly forgettable (dull) songs, the obviously small budget and the z-list actors (although Lillian Miles is actually pretty good) the main problem is the direction. Karl Freund did a fantastic job on The Mummy the year before but his slow, moody style just doesn't work at all with this. It's a very long 85 minutes.