Made on Broadway

Robert Montgomery is great in this comedy of manners. It should have been a screwball comedy, and if it had been released eighteen months later, it would have been, but there was no such genre at that time; even a year later, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT was considered a screwball comedy instead of a romantic one.

But at this time, Screwball was BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING, and the Production Code hadn't closed down the sex comedy, which is what made the American screwball comedy. So this movie about how ace press agent Robert Montgomery saves Sally Eilers from committing suicide by jumping off the Staten Island Ferry, makes her the toast of the town and then orchestrates her defense after she shoots someone just misses.

Montgomery is perfect, exuding an air of genial, self-aware corruption, but everyone else seems to be taking matters far too seriously, even the old ladies he hires to pose as Eiler's sniveling aunts in the courtroom.

MGM's Harry Beaumont, their resident expert on making bricks without straw and stars without talent somehow fails... Eilers lacks the subtlety and range for her role, which weights down this work. Madge Evans is present and steady, but the entire movie lacks the sense of madness that infuses screwball. Ah well. Good try.

A lot of the ground and issues that were covered two decades later in Sweet Smell Of Success are covered also in this before The Code era film. Made On Broadway goes J.J. Hunsecker one better. Instead of just having a permanent table at the swankiest club in midtown Manhattan, Robert Montgomery as Jeff Bidwell owns his own club where New York's elite drink, gamble, and pay through the nose for the privilege. Montgomery has his eyes and ears everywhere as Broadway's number one press agent and has a genius for manipulating public opinion for a very steep price.

He's got a roving eye and wife Madge Evans left him for it. But one night on the ferry to New Jersey Montgomery jumps in the river and saves the life of a would be suicide Sally Eilers. At this point the film takes a Pygmalion like direction.

Eilers is one interesting character herself and the master manipulator gets himself used in some interesting ways. There's a key scene in the film when Eilers gets herself in a nice jackpot she let's down her hair with lawyer Joseph Cawthorn where you get a view of the real character. Takes Montgomery a bit longer to catch on.

If chronology did not label this a pre-Code film the plot would. There are a few things that Mr. Breen's book of rules would not have permitted after 1934.

Eugene Palette as Montgomery's valet is always good, but he's strangely subdued here. I always like to see more of Palette as he appears in My Man Godfrey.

Made On Broadway is a strangely forgotten film and should be better remembered. It definitely could be remade today.

...which is Jeff Bidwell (Robert Montgomery). He is an agent and PR man extraordinaire, but absolutely nothing about this story has anything to do with Broadway or what is made there. Bidwell is so well known in New York that big shots just hang out in his apartment living room - where free drinks are served - waiting for him to come home and give them advice, which he does for a hefty fee. As he points out, when you look at his fees, he is really not the one paying for all of these drinks. Apparently his apartment doubles as his office. He has a strictly business middle aged secretary, and he also has a valet who for some reason is being played by Eugene Palette. Palette is really wasted here as he really has no opportunity to do much of anything.

One night on the ferry a girl who claims she is at the end of her rope, Mona Martine (Sally Eilers), jumps off of the same ferry that Bidwell is riding. He jumps into the water to save her. She claims to be just another girl down on her Great Depression luck wanting to end it all, but I wonder. The story Bidwell gives her to tell once the press shows up to ask what happened is not the story she tells. She has an alternative tale all made up, one that seems to make her look better than Bidwell's story did. Plus she was looking Jeff's direction when she jumped into the water. Did she plan this whole thing just to meet Bidwell? At that point, Bidwell's ex-wife, who is running a salon, gives Mona a make-over at Bidwell's request. Bidwell tells the ex-wife, that just as a strictly business kind of thing, he'd like to give the girl some elocution and dance lessons and see if she can get into the follies. He says it is a project of his. But through a series of bills shown the viewer, you can see this quickly becomes personal and then romantic and then maybe a bit obsessive. Bidwell takes Mona out, and man after man stops by and wants to dance or take her out afterwards. Jeff looks so disgusted. He wants to possess her just because he doesn't possess her i.e. marry her. He even tells his ex-wife that he KNOWS this is why he wants to marry her, yet she still draws him in.

Well, later that night Mona gives Jeff a frantic call. She has shot a man dead in her apartment, supposedly in self defense due to an attempted rape. Bidwell knows this is not true and later gets the truth out of her, but she convinces him that she loves only him, and so he gets to work trying to make the attempted rape story stick to get her out of a murder rap.

How will all of this work out? Watch and find out. Sally Eilers is great as the blonde Mona - she's a real piece of work and Bidwell has finally found his match in her, a match in profiteering and insincerity that is. The role of Bidwell the fixer is a real fast talking street wise part in contrast to the suave upper crust roles Montgomery usually played during this part of his MGM career, and he plays it well. Madge Evens has an understated role as Bidwell's classy ex-wife, Claire. They are still in love, and Claire seems to be waiting around for Bidwell to take a breath from all of the affairs that have come since, and maybe even before the divorce to figure this out. The question is, will he? I'd strongly recommend this as great Depression fun - Montgomery and Eilers make it so, even though I don't think they ever did another film together.

"Made on Broadway" is a somewhat different plot from the many comedy romance films Robert Montgomery was making at MGM during the early to mid-1930s. In most of those, he's the dapper playboy or gentlemen that fits one of his Hollywood labels at the time - the best-dressed actor on the set. He's also usually a self-assured and bemused character. Well, he's all of that and more - or, more accurately, to the maximum in this film.

Montgomery's Jeff Bidwell is the most egotistical, proud, self-centered, in-control character one can imagine. It doesn't quite get to the point of grating on the viewer though, and that's only because of some of the other characters and the humor attached to his presence. There's another side to this story, and that's that he has very little scruples. He's THE master fixer of any problem in the Big Apple. He does it all with publicity. He's a wheeler-dealer who knows the ins and outs and all the right people to pull off a cover-up.

Bidwell has politicians, judges, millionaires, contractors, lawyers, reporters, doctors, professors, women and just about anyone with a scandal, crime or problem indebted to him. And their debts are premium fees.

At one time, Bidwell was married, but he and Claire (Madge Evans) divorced because he couldn't stand anyone who could match him thought-wise. There's still something between them, and they are friends and antagonists on and off. But when a new person comes into his life, things start working out differently. Mona Martine (Sally Eilers) is a different con-artist with a mind of her own.

The film is peppered with some snappy lines and occasional antics. But, its light treatment of a murder, and suggestions about various crimes that Jeff is able to cover-up or fix, is a bit of a problem. The film never rectifies that, and that's the only thing that the enforcement of the Hays Code starting the next year would be concerned with. While it's billed as a comedy and drama, I think it would better be labeled comedy and crime. Especially when one considers that a lot of what Bidwell did might be criminal - things like phony alibis, altering scenes of a crime, removing evidence, covering up details, planting phony stories, etc.

The ending is a little bit of a surprise. The title alludes to Jeff's handling of Mona, when he tells Claire that she was his creation. It could also very well be linked to the fact that Broadway was the centerpiece of acting, and that much of Jeff's work was all about directing clients to act with false stories and alibis, and changing and creating crime scenes.

Here are some of the best lines in the film.

Jeff Bidwell, "But she thought she was just as smart as I am. And there isn't a woman in the world, Mike, who has a right to be that conceited."

Jeff Bidwell, "I don't think a little fresh air'd do me any harm." Elmer, the chauffeur, "Sure. Take a chance."

Jeff Bidwell, "Say, listen, lady. There's one thing you gotta learn right here and now. When it comes to lying, don't try to make a chump out of the old master."

Claire Bidwell, "Why do you love her, anyway? Jeff Bidwell, "I don't know. Yes, yes, maybe I do. You see, when she jumped into that river, she was nothing. I dragged her out and I've made her something. Everything that she is, is me. She's my creation. My doing. Maybe it's just a touch of egotism, but she's mine just as much as if I'd made her out of a mud pie."

Jeff Bidwell, "Anyway, you're good. You're the best female blacksmith in the whole anvil chorus."

Claire Bidwell, "It's too bad someone doesn't invent a gun that shoots backwards."

Police Inspector Burke, "Funny how you gun-shy dames always shoot so straight."

Inspector Burke, "Well, I never heard it done better, even when it was true."

Claire Bidwell, "I've never been jealous of any woman. I don't have to be. I've never seen any woman you had that I've had any reason to be jealous of." Jeff Bidwell, "Oh, perfect, eh?" Claire, "Too good for you. You don't want a woman to be on the level. You want all your women to be phony. You want them to adore you, worship you without question or criticism. And if they're not quite stupid enough for that, you want them to pretend. All which means you can't bear the truth about yourself. And you're a liar and....

The fact that I cannot even remember the name of this picture which I watched yesterday is indicative of the impact this has. At 68 minutes it's just too shallow and superficial to engage with you. Watchable - yes, well made - yes but entertaining - not really.

This is a typical B-feature. It's something made just to fill the cinema screen whilst the audience were settling into their seats preparing for the main feature. Being MGM, it's got high quality production values but no great effort has gone into this to make it stand out. Maybe if it had been made by Warner Brothers, who specialised in short, high impact pictures, it might have had more punch - you can imagine James Cagney relishing a role like this.

As has already been commented, the story is similar to CHICAGO/ROXIE HART. That's true but because Sally Eilers' suicidal protagonist is so unpleasant, she's much more like Mae Busch in Laurel and Hardy's COME CLEAN (the one with the chocolate ice cream!) COME CLEAN is however a comedy - this isn't but neither is it a serious drama. You don't feel like you know the characters. You're told what they're doing but we don't really know why and how. Depth and evocative thought were not high on the tick list for most MGM supporting features, they were just an hour of attractive people playing out a simple story.