Broadway Gondolier

Dick Powell is at the top of his game as both a crooner and a comedic star. And it's fantastic to see Joan Blondell in a lead role. And Adolphe Menjou in a campy role, singing? It's light, fluffy, charming fun that also provides a terrific glimpse into life in 1934 and 1935 (watch how the window on the cruise ship is opened). It's hilarious that everyone on the street seems to know Opera tunes. Also, for anyone who thinks singers and actors today are selling out by appearing in commercials - singers and actors have ALWAYS sold products via or adjacent to their "art," as this film shows. Yet another film that makes me wish there were still nightclubs and live radio shows (not just Wait Wait Don't Tell Me).

While Dick Powell was at Warner Brothers, he would be hat in hand to Jack Warner pleading for him to occasionally be cast in something serious. Of course Warner heard that wonderful tenor and saw nothing else in Powell. And certainly when he wrapped those vocal cords around songs like what Harry Warren and Al Dubin wrote for Broadway Gondolier neither could anyone else.

Life does certainly imitate art. The following year the Kraft Cheese Company was in fact looking for a singer to host a rather daring hour long radio variety show, an hour show on radio was quite an innovation back in the day. Unlike Broadway Gondolier the sponsor didn't go to Italy for a crooner. They and NBC found him doing a show for Woodbury Soap, so Bing Crosby got to do in real life what Powell did in the film, host a show selling cheese, as Bob Hope remarked in The Road to Utopia.

Powell himself was not exactly unknown to radio audiences. He appeared on the Hollywood Hotel program, named after one of his other films in Louella Parsons dished out the latest Hollywood gossip. Of course her Hearst connection and his due to the fact he did two films with Marion Davies made Louella and Dick a natural radio team.

In many ways Broadway Gondolier is a continuation of Goldiggers of 1935 which also starred Powell and had Adolphe Menjou with foreign accent. You could never get away with the performance Menjou gave in Broadway Gondolier with that outrageous Italian accent and characterization. The Italian Anti-Defamation League would be picketing the film. But just like in Goldiggers of 1935, Menjou's hammy performance is enjoyable, especially when he tries to fool radio executive Grant Mitchell and sponsor Louise Fazenda, owner of Flagenheimer's Odorless Cheese, and tries to sing like Powell.

Joan Blondell is Mitchell's girl Friday and Fazenda's keeper in the film who falls big time for the cabdriver, would be crooner Powell. Of course she's got another guy knocking on her romantic door, William Gargan who stars on the network as futuristic space hero Buck Gordon. And Fazenda after Powell pretends to be Italian starts getting designs on him. The look in her eye would be grounds enough for a suit for sexual harassment.

Powell recorded for Brunswick records the four songs he sang that Harry Warren and Al Dubin wrote for the film, Outside of You, Lonely Gondolier, The Rose in Her Hair and Lulu's Back in Town. The last two enjoyed some enduring popularity and Powell sang Lulu solo and in a nice scat version with the Mills Brothers.

After some hilarious errors when cabdriver Powell and his voice teacher Menjou try to get him a radio audition, they get the idea to go over to Italy where Fazenda is vacationing and have her 'discover' him in Venice. They bill him as the Italian Gondolier and of course they have to keep up the masquerade.

Anyone who's seen a few films like this knows exactly how it will end. Warner Brothers and Hollywood in general did a grand job in packaging a lot of wonderful nonsense like this as grand escapist entertainment from the Depression.

Even after over 70 years Broadway Gondolier is still wonderfully entertaining. Should not be missed the next time TCM runs it.

Broadway GONDOLIER is not very well known even among movie buffs but it's one of the most delightful musicals of the 1930's, as much a comedy as a musical. The plot - some plain Joe being hyped up under a bogus image into stardom - has been used in about a million films from CHICAGO to SLIGHTLY FRENCH to TOOTSIE, but it works time and time again, and most definitely here.

Dick Powell stars as a taxi driver who dreams of singing stardom. He blows his big chance by being late for a radio audition and as a result his only option for crashing radio is supplying animal sounds for a kiddie program, a job he loses when his wisecrack about performing for "little brats" goes over the airwaves in a hilarious bit that recalls several infamous real-life radio tongue slips, most of which happened several years after this film. Now unemployable on American radio, he ventures to Italy with his singing teacher Adolphe Menjou in hopes of new opportunities, quite coincidentally at the same time, the secretary from the radio show (and Powell crush) Joan Blondell accompanies cheese heiress Louise Fazenda to Italy to find a new singing star for HER radio program.

There's lots of good comedy here and Dick Powell has never been better in my opinion, ably matched by the always superb Joan Blondell in a somewhat secondary role as the girl who opens doors for him. Powell and Blondell have an excellent "first meeting" scene at the radio station with snappy dialog and comebacks in best 1930's tradition. Louise Fazenda, nearing the end of her very long screen career is cast in an atypical role as a rich matron whose devotion to the memory of her late husband may be tested by her crush on the Italian heartthrob she "discovers", ironically Judy Canova (who later became a star playing hillbilly hayseed roles in the Fazenda tradition) has a brief role in the film as a part of a hillbilly vocal group.

There's a wonderful musical interlude with the Mills Brothers and a hilarious parody of a radio show theme song, this one about the wonders of cheese. Most definitely worth seeking out, not only for fans of 30's musicals but of 30's comedies.

It's been awhile since I saw this... It's a fun, harmless Warner Bros. musical of the '30's, with Dick Powell as an American crooner who moves to Italy to be a Gondolier, then (of course) gets discovered by a whacky American rich-lady, out to provide a "real" Singing-Gondolier for her husbands radio show... You get the idea. He falls for an adorable Joan Blondell while trying to hide his real identity... the movie's a lot of fun if you're not looking for great depth or meaning. Typical of the Warner Bros. musical machine of the day, but still fun.

This film has as silly a storyline as any of the Dick Powell musicals (maybe intentionally so), but its entertaining enough to watch, with some tuneful songs (including one minor standard: Lulu's Back in Town). It's all the more so, owing to the presence of Joan Blondell. She was especially gorgeous in this movie. When speaking of her, most people comment on her sassiness, and rapid-fire patter. But in addition to her fine acting, she was also a beautiful, sexy woman, with huge eyes. She employs here an understated, deadpan delivery she used sometimes to heighten the comic effect of her lines. It shows how deft her ability was with comedy. The movie doesn't have Busby Berkeley's production numbers, so I suppose that's why it isn't so well remembered as other ones. But it does put more focus on Dick Powell's voice. While is it isn't up to the operatic standards required by the role, it's certainly a great voice. It gets overlooked in discussions of him, taken for granted, even, I would say. It may be the nature of his roles, and his later transformation distract people's attention.