Chasing Rainbows

I really love this film - that is, what is left of it. What remains is roughly the 85 minutes which comprise the dramatic portion. What is missing are the Technicolor numbers, or approximately 20 minutes. TCM has inserted publicity stills with title cards telling the audience of any plot developments that happen during the missing scenes, and all in all it is quite watchable in its current state.

This movie reunites Bessie Love and Charles King from "Broadway Melody" fame of the year before, and throws in Jack Benny, Polly Moran, and Marie Dressler of "The Hollywood Revue", also from 1929. Many people describe this film as a redo of the Broadway Melody formula, but it really is quite different from that. The film follows the troupe of the show "Goodbye Broadway" as it moves from town to town during one theatrical season. Here Charles King plays vaudevillian Terry Fay who is oblivious to the fact that his partner, Carlie, (Bessie Love) is in love with him. Terry makes a play for every leading lady on the vaudeville circuit. Of course they use him, of course they break his heart, and of course he goes right out and does it again. However, he finally meets his match in Daphne Wayne (Nita Martin) who sees in Terry a way to make it to Broadway and off the road show circuit.

Plotwise, it isn't much, but plot really isn't the point of these early talkie back-stagers. Bessie Love comes across wonderfully as the taken-for-granted partner. You can really feel the emotional roller-coaster she is on as she thinks she may have finally gotten to Terry only to find out he's thrown her over once again. Jack Benny is great as the wise-cracking stage manager. MGM has thankfully dropped the lechery angle that he had in Hollywood Revue and instead has him adding in his biting sarcastic wit here and there, showing us a taste of what will make him a success in radio. Polly Moran and Marie Dressler are hilarious as two aging ladies of the vaudeville scene, long-time friends who are constantly at each other's throats.

The whole group plays together with such chemistry, yet Jack Benny himself always kidded about how this film landed with a thud when it opened in 1930, calling it "Chasing Customers". If you like any of the stars I've mentioned and the early talkie musicals, this one is worth watching and even has a few songs in it. If it had been released a year earlier it would probably have been a major hit and be intact today. Had it been made a year later - well, it wouldn't have been made at all a year later because by 1931 nobody was making musical films anymore. This is really worth seeking out, just don't be surprised by the condition the sound and video are in. The film really looks shaggy compared to how well the other early MGMs have been preserved.

Any film that starts out with a passenger train chugging across the countryside, followed by a full ensemble rendition of Ager-and-Yellen's "Happy Days Are Here Again" can't be all bad. Sadly, this great old song is presented only in fragmentary form at the beginning to set the tone for a story about a traveling theatrical troupe; later, when the time comes for a full- length version, we learn from an insert that the sequence has been lost, a blow which this backstager cannot survive. (Imagine Golddiggers of 1935 without "Lullabye of Broadway.) There is a decent Ager-Yellen ballad ("Lucky Me, Lovable You," crooned impeccably by Charles King) and a couple of comedy numbers put over with gusto by the scenery-chewing Marie Dressler. The plot (girl-loves-boy-who-loves-other-girls) moves too slowly and far too much time is spent on Dressler's vaudevillian comic routines with her frequent screen partner Polly Moran. The two were real crowd pleasers back in the day, which only shows how much tastes have changed. Their shtick is occasionally funny but not funny enough to justify twenty minutes of footage. Jack Benny is very good as the level-headed stage manager who holds the troupe together and Charles King acts almost as well as he sings. The delicate Bessie Love has a strange, extended scene in which she breaks into grimacing, demented laughter which veers into crying and then back into laughter.

What a potentially great film (finally got hold of a copy), a big hit MGM musical that boasted Bessie Love, Charles King, Jack Benny, Marie Dressler, and Polly Moran.

What a shame that all the Technolor is gone from the existing print, and even worse, so are all the big production numbers! Title cards appear to tell us where the numbers USED to be. Even the audio is gone.

Indeed we miss Bessie Love leading a chorus in "Everybody Tap," Charles King singing "Love Ain't Nothing' but the Blues." and Marie Dressler singing "My Dynamic Personality." Also the entire finale of "Happy Days Are Here Again" is also gone. Thanks to Richard Barrios for listing the missing songs in a footnote in A SONG IN THE DARK.

The few numbers that are left aren't too great. King sings "Lucky Me and Lovable You" to Love (who does not sing). But they do a short dance number. Dressler does an early number on the train, and Nina Martan (odd spelling) also sings one song.

In this backstage musical about an acting company traveling across country in a show called "Goodbye Broadway," we get the usual stories about jealousy, love, etc. Love is adorable as Carlie, King is better than he was in THE Broadway MELODY, Benny is funny, and of course Dressler and Moran steal every scene they're in. George K. Arthur has a small role as a (gay?) member of the troupe, and so does Gwen Lee as the member who quits early on, requiring them to hire Martan. Eddie Phillips plays the smarmy lover.

After smash hits with THE Broadway MELODY and Hollywood REVUE OF 1929, MGM launched this musical with its A Cast, but by the time the film hit theaters, the craze for musicals was winding down. Revue films were so unpopular that MGM included "Not a Revue" in its advertising for CHASING RAINBOWS. Bessie Love was MGM's #1 musical star of the time, and Marie Dressler and Polly Moran are just plain hysterically funny together.

Let's hope these Technicolor musical numbers are found some day. What a treat that would be!

In 1930, MGM was still ironing out the kinks in its early sound pictures. "Chasing Rainbows" " is one of the earliest musicals that still has some of those kinks. It also shows the lesser quality of performers at the time. But this attention to musicals was paving the way for MGM's undisputed title as king of the musicals through the end of Hollywood's golden age in the early 1960s.

Although there had been singers and dancers with bands on stage, the cinema world had not used them until sound. So, finding the voices, dancers and musicians for films was part of the new challenge. And, interestingly, MGM also filmed part of this movie in Technicolor. The DVD I obtained from the WB Archive Collection has a reconstructed film without the color scenes. Three of those were of song and dance numbers. All the color segments were lost, so this rebuilt film has some black and white still photos showing the scenes that were shot in color.

This film has one other historical value. It's a very good depiction of the traveling stage shows. This was not vaudeville, but production of popular stage shows that traveled around the country to perform in towns that had stage theaters.

Most of the cast of this film weren't known much beyond the 1930s. But two of the main characters were, and it's their performances that make this film worth watching. Jack Benny serves as the stage manager, Eddie Rock. With the traveling show, his job was much more than that of the theater manager. He was also director for rehearsals, in charge of property, and overall supervisor and watchdog of the cast and crew. Benny's Rock is very good with some nice comedy.

The other well-known person is actress Marie Dressler, as Bonnie. She is responsible for the bulk of the comedy, and much of that is in an ongoing spat with Polly, the props manager. Polly Moran plays that role very well.

The female and male leads are Carlie Seymour and Terry Fay, played by Bessie Love and Charles King. Love was a big star of the last 15 years of silent films, and her career segued into sound. But, after a few of these early films with lead roles, she was relegated to mostly supporting roles. The evolution of sound pictures also brought a huge swarm of new talent as the studios searched for new stars with good voices. Some came from the live stage and a few from the silent films, but the large influx was mostly new faces in the 1930s.

Besides Dressler in this film, movie buffs will know the silent stars who transitioned and did as well or better than they had before. They included Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Gary Cooper, William Powell, the Barrymore's (John, Lionel and Ethel), Carole Lombard, Loretta Young, Jean Arthur, Myrna Loy, and Clark Gable. But for each one of those whose careers continued and blossomed from silent to sound, there were 100 who didn't. Not all were because of the sound itself, or their voices. Many had been in pictures for 20 years or more, and couldn't compete with the acting of new people. Some big names that made a few films in sound before they quit were Mary Pickford, Clara Bow and Douglas Fairbanks.

Some of the new talent that the 1930s brought ranged from Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, to Cary Grant, James Stewart, Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, Robert Taylor and Spencer Tracy on the male side. And some truly great actresses came to the screen in the 1930s, including Claudette Colbert, Irene Dunne, Bette Davis, Rosalind Russell, Barbara Stanwyck, Katherine Hepburn, Kay Francis, Lucille Ball, Merle Oberon and Greer Garson.

Of course, across the pond - in the UK and all over Europe more stars were appearing in cinema.

Back to this film. Charles King could sing, but he wasn't anywhere near the talent that would be in the musicals within a couple of years. He was new to films himself, but acted as though he were in a silent film. He exaggerated his moves. His long pauses with a sour puss made him seem to be pouting. It's likely that directors and producers were having to adjust as well.

It's good to have something like this in an early major studio film to show the challenges that studios had in making major changes. My guess is that there wasn't another top singer to be found anywhere who had acted to put in the role of Terry Fay. King had just started in films in 1928 and had four films behind him - all musicals. He did much better in "The Broadway Melody" of 1929, where his song was good and acting just so-so. He made one more musical after this, also in 1930, then a handful more of non-musicals in small parts and his acting career was finished.

To give the feel of the traveling show, a couple of scenes show town or theater names between some snippets of very fast-moving trains. In one of those, the film gives the name of show playing. At the Nebraska Theatre, Xmas Week Dec. 22nd, "Good-Bye Broadway" is being performed. Another scene shows a sign of the Vermont Opera House.

Those who might enjoy this film are movie and history buffs. Most others would probably give up on it after a few minutes. Perhaps the missing Technicolor numbers would have lifted the film.

Here's a sample dialog exchange. Carlie Seymour, "Say, I've been through this so much with him, don't you think I'd better go in and talk to him - huh?" Eddie Rock, "Well, all right. If you wanna play Little Daniel in the lion's den, go ahead. But if he bites you, don't blame me."

Pretty big role for Jack Benny in his very first film acting role, playing someone besides himself (acc to IMDb). He rattles off many of his one-liners as Eddie, part of the big traveling (and unraveling) road show. He should know, after all those years of vaudeville, before getting his own radio and TV shows. This movie is all about taking the show on the road, and Bonnie's (Marie Dressler) facial expressions as she gets elbowed, steam-blasted by the train, and insulted by the rest of the cast. Dressler was showing her age here (sixty something, with pretty big bags under her eyes) but that didn't slow her down any. She made SEVEN films in 1930, and only made a couple more before passing away in 1934. Two of her last ones were biggies, Tugboat Annie, and Dinner at Eight! Co-stars Bessie Love (Carlie) and Polly Moran (Polly) had also started in the silents and continued on with the talkies. Lots of backstage jokes and chiding each other, mostly by Eddie and Polly. Also an on again, off again love story between Carlie and Terry (Charles King, who only made a few films). Some serious, touching moments between the girls as they talk over their intentions regarding the men-folk. Sad to note that the color song and dance portions are missing in action - hopefully someday they will be found. Directed by Charles Reisner, who had worked his way up through every occupation, starting with the silents. Written by Robert Hopkins, who would be nominated for an Oscar for his writing on San Francisco (1936). Good story, no plot holes, very family friendly. I really enjoyed watching this one.... it wasn't as hokey as a lot of those "back-stage, behind the scenes stories" were back then. Good to see J. Benny in an early role.