Children of Pleasure

Snappy musical of songwriter (Lawrence Gray) who falls for a society girl (Helen Johnson) much to the chagrin of his faithful secretary (Wynne Gibson). Gray sings a few songs and there are some productions numbers from Broadway shows that feature May Boley, Benny Rubin, and Gibson.

Supposedly loosely based on the life of Irving Berlin, this is an interesting early musical, one of many that Gray starred in. The songs are pretty much integrated into the plot and chart the course of love as Gray writes songs for Johnson (also known as Judith Wood) and then creates dark lyrics when he learns she's only out for a lark.

I suspect some material has been cut and long lost since the film clocks in at a little over an hour.

Gray is a pleasant leading man, Gibson a surprise in her singing number, Boley a powerhouse (despite the hideous costumes) as the "red hot mama," and Rubin always good for a laugh. Cameos by Jack Benny and Cliff Edwards don't add much. Co-stars include Kenneth Thomson, Ann Dvorak (chorus girl), Mary Carlisle, Lee Kohlmar, and Doris McMahon, the girl from Buster Keaton's FREE AND EASY who wants to sing a funny song.

Previous reviewers have hit the high spots in summarizing this 1930s musical from MGM. Lots of criticism has been thrown at the perceived inadequacies of the music and dance aspects of the movie. Yes, when looking at it through today's eyes, it looks dated, simplistic, and fairly unpolished. But the higher standards of the coming years hadn't arrived yet, so let's give this a break! Indeed the dance numbers could have been better rehearsed. If one looks closely, the footwork in the production numbers, while lacking Astaire/Rogers-like precision, is still pretty close. Where the real problems come are in the areas of arm, hand, head, and other body motions. It looks like those aspects of performance were never discussed with the cast, so the resulting dances look sloppy. But this was a step in the process of giving us the higher-level musical that some of us love so very much! Watch this film when you get the chance and enjoy this chapter in the development of an All-American art form!

Because there is nothing of tots or titillation in this film. I will give it this. For an early talkie, it managed to transition between scenes without one title card. This is probably of interest only for film historians, and particularly those interested in the early sound era. And that is because it demonstrates just about everything wrong with the early talkie musical craze that so quickly turned movie goers off the genre for two years.

The cast is obscure unless you are really into that era of film history. Probably the cast member with the biggest future was Wynne Gibson, the best of the tough blondes of Depression era film. Almost emblematically, she is a brunette here. And yet she is the performer you will remember, and fondly.

This is often and oddly compared to "Lord Byron of Broadway", and I can't imagine why other than both films are MGM movies about songwriters. Except Lord Byron's songwriter is a heel and this songwriter, Danny Regan (Lawrence. Gray) is just romantically rash. In fact the entire film is about his confusion over picking the right woman. Because Regan is a songwriter and publisher at least the plot escapes being a complete backstager by being able to move between productions and not tethered to just one. But the featured musical numbers are very odd - the first number is an operatic song with minstrel accompaniment (???) and the second number has everybody dressed in felt with a single metallic barb coming out of the top of their costumes. And you haven't lived until you've seen Wynne Gibson and Benny Rubin try to sing a duet. Unfortunately the songs are just not memorable.

To pad the plot, for some reason Benny Rubin is inserted as the piano playing employee of an overweight middle aged diva whom he obviously finds repulsive and yet she chases the poor man tenaciously. Maybe they were going for a Margaret Dumont/Groucho Marx dynamic and just got way off target?

You can't say MGM didn't give Lawrence Gray plenty of opportunities. He played the lead in five of these early sound films before they gave him the boot, because although he had a great voice he just had no screen presence.

Jack Benny shows up in a short scene at the very beginning, I think mainly to explain to the audience just who Gray's character is. Benny wasn't a radio star yet, and I think this was the period of time where Benny was under contract to MGM, Irving Thalberg liked him but couldn't figure out what to do with him next, and Benny was getting bored.

Some say that this film was based on the marriage of Irving Berlin to heiress Ellin Mackay. If so, Berlin should have sued.

If you are possibly going to spend 75 minutes or so out of your life watching an early musical from MGM, there's a strong chance you already know what you're in for--this short quickie, compared to a creation from Busby Berkeley at Warner's a few years later, is primitive indeed, but captures a time and place in Hollywood like few other films are able to do.

The plot is simple--winsome secretary loves a songwriter who falls for a society dame. The songwriter is zippy Lawrence Gray who smiles through his tears, and composes a song when he wants to express himself in love or out of it. One of his interpreters (and comic relief) is a Sophie Tucker type, a sort of Red Hot Mama attached to her ethnic pianist (at least that's how's he's played). We get some peeks at various musical numbers, some out-of-step minstrels in a theatre and a nutty song and dance in a nightclub--and "you ain't seen nothing" until you've seen the production number for "Dust," one of the hero's hits--with several helpings of actual dust--and later, a catchy little number "The Whole Darned Things For You."

The pleasures in this film are to be found in the sense of history it represents, awkward dealings with the sound, none of it prerecorded--even an outdoor encounter with comedian Jack Benny is fascinating, and one wonders if the subway entrance was a location shot or on the MGM lot. "Jiminy Cricket" Cliff Edwards also makes a jokey cameo, and the film zips along at a good pace--but ending as if the producer decided the company had run out of resources and just called "cut" and "print." Children of Pleasure is an archivist's delight!

CHILDREN OF PLEASURE (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1930), directed by Harry Beaumont, is only a title that has no bearing on the story. The film has no children yet the title makes one believe it to be one about a childless couple who take in foster kids to bring joy and happiness in their lives. Nothing like that here, not even a song bearing that title to end the story. The film overall, taken from a play "The Song Writer" by Crane Wilbur, (also credited for dialogue), as scripted by Richard Schayer, is a musical about a fictitional songwriter. Following the formula pattern of screen musicals that have become the rage during the motion picture transition from silent to talkies, Beaumont, the director responsible for MGM's first musical and Academy Award winner, "The Broadway Melody" (1929) gives it another try placing the dark-haired, smiley-faced Lawrence Gray, Helen Johnson and Wynne Gibson in the leads rather than reuniting its "Broadway Melody" trio of Charles King, Anita Page and Bessie Love. While "The Broadway Melody" proved beneficial for the studio, with countless imitations that followed during the 1929-30 season, CHILDREN OF PLEASURE is simply one of minor importance.

As with "Broadway Melody," the plot is set mostly in the Broadway district of Manhattan where Danny Regan (Lawrence Gray), a young composer from the Bronx, coming to see and hear the songs he's written for stage performances at a local theater starring his friends, Fanny Kaye (May Boley), the featured singer (with four ex-husbands), and her partner, Andy Little, nee Levine (Benny Rubin) at the piano. During the show, Danny, who's in a relationship with Emma Gray (Wynne Gibson), secretary to song publisher Bernie (Lee Kohlmar), becomes infatuated with a beautiful blonde patron (Helen Johnson) seated next to him. He continues to give her the eye after she leaves. Danny notices the same blonde once again while attending another show featuring his melodies, this time meeting and making the acquaintance with heiress Patricia Thayer. Even though Patricia has been engaged "a dozen times" to Robert Peck (Kenneth Thomson), and not really in Danny's social class, she agrees to marry him as an experiment rather than for love, with intentions of divorce once she becomes bored with him. After Danny overhears her intentions conversed with Peck the day of their wedding, he tells her off and leaves, to become a hopeless drunk. As Emma tries to help Danny through his troubles, and Patricia wanting to explain what he's overheard, it's Danny who really settles the score.

On the musical program, songs include: "A Couple of Birds With the Same Thing in Mind" by Howard Johnson, George Ward and Reggie Montgomery (sung by May Boley, tap dance by male ensemble in black-face); "Raisin' the Dust" (sung by Lawrence Gray); Raisin' the Dust" (reprise, production number performed by May Boley and ensemble in devil costumes, one being future film actress Ann Dvorak); "Girl Trouble" by Andy Rice and Fred Fisher (sung by Gray, comic act performance by Benny Rubin and Wynne Gibson); " As I See You" "Leave It That Way" and "A While Darn Thing For You" (all sung by Gray, the latter accompanied by The Rounders). Of the songs, the last two are easily the best, while the initial two are given okay production number treatment choreographed by Sammy Lee.

While the pattern of entertainer/composer forsaking good girl for the love of the wrong one can easily be traced to recent musicals, notable exceptions being THE SINGING FOOL (1928) with Al Jolson; THE DANCE OF LIFE (1929) with Hal Skelly; and PUTTIN' ON THE RITZ (1930) with Harry Richman, CHILDREN OF PLEASURE, which should have been titled "Girl Trouble," very much belongs to the now forgotten Lawrence Gray. Aside from being in films since the silent era, and quite an acceptable singer, his career would fade to obscurity by the mid 1930s, never making the grade in popular singer category as popular singer as Al Jolson, Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra. Wynne Gibson, shortly before developing her craft as a "tough fame" over at Paramount and RKO Radio, is agreeable in the good girl role, while Helen Johnson (who later changed her name to Judith Wood), could physically be the equivalent to Josephine Dunn's performance in Jolson's THE SINGING FOOL, though Lawrence Gray doesn't end up singing a sad song like "Sonny Boy" to drown out his sorrows.

As much as CHILDREN OF PLEASURE lacks top names of real interest, then and now, film buffs should take great interest in spotting Jack Benny, future radio and TV comedian, and Cliff Edwards, in separate cameo roles playing themselves. Benny Rubin and May Boley as the secondary couple, offer comedy support through verbal exchanges reflecting more like vaudeville routines than natural flare of speaking, while Lee Kohlmar's Jewish dialect with Woody Woodpecker sounding laugh for stereotypical humor is definitely a reflection of the times way back when.

Though far from being a classic in any sense, CHILDREN OF PLEASURE should score well for those interested in the history and development of early screen musicals such as this. Seldom revived, even on Turner Classic Movies cable channel, don't expect finding any children in this one, only Lawrence Gray the composer who writes the songs. (**)