Broadway Thru a Keyhole

An interesting musical curio featuring some legendary names like Texas Guinan and the late Russ Columbo. Columbo shows promise as a cowardly crooner but he's only in the last half of the film. The stars are Paul Kelly and the lovely Constance Cummings who showed great unfulfilled promise as a musical comedy star. The Film is infamous as the reason for Al Jolson punching co-writer Walter Winchell. Jolson thought the story was too closely based on the real life adventures of his wife Ruby Keeler and her gangster pals.

Ostensibly the story of Ruby Keeler and Al Jolson, this snappy musical about Broadway, gangsters, molls, and chorus girls directed by the wonderful actor, Lowell Sherman. While Sherman does not appear in this film, the Walter Winchell tale boasts a few stars and a few Broadway legends.

Constance Cummings stars as the ambitious Joan who allows gangster Rocci (Paul Kelly) to feature her in a show at a night club he buys from Tex Kaley (legendary Texas Guinan, the original Queen of the Nightclubs). She becomes a star but has to skip off to Miami when gangland wars threaten Rocci. She takes an old friend (legendary Blossom Seeley who doesn't get to sing) as a chaperone but falls in love with a local crooner (Russ Columbo).

Somce nice plot twists and snappy numbers keep this one interesting. There's also some interesting sexual innuendo going on with Rocci's devoted "pal" (Hugh O'Connell), Seeley in drag and being taken for a man by a porter, and Columbo playing a wimp who's afraid of the sun and practically panics when he gets a sliver in his finger. Lots of nice little twists.

The film is a rare showcase for Frances Williams, who was a big Broadway star. She gets to sing the best song: The Uptown Low Down. She dances too. Hobart Cavanaugh, Gregory Ratoff, Eddie Foy Jr., C. Henry Gordon, Helen Jerome Eddy, Fred Santley, and Wheeler Oakman co-star. Also look for the two bimbos accompanying Louis the Lug. They are Ann Sothern and Lucille Ball as bleached blondes. One of the wisecracking dames during the early rehearsal scene is Esther Muir, noted for several Marx Bros films. Guinan and Seeley steal all their scenes.

Lowell Sherman, Texas Guinan, and Russ Columbo would all be dead within a year of the film's completion. Sherman had a 20-year career as a star in films and turned out several excellent films as a director, most notably Morning Glory and She Done Him Wrong.

Worth a look.

Al Jolson punched and knocked out the writer of this picture apparently because he thought the story was based on his wife, Ruby Keeler whereas in reality surely he did this simply because Jolson was so annoyed that he'd written such an awful film?

This must have been embarrassing for Darryl Zanuck. After overseeing most of the early thirties' greatest films at Warner Brothers then flouncing off to create Twentieth Century Pictures (Fox would join soon) he seemed to have expected that just he, himself was all that was needed to make fantastic films. But he made this! He may have taken his impressive talent, his progressive and campaigning attitude with him but not, by the look of this, any actors who could act (acting in this is uniformly atrocious by everyone), directors who could direct and writers who could write.

Compared with similar musicals from this time: his own classic Busby Berkeleys at Warners or what Victor Saville was doing at Gaumont-British (with Jessie Matthews), this seems like it was made either years earlier or using obsolete ancient equipment that Zanuck managed to stash in the back of his car on his last day at Warners; it looks so cheap.

Watching this gives the impression that the setting up of Twentieth Century hadn't quite been completed by the time they made this. It was just their second ever film and it really shows. Since Zanuck had made the greatest musicals and gangster pictures up to that date, he thought he could combine both his speciality genres and make millions with this. The result however is awful: the blending of a hard-hitting crime drama with an upbeat, cheerful musical doesn't work. We just end up with the worst of both worlds.

"Broadway Thru a Keyhole" is a strange movie with one very inconsistent character. Paul Kelly plays Frank Rocci, a mobster who works the protection racket. His Poultry Protection Association offers to prevent 'accidents' in order for a piece of the profits. Yet, oddly, you are expected to believe he's fallen in love with Joan (Constance Cummings) and is so smitten and honest that he really only wants what's in her best interest! So, when she falls for another man, Clark (Ross Columbo), Frank isn't all that upset! What's next? Watch the film...or not.

While I found this film reasonably diverting, I must admit that the script was a bit hard to believe from time to time. Not a terrible film but one that should have been better...and less schmaltzy.

Manhattan mobster Frank Rocci (Paul Kelly) helps out a childhood friend by getting her sister Joan Whelan (Constance Cummings) a job as a chorine in Tex Kaley's (Texas Guinan) nightclub and quickly falls in love with her. He buys the place so's he can showcase Joan in a Max Mefoofski (Gregory Ratoff) revue which makes her a star and out of gratitude, she agrees to marry him. Before the wedding can take place, however, rival racketeer Tim Crowley (C. Henry Gordon) makes an attempt on Rocci's life so he shuffles Joan off to Miami with her motherly girlfriend Sybil Smith (Blossom Seely) and both gals promptly fall in love: Joan with crooner Clark Brian (radio heartthrob Russ Columbo) and Sybil with his busom buddy, the none-too-bright Peanuts Dinwiddie (Hobart Cavanaugh). Rocci gets wind of it and orders Joan back to New York and Clark, hot on her heels, humbly asks Rocci for Joan's hand. The tough-guy touchingly gives his consent but when Crowley's gang kidnaps the bride on her wedding day, bloodshed, sacrifice, and hope lie ahead...

Broadway reporter-at-large Walter Winchell's saga of song, dance, danger, and romance so closely resembled the real life love triangle between entertainer Al Jolson, hoofer Ruby Keeler, and racketeer Johnny "Irish" Costello that Jolson punched Winchell out when he saw him at a Hollywood Legion prize fight, causing the columnist to sue for $500,000. The Fox film (a Darryl Zanuck Production) opens with a POV peek thru a keyhole that becomes a montage of the Great White Way (called "The Stem" at the time) where the underworld really can meet the elite. There's plenty of musical numbers on display and a couple of them are fairly inventive including tuxedo-clad songstress Frances Williams' rousing rendition of "Doin' The Uptown Lowdown" and a Busby Berkeley-style number with hoola hoops and crotch shots. There's also a romantic duet by handsome Russ Columbo and pretty little Constance Cummings, who's later seen in a transparent dress. Since it's Pre-Code, Connie's in step-ins a lot, too, and un-PC moments include a typical-for-the-time gay stereotype and derogatory slang for Jews. There's quite a bit of double intendre gender-bending going on as well- bits include Seely, dressed in a man's suit and fedora, puffs on a cigar and kisses her gangster boyfriend (after which the guy wipes his mouth) and handsome milquetoast Russ Columbo (he nearly swoons over a cut to his finger) has a too close relationship with his pal Dinwiddie, predicting the one shared by John Hodiak & Wendell Cory in DESERT FURY over a decade later.

As this film shows, silent leading man Lowell Sherman quickly became a capable director at the advent of talkies and he remained so until his untimely death in December, 1934. The British-born Constance Cummings was a popular leading lady for a couple of years in the early '30s and in addition to a top-notch supporting cast, the Broadway luminaries on hand included notorious "Queen Of The Speakeasies" Texas Guinan, the Sophie Tucker-ish Blossom Seely, singer/dancer Frances Williams, Eddie Foy, Jr., Abe Lyman & His Orchestra, and Winchell himself. Young Lucille Ball has a bit as a Miami Beach golddigger as does Ann Sothern & Susan Fleming (soon-to-be Mrs. Harpo Marx) as chorines. Lots of fun!