Broadway Serenade

Strange musical stew with a puppyish Lew Ayres and a soft-focus Jeanette MacDonald making an unlikely romantic pair. The score is, shall we say, oddly eclectic, ranging from Victor Herbert (surprise!) to Ella Fitzgerald. Worth catching, though, for the final reel, which features possibly the screwiest musical number ever to appear in a "golden-age" MGM film (via Busby Berkeley). This one's beyond description -- not even Harlow singing or Crawford dancing comes close.

From 1939, Broadway Serenade is an odd movie, containing all kinds of music. Lew Ayres is a composer/pianist who apparently wrote or ripped off None but the Lonely Heart, I couldn't decide; the Macdonald-less Jeanette is his lovely singer wife.

During his audition of a new song for a big Broadway producer (Frank Morgan) and his investor (Ian Hunter), it's Jeanette who gets the job and Hunter's heart. She has to go on the road with the show; she comes back a star, and her husband, hearing rumors of a romance with Hunter and not doing too well himself, rejects her, though the rumors aren't true. He becomes drunk and disorderly while her star ascends.

I guess the big, lirico-spinto/dramatic soprano arias were the popular ones, because in movies where she sang opera, Jeanette MacDonald was always doing something like Tosca or Madama Butterfly, which she does here - so totally out of her vocal type, which was way too light for that sort of music. Her repertoire was operetta and roles like those in the French repertoire: Delibes, Gounod, or Bellini and Donizetti.

She had a nice middle voice and beautiful, lyrical pianissimos, but her very high notes had a whitish, straight sound - basically that's how female singers were taught back then. I always loved her acting. She and Ayres are both good although an unlikely couple, he being boyish and she being diva-ish.

Some bizarre musical numbers, such as the one at the end. A mixed bag. There are better musicals - an understatement.

Jeanette MacDonald filmed Broadway Serenade while her usual screen partner Nelson Eddy was busy doing Balalaika with Ilona Massey. She's married to Lew Ayres, musician and would be composer. They're a duo working in some real dives when we first meet them. Ayres has a short fuse involving his wife and manages to get himself fired after punching out a drunk. MacDonald dutifully follows her man.

After that it's the usual backstage story for both of them. She becomes a big Broadway star and he has dreams of presenting his concerto, a treatment of Tschaikovsky's famous None, But the Lonely Heart. And they run into the usual situations involving her beauty and his temper.

Jeanette sings beautifully and Ayres steps out from his Dr. Kildare image. At the time Broadway Serenade was being filmed, just as Jeanette was taking a break from Nelson, Ayres was on hiatus from the Dr. Kildare series which was at the height of its popularity.

Also in the cast is Frank Morgan as a Broadway producer, the same role he had in Sweethearts and Ian Hunter as the playboy backer of Morgan's shows who's got a yen for Jen. But the best supporting part in Broadway Serenade is Al Shean who is sidekick and confident to Lew Ayres. This may have been Al Shean's best screen role.

But what this film is probably best known for is the climax sequence involving Lew Ayres's concerto. Busby Berkeley did the number and it goes down as one of his worst.

Berkeley who did so well at Warner Brothers with Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler and later on at MGM with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, makes a ghastly debut at MGM. His None But the Lonely Heart dance number is like the number that Jack Buchanan did in The Bandwagon. Only that was supposed to be satiric, this one was for real.

If Ayres's concerto had been presented simply as just an instrumental piece it would have been sooooooo much better. It was one bad creative decision to give Busby Berkeley an assignment here.

Other than that, Jeanette's fans will go for this. She has some fine numbers to sing her in both the classical and popular vein.

Although Jeanette MacDonald struggles valiantly, the script is poor, overlong and cliché. Ayres' character is thoroughly unlikeable, boorish, insanely jealous, violent - the audience has difficulty caring about him and likewise the motivations and caring of MacDonald, who plays his wife.

Able support is given by Al Shean as the kindly old musician who takes an interest in Ayres' serious music composition, and Rita Johnson, who gets all the best lines as a catty chorus girl who has her eye on the producer (Frank Morgan) and won't let anyone get in her way. Also fine is Franklin Pangborn who is wonderful in his three scenes as a frustrated arranger.

The score is lackluster. Jeannette has a medley at the beginning (Yip I Addy I Ay, Just A Song at Twilight and a few unrecognizable tunes), Lonely Heart - based on Tchaikovsky's song, Flying High, Un Bel Di from Madame Butterfly, another montage of snippets of songs, Musetta's Waltz, Les Filles de Cadiz, Italian Street Song, One Look At You. It's a combo of song and opera snippets and new songs that are dreary.

The stupid finale with grotesque masks and bizarre sets and lighting makes no sense in terms of a staging of a rhapsody, less in the fact that the music is stolen from Tchaikovsky - one of Busby Berkeleky's very worst conceptions.

Flatly directed by Robert Z. Leonard and overlong at 114 minutes, this is a forgettable mishmash, far below the standard the studio had previously set for Jeannette, at the time its biggest star. See it only for her.

MGM probably wanted to give their singing sweetheart a break from doing every film with her usual co-star, baritone NELSON EDDY. So, they put her in this mess of a musical just to keep her busy. Her most ardent fans probably won't complain because she does get to sing rather nicely, but the story is--well, a mess with the usual contrived ending that lacks conviction, or any sense of reality.

JEANETTE MacDONALD is a lovely singer with an aspiring song writer for a husband (LEW AYRES, taking a break from his Dr. Kildare chores). The two of them are facing a marriage on the skids because she's getting more popular while his star is fading--until he can write his great concerto for the finale.

It's all old hat with even the presence of FRANK MORGAN and IAN HUNTER not enough to ensure anything approaching solid entertainment.

The Busby Berkeley staged concerto is totally inappropriate and ends the film on a low note.

Summing up: At your own risk.