Gondoleiro da Broadway

I thought this would be just another formulaic assembly line WB musicals but I was wrong. This is much better than I expected. It feels more like one of those sumptuous Fred Astaire or Jessie Matthews musicals than those bland grey carbon copies Warners seemed to be making at this time.

It's clearly inspired by TOP HAT inasmuch that we're again transported off to a lovely stylised art deco Venice. As with that film, here we have that same silly feel-good blend of romance, confusion and songs. (Apparently the Venice scenes were filmed during a really bad cold snap in Hollywood so all the men were wearing thermal underwear but poor Joan Blondell, in just a sheer silk dress was reportedly freezing.)

The story is cheesy - it's about a cheese company looking for a singer to represent them on their sponsored radio show. It's a longer film than some but it doesn't ever get dull and you'll love every minute of it. It's well written with a surprisingly witty script for this type of thing with comments like "You are so cheesy" being offered as a compliment at one point! It's all very tongue in cheek stuff and its 1935 humour is actually still quite funny.

It's not quite up to TOP HAT standard but it's close. Maybe because he's quite self effacing in this but Dick Powell comes across as much more likeable and normal in this than in some films. Possibly that's because he's got Joan Blondell rather than Ruby Keeler as his romantic interest which would be a plus for any red-blooded man, and indeed a year later he was married to her.

Although not one of her more famous films, I don't think she's ever been funnier than in this one. She seems a little more cynical and dry but still with that lovely warmth which was so much part of her own personality. That tinge of world weariness maybe reflects her life at that stage. This was her first film after her maternity leave and her marriage nosediving towards the rocks. Her husband was definitely not the nice man she thought he was and unfortunately he was the cinematographer on this picture - that did not make for a comfortable set! George Barnes ("Mr Blondell") does however photograph his prize possession amazingly although since he, not her or the director now decided how provocative or suggestive his wife could be, there's certainly none of those old Joan in her undies scenes anymore! Nevertheless, she is possibly the most beautiful she ever was in this film and as I've said, the funniest too. Anyone who doesn't know who Joan Blondell was should watch this.

Another surprise is that even Adolphe Menjou is amusing and that's real rarity. I usually can't stand that guy but he honestly made me laugh in this. The more I think about this, the more I wonder why this isn't more well known. It's not a fantastic film but it's so much better than you would expect.

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.

This little known Dick Powell-Joan Blondell romance musical, with a good turn by Louise Fazenda, is a charmer. What I like most is its erudition. Those must have been the days. At the beginning, occasionally in the middle, and near the end, everyone on the street seems to know the turns and lyrics to arias from Rigoletto."

"What's THAT?!" most movie audiences would ask today.

It opens with two music critics debating how one aria goes, then their cab driver -- who turns into the title character when he masquerades, per his vocal coach Adolph Menjou, as an Italian to get on the radio here -- joins in and a beat cop also does.

The rest of the music is very nice, too; but not quite Verdi.

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).

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.