Lord Byron of Broadway

I watched this film expecting it to be quite bad, so I was pleasantly surprised at its quality. The film is about Roy Erskine (Charles Kaley), by night a singer and piano player at a café, and by day a songwriter. He uses women and then discards them, using the experience of breaking their hearts as material for songs. He gets a break after vaudeville singer Joe Lundeen (Cliff Edwards) sings one of his songs in his show and invites Roy to be part of the act. This is followed by some records, and pretty soon Roy has hit the big time. Through it all Roy is loved secretly by the girl who transcribed his first hit song, Nancy Clover, who is also part of the vaudeville act. However, Roy does eventually fall hard for a woman who turns out be more than his match in the user department.

There is some good music in this one including two attractive Technicolor numbers - "Blue Daughter of Heaven" and "The Old Woman in the Shoe". "Should I", featured in "Singin in the Rain" is performed a couple of times including once by Charles Kaley. "The Japanese Sandman" is not sung in its entirety, but it's a quite catchy jazz tune as performed by Cliff Edwards. There are several other good tunes, mainly written by songwriting team Herb Nacio Brown and Arthur Freed. With good direction, a compelling plot, good music, and competent acting what went wrong? Why did this film flop at the box office?

The main problem with this film, and probably the reason that it flopped, is that the biggest star in it is Cliff Edwards (Ukelele Ike), and he is just a supporting player. William Haines was originally slated as the lead, but he thought playing such a despicable character as Roy Erskine would hurt his film career, so he declined. So, instead, MGM cast a tuneful Haines look-alike, Charles Kaley. Unfortunately, the resemblance ends there. Haines' characters could behave obnoxiously in his films and still get the audience to root for him because you felt that, beneath the facade, there was a good man just waiting to get out, and by the end of the picture that good man never failed to appear. However, in Kaley's depiction of harmonious heel Roy Erskine you feel that what you see is what you get, and never expect him to redeem himself. This was Kaley's only film at MGM. He was only in three other films, all of those at poverty row studios, and as far as I know all three of those films are lost.

If you like the early talking films and musicals, I highly recommend this one. It's been well preserved and both the video and audio are clear on the copy I've seen.

This is a movie musical from 1930 so expect very static scenes as the sound equipment in those days greatly limited the actors and director. Second, let me caution that the actor in the lead male role and the two actresses in the top female roles are often blushingly amateurish. The director didn't seem to be much help and in a few years he would be at Monogram doing routine programmers.

So what's worthwhile here? First there is the performance of Cliff Edwards, who gets a chance at a full-bodied role and does well. He shows he could be more than a Disney footnote.

But the biggest surprise to me was the fine, natural performance of Benny Rubin. I was so accustomed to him as an aging ethnic comedian that I almost didn't recognize him. The role was flash-flash "Jewish" as he played an employee of a song publisher and he joked about charging the hero interest for a loan. But he was the most natural presence on the screen and he shined as a real human being. The camera loved him at the same time it gave scant grace to the leads in this film.

Rubin is often mentioned as a talented comedian who was limited in Hollywood by the ethnic prejudice. Here we see the very real evidence of what was lost because of that prejudice.

ETHELIND TERRY WAS A THEATRICAL SINGER OF BEAUTY AND TALENT, THE HEIGHT OF HER CAREER STARRING IN THE TITLE ROLE OF THE LATE-TWENTIES BROADWAY HIT, "RIO RITA". SHE WAS PASSED OVER FOR RKO'S 1929 MOVIE VERSION IN FAVOR OF BEBE DANIELS - THIS PRODUCTION WITH AN EXTRAORDINARILY LENGTHY RUNNING TIME! MISS TERRY DID HAVE THE FEMALE LEAD IN "LORD BYRON OF BROADWAY" (MGM; 1930), A BAD FEATURE ALTHOUGH WITH THE SONGSTRESS PERFORMING IN A TRULY WONDERFUL MUSICAL NUMBER, "WOMAN IN THE SHOE", PHOTOGRAPHED IN THE TWO-STRIP TECHNICOLOR PROCESS AND LATER REUSED IN "NERTSERY RHYMES", A 1933 MGM COMEDY SHORT FEATURING THE THREE STOOGES WITH TED HEALY (HE AN ANCHOR AROUND THEIR NECKS BEFORE THEY LEFT HIM IN 1934 FOR COLUMBIA PICTURES). TERRY CONTINUED TO STAR IN VARIOUS STAGE MUSICALS, NONE VERY SUCCESSFUL. IN 1937, SHE APPEARED IN A TEX RITTER WESTERN FOR GRAND NATIONAL (A SMALL STUDIO) ENTITLED "ARIZONA DAYS", AND THEREIN LIES A TRULY STRANGE CIRCUMSTANCE: RECEIVING PROMINENT BILLING (THIRD AFTER RITTER'S HORSE, "WHITE FLASH"!) ON POSTERS AND LOBBY CARDS - AND HAVING A BIT OF DIALOGUE WITH ANOTHER WOMAN, BOTH SEATED UPON A WAGON EARLY IN THE STORY - THE SINGER DISAPPEARS FROM THE PRODUCTION! STILLS SHOW HER PERFORMING IN A STAGE NUMBER, VERIFYING THAT SHE HAD A PROMINENT ROLE INITIALLY. BUT ETHELIND TERRY NO LONGER IS EVEN BILLED IN THE PICTURE'S MAIN CREDITS! WHAT HAPPENED? ASIDE FROM A FEW NEWS PHOTOS OF HER AS ASSISTING THE WAR EFFORT BY BEING EMPLOYED IN AN AIRCRAFT PLANT, THIS IN 1943 - STILL HIGHLY ATTRACTIVE - SHE SEEMINGLY DISAPPEARS, AS SHE DID FROM THE TEX RITTER FILM. HER DEATH IS GIVEN AS MARCH 17, 1984 IN FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA, REPORTEDLY WEALTHY ; ADDITIONAL DETAILS, HOWEVER, ARE NOT INCLUDED. PERHAPS AN EXPLANATION WAS RENDERED FOR HER NO LONGER BEING IN THE WESTERN FEATURE, THIS IN A TRADE PAPER SUCH AS "VARIETY" OR "THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER" - UNLESS THEY, TOO, HAD BY THEN LITTLE IF ANY INTEREST IN THIS ONCE VERY SUCCESSFUL SINGER.

SINCERELY, RAY CABANA, JR.

If the name of Ukulele Ike makes you smile with informed warmth, you may want to give a quick flip past "Lord Byron of Broadway" when TCM replays it in thirty years or so. If you're obsessive-compulsive enough to wait out scene after scene of tepid love talk for two-strip Technicolor Albertina Rasch dance routines, or lesser-known Nacio Herb Brown songs trilled by operetta-singing stiffs, you may even sit thru a good portion of it. But whatever you bring to it, be warned that you cannot possibly like this picture.

Even to the 1929 audience, "Lord Byron" must have been a bland plate of turkey indeed. The color dance numbers aren't too bad to look at - Mme. Rasch owed a debt to Busby The Great, or maybe vice versa - but listening to the draggy, chirpy musical settings is painful even if you love the music of the 20s. And if the name of lead actor and grade-B recording star Charles Kaley means anything at all to you, you've watched entirely too much Joe Franklin. Or perhaps you ARE Joe Franklin.

Strictly for nostalgia nerds, this, and even for them, it's not all that rewarding.

"The Lady in the Shoe" number, filmed in primitive color and sung charmingly by Ethelind Terry, is quite stunning for a 1930s film.