Amour et clair de lune

When the film begins, George (Roger Pryor) is working on a song and when he finally gets it right, he dedicates it to nice-girl Sally (Mary Brian). Soon he's off to the big city to try to make it big and promises to come back for Sally...one day. Well, George makes it very big very fast and seems to have forgotten about Sally. When she comes to the city later, he's so involved in his new solo production he doesn't even recognize her. Soon, however, they have a reunion...but it's cut short when his old partners try to ruin his show. So it's up to George's lady friend, Elsie, to get him in touch with a new backer, Nick (Leo Carillo). Will George be the big solo success AND what of sweet Sally?

This film is one of a bazillion similar sort of films of the era that involve folks putting on a show...a very, very popular plot in the early years of talking pictures. Beucase there are so many there is a certain sameness about all of this. As far as the song and dance numbers go, they are about what you'd expect from a non- Busby Berkeley film--nice but not quite as excessive and goofy as the Berkeley ones.

Overall, this is a reasonably watchable second-tier musical of the era. Nothing new about this one...absolutely new. Hence, my mediocre score of 5.

By the way, at about 26 minutes into the film you BRIEFLY get to see a younger Robert Young, though he's uncredited...even by IMDb.

MOONLIGHT AND PRETZELS was a somewhat tacky attempt by Universal Pictures to cash in on the Busby Berkeley craze that was making mountains of money for Warners in 1933. The backstage plot flagrantly imitates the Warners formula: songwriters and performers desperately want to put on their show but are having trouble raising the money; they hook up with an eccentric investor, go through dramatic ups and downs and eventually pull off the production with flying colors. Along the way we get lots of slangy wisecracks delivered by colorful characters. In this case, the musical numbers are dispersed through the narrative, whereas in the Warners musicals they tended to be stacked at the end. This film boasts an eminently hummable collection of pop songs, chief among which are, from EY Harburg and Jay Gorney, "Ah, But Is It Love" (performed by chorus girls dressed like bleached out clones of Ruby Keeler in "42nd Street" mode), the daffy but catchy "Moonlight and Pretzels" (think, "I Love Louisa" from Schwartz and Dietz in THE BANDWAGON); and "Dusty Shoes," a more optimistic variation on the team's earlier "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" crossed with "My Forgotten Man" from the Warners hit GOLDDIGGERS OF 1933). From Herman Hupfeld we get "Are You Makin' Any Money?" and "I've Gotta Get Up and Go to Work," two jaunty numbers which both suggest the Harry Warren sound. And a beautiful ballad by Harburg and Sammy Fain, "There's a Little Bit of You in Every Love Song." One interesting lost opportunity occurs about half way through the film when hero Roger Pryor (think, a slightly more rough-hewn Dick Powell) tells heroine Mary Brian (think, Ruby Keeler's almost-twin sister) that the prop moon hanging over their heads would be real if she truly loved him. The song that should have followed, "It's Only a Paper Moon," isn't even in this film. This EY Harburg-Harold Arlen song, in fact, ended up in the film version of the Broadway musical TAKE A CHANCE, released later the same year.

The cast is uniformly excellent, with Lillian Miles, a slender platinum blonde with a great set of pipes, as the "star of the show" particularly fetching. The supporting cast includes Leo Carrillo (very funny as a Greek gambler who finances the show and constantly mispronounces words); Bobby Watson as a catty gum-chewing production assistant; William Frawley in typical gruff form.

Karl Freund (cinematographer for Murnau's 1924 THE LAST LAUGH and the 1931 version of FRANKENSTEIN) directed this work and in the "Dusty Shoes" finale, which finds Lillian Miles warbling her heart out behind a phalanx of upstretched hands, one is reminded of a famous scene from Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS. Quite a striking image. One wonders if Freund was deliberately drawing on his German expressionist background or if it was just a coincidence.

Bobby Connolly, who went on to choreograph THE WIZARD OF OZ and other major films, seems off kilter here. The moves of the dancers in the "Ah, But Is It Love" number are noticeably halting and awkward.

I've viewed Moonlight and Pretzels many times, It's a refreshing change from those Busby Berkley musicals from this era. We have a virile male lead, a sensational vocalist in Lilian Miles (far superior to Ruby Keeler) and a totally unique up tempo dance number without all those flowers opening and closing! The orchestra playing behind the dancers is loaded with outstanding musicians. Incidently two of the songs were very successful "Ah! But Is It Love? and Are You Making Any Money" A highly desirable record of these songs was released by Paul Whiteman. A real fun movie from the early thirties.

This is a cheap, shabby rip-off of 'Gold diggers of 1933' which lacks the fun, the charm and the smiles of the original. It's very disappointing.

The predictable and lugubrious story limps along without any surprises or excitement, occasionally punctuated only by some terribly amateurish song and dance numbers. Those real Busby Berkeley numbers in the WB movies or even in the earlier Eddie Cantor films don't look that difficult to copy but this shows that they clearly were. Berkley would probably be considered a voyeur these days but like great artists throughout history, his spectacles were primarily his way of celebrating the sexiness of beautiful young women. The routines in this film completely lack any of that innocent eroticism, we just get cardboard cut-out showgirls doing their steps.

Besides the tiresome story, the lacklustre musical numbers, the instantly forgettable (dull) songs, the obviously small budget and the z-list actors (although Lillian Miles is actually pretty good) the main problem is the direction. Karl Freund did a fantastic job on The Mummy the year before but his slow, moody style just doesn't work at all with this. It's a very long 85 minutes.

"42nd Street" had just come out, and Universal attempted its own version of a backstage musical a la Busby Berkeley with this oddly titled curiosity. It was made in New York for $100,000, which even then was ridiculously cheap, and the corner-cutting is visible in the sets, costumes, and substandard hoofing of the chorus girls, who nevertheless are advertised as "150 of Broadway's loveliest beauties," or somesuch. The screenplay's uninspired, the direction prosaic, the stars not terribly interesting (Roger Pryor, in the Dick Powell role, looks uncomfortable, and Mary Brian has a nice personality but less-than-huge musical talent; Lilian Miles, in the Bebe Daniels part, comes off best). Yet it's fascinating, and entertaining. Thank, first of all, the Jay Gorney-Yip Harburg score, with assistance from Sammy Fain and other fine tunesmiths. "Dusty Shoes," the team's attempt to rewrite their earlier "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" in a slightly more optimistic light, is a wonderful number, powerfully sung by Alexander Gray, and other songs run to such oddities as "Let's Make Love Like the Crocodiles." One could do with less of Leo Carrillo's dialect comedy (he gets top billing, though he's not really the lead), and the show-biz clichés get a little oppressive. Still, it's very worth catching.