Broadway Gondolier

I saw this film in 1959 on late night Television at age 14. It left a very favorable and lasting impression with me. I only discovered today day via the Internet, the actual title was "BROADWAY GONDOLIER". I can remember seeing Dick Powell as a gondolier, singing pleasant music and what did I know of the movies at the age of 14 years? Virtually zero at that age! I remember my laughing a lot through this film, if you folks reading this posting have recently seen this very enjoyable Musical Comedy entertainment count yourselves very lucky indeed. As far as I am concerned, I indeed envy your good fortune. It is currently Un-Available on DVD, I suspect it has never been released to Home-Video. We are lucky that the Warner Brothers made such a generally enjoyable entertainment for us at the time of the "Mid-Point of the Great Depression" in 1935. I am sure audiences were wanting to escape their financial woes during the time of this film's release, and that Movie Stars in general would have been living the "High-Life" in comparison to the average person in the street. Irrespective whether Dick Powell was pleading for stronger movie roles, only passing time and film Historians have revealed these facts to us... I have been wanting to get a copy of this film, and I am hoping the Warner Archive will release it on DVD before much longer. I disagree with all the "Negative" reviews posted here on IMDb about this film and many other films. Going to the Movies is like taking a ride in a car, you either want to be on the journey or you do not. A lot of present day audiences are prejudiced against seeing "Black-and-White" movies and many have told me so. Dear reader, if you get the opportunity to view this Black-and-White Film, you need to realize one finer point of movie production in the 1930's and through to the 1950's... And that is that Black-and-White films were made on Nitrate Film Stock using Fine-Grain Silver-Salts to produce real intense Blacks and many Shades of Grey through to Zero-Silver-Salts giving Dazzling White Light from the Carbon-Arc Projector-Lamp-Houses on the Cinema Screens of that time. And unless you are seeing an original 35mm Black-and-White "Original" Nitrate Print struck from the original Camera Negative being projected from a Carbon-Arc Lamp-House, you will usually be seeing the Movie from an Old-16mm-Print (from a Television Station ) using Low-Contrast copies, and you are not seeing the film that audiences were viewing at the time of the Original Release, even during the Great Depression. Later in my life, I was employed as Cinema Projectionist ( for over 30 years ) and I recall my mentor revealing to me that in his youth, he was employed as a junior to soak the Nitrate 35mm Movie prints in a bath tub, and his job was to recover the SILVER-SALTS from the Film-Stock, and the Film Exchanges recovered the actual SILVER from the prints, bringing in a great deal of money as a consequence. This was revealed to me by a Chief Projectionist who had worked in Cinemas and Overseas in the Armed Services as Projectionist during World War 2. Dear reader, I hope you are now, a little better informed, that you are not seeing "Black-and-White" films these days ( in the year 2017 ) as they were Originally presented to audiences during the Golden Years of Cinema in the 1930's and the 1940's, but you are seeing a mere facsimile of what was Originally presented during those Golden years. And back then, and in my time in Cinemas, we took care and were proud of the way we presented each and every motion picture to the Cinema-going public, I am proud to claim to you dear reader I was a "Show-Man"...Please to all fellow reviewers, please no more nasty comments... and to you dear reader, Thank You...

Dick Powell stars with Adolphe Menjou, Joan Blondell, and the Mills Brothers in "Broadway Gondolier" from 1935.

Powell plays Dick Purcell, a cab driver with an impressive singing voice. So good in fact that the producer in the cab, E.V. Richards (Grant Mitchell) in the cab tells him to come to his office. He gets an audition but shows up too late.

Meanwhile, Purcell is interested in the secretary there, Alice (Blondell). When Purcell sees Alice, Richards, and the sponsor of a radio show, Mrs. Flaggenheim (Louise Fazenda) board a boat for Italy, he jumps on and pays his way by washing dishes.

Once there, he becomes a gondolier and impresses Mrs. Flaggenheim, who hires him for her show. He is given the name Ricardo Purcelli and marketed as an Italian. For this, he grows a mustache and acquires an accent. His voice teacher, Eduardo DaVinci (Menjou) plays along.

I think this film contains Dick Powell's best singing, since he fools around with opera and we are able to experience more of his range. His voice was so smooth, and he was very musical. His number with the Mills Brothers, "Lulu's Back in Town" was spectacular.

Powell and Blondell are adorable in this film. They married a couple of years later. What I love about Blondell is that although she often played the wise-cracking role, she was never the same character. Here she is flirty with a soft spot; other times she's tough, or serious, or snappy.

Adolphe Menjou is hilarious as da Vinci, and Grant Mitchell plays flustered well as Richards. Louise Fazenda is also a riot as the cheese company owner.

Interestingly, the next year, Kraft Cheese hired Bing Crosby for their radio show.

I have one bone to pick. At the beginning of the movie, Lyons is discussing "Rigoletto" with another man, and we hear the last line of the opera, sung by Rigoletto, "la maledizione" as they leave. They're talking about how good the tenor is. He sounds like a tenor, too. One small problem - the role of Rigoletto is for a dramatic baritone.

Other than that, I loved it.

It's been awhile since I saw this... It's a fun, harmless Warner Bros. musical of the '30's, with Dick Powell as an American crooner who moves to Italy to be a Gondolier, then (of course) gets discovered by a whacky American rich-lady, out to provide a "real" Singing-Gondolier for her husbands radio show... You get the idea. He falls for an adorable Joan Blondell while trying to hide his real identity... the movie's a lot of fun if you're not looking for great depth or meaning. Typical of the Warner Bros. musical machine of the day, but still fun.

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.

Broadway GONDOLIER is not very well known even among movie buffs but it's one of the most delightful musicals of the 1930's, as much a comedy as a musical. The plot - some plain Joe being hyped up under a bogus image into stardom - has been used in about a million films from CHICAGO to SLIGHTLY FRENCH to TOOTSIE, but it works time and time again, and most definitely here.

Dick Powell stars as a taxi driver who dreams of singing stardom. He blows his big chance by being late for a radio audition and as a result his only option for crashing radio is supplying animal sounds for a kiddie program, a job he loses when his wisecrack about performing for "little brats" goes over the airwaves in a hilarious bit that recalls several infamous real-life radio tongue slips, most of which happened several years after this film. Now unemployable on American radio, he ventures to Italy with his singing teacher Adolphe Menjou in hopes of new opportunities, quite coincidentally at the same time, the secretary from the radio show (and Powell crush) Joan Blondell accompanies cheese heiress Louise Fazenda to Italy to find a new singing star for HER radio program.

There's lots of good comedy here and Dick Powell has never been better in my opinion, ably matched by the always superb Joan Blondell in a somewhat secondary role as the girl who opens doors for him. Powell and Blondell have an excellent "first meeting" scene at the radio station with snappy dialog and comebacks in best 1930's tradition. Louise Fazenda, nearing the end of her very long screen career is cast in an atypical role as a rich matron whose devotion to the memory of her late husband may be tested by her crush on the Italian heartthrob she "discovers", ironically Judy Canova (who later became a star playing hillbilly hayseed roles in the Fazenda tradition) has a brief role in the film as a part of a hillbilly vocal group.

There's a wonderful musical interlude with the Mills Brothers and a hilarious parody of a radio show theme song, this one about the wonders of cheese. Most definitely worth seeking out, not only for fans of 30's musicals but of 30's comedies.