Lord Byron of Broadway

This film is full of very talented actors and actresses, who I've never seen before, and don't know their names. I think 1930 is getting pretty close to the start of talkies, but the sound is fine in this one. Its full of good songs and good performers, instrumental and vocal, men and women. Dancing extraordinaire! Busby Berkely type routines on stage with Circles of high kicking young ladies. This captures the feeling and the passion of the music of this day. Charles Kaley, (Roy Erskine) is one of the main singers and actors. He is superb in both respects. The ladies opposite him are perfect to a "T" also. Flappers galore. Where are they now? If you would like to be taken back to the 20's in fine style, catch this short film. Dave Danzl

I've seen this film twice and I think it's really one of the most underrated early musicals. Yes, it has its flaws: there's some typical early-talkie clunkiness in the direction, and Charles Kaley as the leading man is good-looking and a competent actor but hardly the irresistibly charismatic woman-magnet and energetic go-getter the script tells us Roy Erskine is. (Imagine this script as an early-1930's Warners product with James Cagney in the lead and you've got a good idea of what this story could have been.) But the story has real bite and pathos, its picture of the music business as exploitative and cutthroat rings as true now as it did then, and next to Rouben Mamoulian's masterpiece "Applause" this is probably the darkest backstage musical ever made. Even the ending, which in other hands could have been unbearably sentimental and sappy, is handled with the same realistic toughness as the rest of the film. Worthy of note is the appearance of a Columbia record label on screen (the label Charles Kaley actually recorded for; I have a 78 of him singing "Hello, Bluebird," a song Judy Garland revived in her last film, "I Could Go On Singing") instead of a made-up record company, and the two beautifully preserved two-strip Technicolor dance numbers (including an Albertina Rasch ballet that features Busby Berkeley-style overhead shots a year before Berkeley himself ever made a film) that show off what a gorgeous process two-strip Technicolor really was, with a harmonious, painterly color scheme that often is more pleasing than the often overripe colors of the early three-strip process which replaced it.

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.

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

LORD BYRON OF Broadway (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1930), directed by William Nigh and Harry Beaumont, turns out to be another one of the studio's musical contributions to "The Broadway Melody" (1929) mode. With the title leaving the impression of a British Lord achieving fame and fortune on the Broadway stage, it's actually a scripted story from the novel by Nell Martin dealing with an American songwriter and the women and tunes in his life. While this production could have been a reunion for its "Broadway Melody" stars of Charles King, Bessie Love and Anita Page, MGM placed another singing Charles in the lead, Charles Kaley, accompanied by Broadway veteran, Ethelind Terry, and Marion Shilling as his female co-stars. As with many early musicals featuring star named performers from the theater making their mark in motion pictures, the names of Kaley and Terry just didn't go any further than this film. As much as they separately appeared later in short subjects and an obscure western film into the thirties, LORD BYRON OF Broadway was just another here today/gone tomorrow musical from the early sound era and nothing more.

The story introduces Roy Erskine (Charles Kaley), a piano playing songwriter coming to the Trocadero Café where he's met by another one of his rejected girlfriends, this one named Kitty, who sees him for what he actually is. With another girl out of the way, Roy encounters Bessie (Gwen Lee), a flirtatious blonde at the café. He escorts Bessie to her apartment where he not only gets an inspiration for another new song, but works fast with kiss and embrace with a woman he hardly knows. Later, Bessie introduces Roy to Mr. Millaire (John Byron), a song promoter interested in his latest composition, "Just a Bundle of Old Love Letters." In spite of her favor, Roy begins to tire and ignore Bessie. Later that night, Roy comes into a sheet music store where he immediately becomes interested in employee, Nancy Clover (Marion Shilling), who guides him through his "Love Letters" song. The song is soon introduced on the theatrical stage by Joe Lundeen (Cliff Edwards), the popular singer of songs. Roy and Nancy, who happen to be in the audience, are shocked when Lundeen credits the "Love Letters" song written by Mr. Millaire. As Roy proves he actually wrote that song, Lundeen's agent, Phil (Benny Rubin) stumbles upon a great idea by having Roy and Lundeen work as a song and dance team, with Nancy at the piano, and Roy providing his latest song hits. Now a popular vaudeville team, Roy, the ladies man, forgets his friends and spends much of it with Ardis Treyker (Ethelind Terry), a theatrical singer. After Roy and Ardis become engaged, Roy discovers his fiancé happens to still be married, and is surprised to find out the name of her husband of seven years. Also appearing in the story are Drew Demarest (Edwards, the Butler); Paulette Aqult (Marie, the Maid); Gino Corrado (Riccardi, the jealous husband); Rita Flynn and Hazel Craven, among others not credited in the cast listings.

While LORD BYRON OF Broadway gets by with its familiar plotting, the song interludes come off best. The motion picture soundtrack, credited by "Broadway Melody" composers as Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed include: "Just a Bundle of Old Love Letters" (sung by Charles Kaley); "The Japanese Sandman" and "Just a Bundle of Old Love Letters" (both sung by Cliff Edwards); "Just a Bundle of Old Love Letters" (reprise by Kaley); Untitled dance number; "Blue Daughter of Heaven" (stage production by Dmitri Tiomkin and Raymond B. Cagan, sung by James Burroughs); "Should I?" (sung by Charles Kaley); "Should I?" (sung by Ethelind Terry); "The Woman in the Shoe" (stage production sung by Ethelind Terry); and "You're the Bride and I'm the Groom" (sung by Kaley). The two production numbers, staged and filmed in color to an otherwise black and white film, are highlights to a degree. As much a some musicals of 1930 were beginning to improve in its staging by this point (as opposed to production numbers from 1929 with ensembles doing card-wheels or flip-flops), "The Japanese Sandman," for instance, is a predate to the Busby Berkeley numbers of the 1930s with chorus girls in circular revolving floors doing formations captured by camera from top of the stage. Yet, this production is credited not by Berkeley but to Sammy Lee, with ballet sequences by Albertine Rasch. "The Woman in the Shoe" is another color staged production that comes later in the story. Of the bundle of songs vocalized, "Should I?" is well received, considering it was the same score used in parts of the silent film production of OUR MODERN MAIDENS (MGM, 1929) starring Joan Crawford.

Though Kaley sings and acts his part well, like Charles King from "The Broadway Melody," they would only become associated only with early sound musicals during the 1929-30 season and nothing else. Ethelind Terry, better known for her stage role in the Florenz Ziegfeld musical, RIO RITA, receives second billing, yet surprisingly comes 40 minutes into this 70 minute story. One would assume it would be Ethelind as the good girl rather than the third-billed Marion Shilling, the actual co-star of the story. The only familiar faces seen here are Benny Rubin (with that distinctive laugh) and Cliff Edwards, considering their extended movie and later television roles, even if their latter day careers were far from major. Edwards, however, usually associated with singing and comedy routines, is quite effective with good when serious, especially during his showdown scenes with song and dance partner, Kaley.

With the exception of rare revivals in theatrical movie houses as Theater 80/St Marks in the 1970s, LORD BYRON OF Broadway remains virtually forgotten and unknown today, even with occasional cable television showings on Turner Classic Movies and availability on home video and DVD. It may not have been theatrically successful in 1930, LORD BYRON OF Broadway somehow holds interest for film buffs, even with the now lacking of better-known names heading in the cast. (**)