User Reviews

This musical was directed by Paul Fejos at Universal Studios in 1929. There were so many musical films made in 1929 with the title "Broadway" in them, thus you might ask - why is this one unique? For one its director was a Hungarian bacteriologist by trade who dabbled in film and is famous in particular for two late 20's films - 1928's "Lonesome" and this film, "Broadway". Fejos made a crane the actual star of the picture. It was a custom built contraption that allowed the camera to sweep about the nightclub in which most of the movie was set. Most early sound films were very static by necessity, and Fejos wanted his musical to have some of the fluid motion of the late silent era restored. However, during these sweeping scenes, Fejos had to use silent film and then dub over it with recorded sound. This gives these parts of the film a surreal and disembodied quality.

The film is like "Faust" meets "Lights of New York" in that the film opens with a metallic-painted giant stalking about Broadway at night, filling his glass with ale, and gesturing for the residents of Broadway to join him in his debauchery. The film then moves to a nightclub where the story is largely unremarkable. It's basically just another gangster film set in a nightclub punctuated with two-strip Technicolor musical numbers. "Hitting the Ceiling" is the best and most remembered of these moments. My main complaint about this film is that Evelyn Brent looks so bored during most of it. She could and did turn in good performances in the early talkie era, so I'm not sure why with all of the intrigue that is lurking about the Paradise Club her reaction seems to be that it's just in a day's work.

The film was shot both silent and in sound, and has never been on VHS or DVD. The silent version I saw had Technicolor, and the sound version I saw was in black and white. I don't think that a talking version with color still exists. Some people have attempted to dub the speech of the talkie version into the silent version to get the maximum effect of the music and the color, but what I've seen hasn't worked too well. The film's director, Paul Fejos, decided to leave the film industry shortly after "Broadway" was complete due to his dislike of the people running Universal. Instead he embarked on a career in anthropology, where he became a leader in his field. An unusual end to the film career of a man who made very unusual films.

After 75 years considered lost, "Broadway" directed by Herr Paul Fejos was found in Hungary, in a very well preserved copy with Hungarian titles but that European language is not a problem for this German Count because he remembers very well those Austro-Hungarian old times. This remarkable discovery gives silent fans the chance to watch the virtuosity of camera work of a director not very well known. His obscurity is a complete disgrace because Herr Fejos'surviving silents are absolutely fascinating.

"Broadway" tells the story of underworld criminals who run the "Paradise Club". In between musical numbers we have crimes and intrigues involving showgirls and special investigators. Passion, strange business and love affairs are all part of the mix too."Broadway" shows characters caught up in dual roles and the turmoil in which feelings come out into the open, the sort of conflicts that Herr Fejos was so fond of.

The most remarkable aspect of this film is the extraordinary camera work, especially Herr Fejos' use of an enormous and amazing camera crane which he himself designed and which scrutinizes every corner of the "Paradise Club", giving a frenzied rhythm to the film with those incredible camera movements. It also highlights with many details and angles, the beautiful and astounding sets that are the backgrounds for the fuss, happy and dangerous night life in the Broadway streets. The second notable aspect of this modern silent film is that it was made before the superb "Lonesome" (1929) and, like that film, it is part of the transition period between silent films and talkies. "Broadway" was an early musical available in both formats, silent and talkie and what's more, the silent version found in Hungary is a complete copy that includes at the end of the film "Technicolor" footage ( faded after so many years ) of the final musical scene number and this so startled this German Count that his monocle popped out from his aristocratic eyes more than once.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must leave vaudeville behind and attend the opera.

Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com/

Broadway now exists in two versions - the 88 minute visual silent with Hungarian subtitles and the 105 minute soundtrack only of the talking version (inflated for production numbers).

I was most impressed with the cinematography (Hal Mohr) in the scenes that could be filmed silently with soundtrack added later. The tracking and crane shots are amazing for any period, but especially for an early talkie; about an hour into the silent print, a morning after shot reveals the enormous night club set being cleaned by custodians with an almost surrealistically mobile camera. In contrast the scenes including dialogue are filmed rather conventionally with a non-moving camera.

The night club set is a stunner - looks like it took up an entire sound stage - kudos to Art Director Charles D. Hall. There are only a handful of other sets, mostly small backstage interiors.

The plot is very simplistic. I won't reveal any details as I don't want to provide spoilers. However, I can reveal this. There are two parallel plot lines - one involving a hoofer and his romance with one of the chorus girls, and the other a reel one murder involving management and bootlegging that relies on feelings of guilt and paranoia to bring the guilty party to heel.

Glenn Tryon is a lousy singer, but Evelyn Brent's superb performance as Pearl carries the film.

As a piece of cinematic history, it's a treasure to find. Now if the talking version pictorial elements surface, we'll be able to really compare the two.

The Film Forum in NYC screened the sound version of this film on July 24,2012. The Technicolor last reel of course is lost but the rest of the film was complete and ran about 108 minutes. Will not give away the plot but is worth viewing just to see the innovative use of a giant camera crane to film the Night-Club scenes. Really amazing for a film made in 1929. I must say that the acting is really not that great for a film listed as a Universal "Super Production" in the opening credits.Glenn Tryon is passable playing the role of the comedian but you have to wonder how much better the film would have been if Lee Tracy, who played the same role in the Broadway Musical that the film was based on had appeared in the film also.

If you take away director Paul Fejos's flashy crane shots and stunning opening sequence set to the music of Ferde Grofe's "Metropolis," there isn't much left to "Broadway," an otherwise static transfer of a stage play to the screen in the early talking era. The quality of the sound is superior to most talkies made in 1929 and the camera set ups and actor blocking are slightly less moribund, but there are still too many long sequences of posed bodies mouthing dull dialogue. Glenn Tryon, the appealing vaudevillian from Fejos's "Lonesome" the year before, is fine as the hoofer who dreams of getting out of Club Paradise and hitting it big. And Evelyn Brent, in what amounts to a supporting role, dominates the screen with her smoldering presence whenever she appears. Problem is, in order to make this routine play about backstage intrigue involving showgirls and bootleggers interesting as cinema, Fejos chose to make liberal use of innovative, ambitious crane shots, requiring an inflation of the nightclub setting to such gargantuan proportions that the main character's ambitions seem questionable; isn't he already headlining in the biggest show place on earth outside a football field? Rather than a small-time venue, we get something more like a surrealist-cubist airplane hangar and it soon becomes clear that the movie is simply an excuse for Fejos to experiment with a new toy. The sweeping camera draws attention to itself, whereas the liberal use of superimpositions in "Lonesome" a year earlier revealed truths about modern mechanized drudgery and the nature of urban crowds. Most of the songs by Con Conrad, Sidney D. Mitchell and Archie Gottler are cut off before they can get much beyond their introductions, their purpose reduced to another means of showing off the gigantic stage set. At well over 90 minutes, "Broadway" outstays its welcome. The much-touted finale, synced to a reprise of the film's best song, "Hittin' the Ceiling," looks like a jerkily animated third-generation color photocopy.

If, like me, you are fascinated by films from the dawn of sound, You will enjoy Broadway. If you don't, you'll find it a clunky monstrosity in a bad print.

The first thing you'll notice is the camera work: optical printing of a giant spritzing the Great White Way, a camera that flashes around the set and so forth. This is an enormously technically advanced movie for 1929.

The next thing you will notice is the bad acting. It's certainly interesting to see Arthur Houseman in a sound film in which he's not a comic drunk, Thomas Jackson is fine in the role he originated on Broadway and Evelyn Brent gives an amazing performance. However, leads Glen Tryon and Merna Kennedy are whiny. In addition, a lot of the cast moves in strange ways, which I attribute to the fact that they're used to shooting for silent films, and don't have much understanding of how to pace movement with dialogue.

What gave me the most pleasure is that this is an anti-Damon-Runyon show. I love Damon Runyon's stories, but, as some one noted, the pleasure of his work is that you never hear the gunfire, never see the murders; you see the people at the edge of the underworld, stupid and non-threatening. Here, in this backstage musical, you see the gangsters backstage, killing each other and threatening rape. My pleasure in this movie lies not in what it does, but what it tries to do and fails.

Broadway represents what you practically picture when you think of the typical, or in this case perhaps proto-typical or quintessential or one of those highfalutin terms - of the late 20's/early 30's back-stage musical. This isn't to say that it's entirely like something of the quality of, say, 42nd Street or other Busby Berkley musicals, it doesn't quite have that standard of artistry. But it has the edge, via director Paul Fejos, of containing a certain excitement to its plot by it being really kicked off by a behind- closed-doors murder (let's just take him out as if the guy is drunk, even though he's dead) and it has a good gangster edge to it. Maybe not fully that, but it has that criminal side that makes it more than just the standard back-stage drama.

There's some romance too, between one of the guys that I think runs the show or runs the club or something like that, and one of the dancing/singing girls for the show. It feels like we know it will have a tragic outcome in some way or another, but we can't be totally sure how it will unfold (one may have an idea, and you may be correct, but who will eventually take out who turns out to be a real surprise). The main mark against it is that some of the dialog and performances haven't aged too amazingly, but then context is in order: this was one of the earliest tries at not just a sound picture but a sound musical, and in that sense it's phenomenally directed by nature of the movement of the camera. Of course one can tell when at certain times it has to stop dead and the actors are there on set for the sake of the microphone getting their dialog as carefully as possible. Also, as one might expect, some (or many) of the performances are more geared for the stage, how the dialog is spoken especially.

What elevates it is the joy in Fejos's direction and that he doesn't get *bad* performances exactly out of his players (at worst they're just mediocre or forgettable). He also brings a certain authenticity, or just a 'movie' authenticity if that makes sense, to the feel of this back-stage drama and how everything does keep moving story-wise. It may run a minute or two too long, but the finale makes it all worth it as the filmmakers use an early two- strip technicolor for the big finale number "Sing a Little Love Song", which even has a couple of laughs simply by featuring the 'bitching-rest-face' performer (who does have a pivotal role in the climax just before this). This is probably the must-see part of the movie, and this comes after what has been a more than competently made musical that has the songs worked in to the story, not those that come inorganically, and if you have the patience for the technical imperfections as they were working things out, it's fun.

I finally saw this film after hearing about it for years. It has good photography for an early talkie, the art deco settings and the imaginative costumes are lovely to behold, and the acting and direction in the dialog scenes are putrid. Paul Fejos may have been a great visual director in silents, and, as I say, this film does have good visuals, but there are so many bad dialogue scenes, mainly by the men involved, that this becomes just another bad early talkie. Evelyn Brent, whom I admired so much in THE SILVER HORDE, has little to do here but scowl in her performance. Betty Francisco, as Mazie, comes off best of the females. None of the men turn in good performances, with the prize for worst acting going to the actor playing McCorn, the cop. He reads his lines in a flat monotone while he looks off camera as if for cue cards. The sound recording is good except for one scene when it totally drops out for a few seconds, and the print quality is pretty good, save for the Technicolor finale which looks pretty bad. This was apparently a hit when it came out. Practically anything with sound was in 1929, but take away the pretty trappings, and you have a pot boiler that would have lost money if, say, Tiffany had made it. Watching this suddenly elevates films like THE Broadway MELODY and ON WITH THE SHOW! to absolute greatness.

"Broadway" is a very unusual film. While it is a very early talky and is dated in some ways, in others it's amazingly advanced...especially with the truly spectacular camera-work. For the artistry alone, it's well worth seeing!

The opening credits are shocking and very interesting...and you know you're in for a special film. Using a model of Broadway, a man dressed up like a demon roams the streets and the titles then appear over it! For a model scene, it was very, very well done. Also well done are scenes using cranes, amazing dissolves and a roving camera- - something rarely seen even in films of the 30s! Also amazing are the costumes....especially the one with the skyscraper hats!

As for the story, a mobster named Crandall owns the theater in which the film is set. He's involved in bootlegging and early on in the picture, he murders his competition. As he and his sidekick are dragging the body outside, Billie and Roy see them...and are told the guy was drunk and they are 'helping him'. This story is unquestioned...but when Scar is found dead nearby, Roy realizes what has happened. As for Billie, she obviously has feelings for Crandall, and he's been heaping his attention on her, and she lies for the guy when asked about this later. So what's going to become of Billie and Roy? And, what of the murder? Will it go unpunished?

This film is unusual because although you see lots of costumes and dancers, it's not a musical until the very end--which is, incidentally, in Two-color Technicolor...and it's very degraded (looking mostly black and orangy-red). The copy I saw on YouTube sure could stand restoration.

As far as the overall film goes, it was BRILLIANT for 1929....and still holds up pretty well today.

"Broadway" (1929) contains some instances of dizzying, stupendous camerawork; most of the film, however, is shot in a more prosaic manner. The sets are impressive, but the story playing out inside them is mostly trite. The two main leads lack charisma; some secondary roles (the cop, the crook) are better, and then there is Evelyn Brent. Brent had already starred in one of the very few all-talkies made in 1928 (!), "Intereference", so unlike most of the other cast members, she was not new to all this. And she has more star presence than anyone else. She is the perfect embodiment (and what a thick body it is!) of female vengeance, and her climactic scene with the crook single-handedly earns this film an extra half-star. The final sequence is in color, but in current prints, at least, it looks terrible: someone needs to remaster this. **1/2 out of 4.

BROADWAY (Universal, 1929), directed by Paul Fejos, is a Carl Laemmle Jr. Super Production, and it shows. Taken from the hit play by George Abbott and Philip Dunning, BROADWAY came at the time when movies were equipped with new sound technology, putting the silent films to rest. Of the many early talkies from 1929, BROADWAY proved to be one of the finer productions produced due to the Hungarian director's futuristic visuals and offbeat camera angles that make this musical/drama appear more modern than some of the other talkies primitive styles. With a handful of "Broadway" titles used for its early musicals, there are those that were backstage themes. BROADWAY is categorized as a "night club" story with production numbers and murder story combined. Headed by unfamiliar marque names to contemporary viewers, Glenn Tryon, playing the hoofer/singer, gets feature billing supported by actresses known for their silent screen performances as Evelyn Brent, on loan from Paramount, and Merna Kennedy, best known as Charlie Chaplin's co-star in his silent comedy classic, THE CIRCUS (United Artists, 1928).

BROADWAY gets its stunning visual opening with a studio set air view of New York City's Broadway district of glittering lights before a huge, half-naked man walks through the streets superimposed under the title cards, pouring a drink into his glass and sprinkling it over Broadway. Next scene resumes its camera tracking through the Broadway district of theaters, movie houses and hotels before settling into the Paradise Night Club managed by Nick Verdis (Paul Porcasi). Roy Lane (Glenn Tryon) and Billie Moore (Merna Kennedy) are introduced as a dance team for the club. Steve Crandall (Robert Ellis), a bootlegger, assisted by Dolph (Arthur Housman), have a run-on in the cabaret office with gangster, James "Scar" Edwards (Leslie Fenton) who has been robbed of a truckload of liquor by Steve's gang, leading Crandall to shoot and kill Scar in the back. Scar and Dolph carry Scar, passing as an unconscious drunk, outside the club as witnessed by Roy and Billie, onto the back of a parked truck where they cover the body with a blanket. Unknown to Crandall, Scar happens to be married to Pearl (Evelyn Brent), one of the chorus girls in the show. When she learns of his death, she vows vengeance on his murder. During the course of the story, Dan McCorn (Thomas Jackson), having discovered the body a few blocks away, and having his suspicions, enters the scene with investigations. Others in the cast are: Otis Harlan (Andrew "Porky" Thompson); George Davis (Joe, the Waiter); Marion Lord (Lil Rice); and Gus Arnheim and his Orchestra. Though some sources list character actor, Fritz Feld, to appear as Mose Levitt, his name is not in either of the cast or visible in the final print. Thomas Jackson stands out as the detective with his overly familiar slow-speaking tone sleuth.

The songs by Con Conrad, Archie Gottler and Sidney Mitchell include: "Hitting the Ceiling" (sung by Glenn Tryon), "Hot Footin' It," (featuring Glenn Tryon dressed as a child); "Which Came First? The Chicken or the Egg" (performed by Tryon dressed as a school teacher); Tap Dance Number; "Sing a Little Love Song" (sung by Tryon and Merna Kennedy); "Broadway" and "Hitting the Ceiling" (reprise/Technicolor finale). The production numbers are as impressive as the film's visual opening, especially with its Art-Decco sets. They are not as stunning as some of the latter musicals of the 1940s, 1950s and beyond, but often start with Glenn Tryon walking down a long and wide pathway introducing his songs as the camera captures him many feet above the stage and looking down at him. The first song opening occurs 20 minutes into the start of the film. With the songs interlude not performed in its entirely, often interrupted by cutaways and dialogue by other actors, it is evident that the plot element comes as its main factor.

Glenn Tryon, who physical appearance makes one think of either a teenage Frankie Darro or cowboy actor, Guinn Williams, gives a good account of his portrayed character. Virtually forgotten, and having performed on stage and the silent screen in the twenties appearing in both short and feature films, BROADWAY should have paved the way for greater success, but didn't. Eventually Tryon became director before returning to acting in the 1940s, mostly in minor roles before disappearing from view. BROADWAY was later adapted for the screen again by Universal in 1942 starring George Raft, Pat O'Brien and Janet Blair, with new songs and updated story, but without those visuals and art-decco sets that have made the 1929 original so memorable.

Fortunately a film survivor, this 105 minute production was placed on DVD. To date, BROADWAY has never been shown on cable television, which is a shame because the film as a whole remains as impressive today as it must have been in 1929. (***)

Crane shots, where a camera is positioned on the end of a long sturdy pole called a jib, is as ubiquitous in sporting events, concerts, award shows and in movies as seagulls at the beach. D. W. Griffith gets credit for having the first crane shot in cinema in 1916's "Intolerance." But that was a camera sitting on an elevated moving platform on rails.

The first use of a crane for filming was May 1929's "Broadway." The combination musical and gangster film, based on the 1926 play of the same name, "Broadway," was one of the first Hollywood films to center its plot around a backstage drama involving a murder. Paul Fejos, who the previous year directed "Lonesome," was selected to handle Universal Pictures first all-talkie musical. The studio executives felt so highly of Fejos' talents they budgeted an astronomical $1 million towards "Broadway's" production.

Much of the expenses went to construct a huge nightclub set as well as a large 50-foot crane to support the camera bolted to its top end. The entire system, costing between $50,000 and $75,000, carried a heavy camera and was mounted onto an iron cart on wheels. The crane, used both inside and outside, gave Fejos the freedom to film elevated shots from the stage to the ceiling of the specially-constructed Paradise Club. Working alongside cinematographer Hal Mohr, cameraman for the 1927 "The Jazz Singer," Fejos maneuvered the apparatus throughout the nightclub set. Cinema had never quite seen such a soaring series of shots like Mohr's. This helped to capture a breathtaking dance number at the conclusion, which was filmed in two-strip Technicolor. After "Broadway's" production finished, the crane remained with Universal long after Fejos left, where it was put to good use.

"Broadway" opens up with a whirlwind of images, sending viewers' eyeballs bouncing all over the place. Universal built a small-scale model of New York City's mid-town centered around Broadway's theater district. A smaller camera crane whips around the miniature skyline before a double exposure of a very fit Green Giant-type of model appears. Once inside the Paradise, the camera continues to dollie throughout the corridors and stage area, transporting the audience inside the nightclub, a la Martin Scorsese's 1990 "Goodfellas." Fejos plants his camera inside the sound-proof container only when the movie's plot begins to unfold. Once inside, "Broadway" zooms in on choreographer Roy Lane (Glenn Tryon of "Lonesome" fame) and his dancer girlfriend, Billie Moore (Merna Kennedy), both whom try to avoid the criminal element of the nightclub's owner and his associates. Merna Kennedy had earlier played opposite Charlie Chaplin in 1928's "The Circus" and ironically, later married the choreographer of a number of early film musicals, Busby Berkeley.

Even though "Broadway" received decent returns, both Universal and Fejos were disappointed by the receipts. Once he wasn't named as director for Universal's upcoming 1930 "All's Quiet on the Western Front," Fejos left the studio to pursue other opportunities in film and followed his passion as an anthropologist. But his imprint on the dazzling crane shot in cinema would forever be imprinted in movies as one of the more reliable sweeping motion shots on the screen.

I just came home from maybe the premier of the restored version with 2-color finale. The screening is part of a terrific series at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan going through a dozen or more Universal recently restored films. Last night's King of Jazz was one of the greatest movie going experiences I ever had.

Ol' Man Law of Averages caught up tonight. This movie is cringe-worthy terrible, and if you want to see it for crane shots be my guest. For Historians and obsessives only.

A hackneyed gangster/nightclub story. Acting that was so wooden you wanted to leap into the screen and help out. One standout character. Leading lady apparently recuperating from a recent lobotomy. There was some potential in the nightclub acts but thanks to a blurry shoot and that damn crane (again), the dancers look like mice.