Rose of Washington Square

Quite some time back I bought a box set of Alice Faye movies, mostly so I could get my hands on a DVD of Four Jills and a Jeep. Recently, I watched another movie in that collection, Rose of Washington Square.

Faye plays Rose Sargent, a singer from just about the time Prohibition was to go into effect. She's unable to make it to the big time, doing amateur night and low-level vaudeville. Working across the street is a fellow singer, Ted Cotter (Al Jolson). But he's not a professional singer yet, instead selling cigarettes at theclub across the street and hoping he can get his big break. Obviously he's got a lot of talent, so he is able to get that break and become a star, forcing him and Rose to go their separate ways, which is a bit of a shame because the two really like each other.

Rose goes to one of those road house places, except that it seems a bit more upscale. She's singing there when she's spotted by Barton Clinton (Tyrone Power), who looks photogenic but is a bit of a bad boy. Or a lot of a bad boy since all of his schemes for making money are on the wrong side of the law. This too is a shame because he'd like to romance Rose and see her become successful, but has no way of supporting this, at least no way that's not legal.

Time passes and Ted has become the star of a musical revue called Yoo Hoo, which means that we're going to have to see Al Jolson do his blackface numbers, which is obviously going to cause problems for a lot of modern-day viewers. Rose and Bart have split up too, since Bart has had to make some quick escapes from the law. Rose is now working in a speakeasy in New York, and when Bart brings some gambling marks there, the two former lovers see each other again and decide to rekindle their relationship.

Ted knows that Bart is bad news for Rose, but she can't seem to see that herself, especially since Bart is into much bigger cons. Shockingly, he claims to be her agent and gets her a contract to be in the new Ziegfeld Follies, without telling her. And to pay the cash he's going to owe her, he's going to have to sell the furniture in the apartment he's borrowing, which is going to tick off the apartment's owner when he returns from Europe.

Eventually he does make the big time and Bart's constant debts catch up with him, leading to a trial for securities fraud that threatens to drag Rose's name through the mud, they by now being married. Bart then does something which to me seemed even more likely to sully Rose's reputation, and that is to jump bail, which Ted had so kindly provided. How is this going to resolve itself in a way that leaves everybody happy while still satisfying the folks in the Production Code Office?

Rose of Washington Square feels like a movie that's not really treading any new ground, which isn't so surprising since you could be forgiven for thinking this all sounds a lot like Fanny Brice and her gangster husband Nicky Arnstein. In fact, Fanny herself thought that, and sued, eventually reaching a settlement out of court. But in any case, the story is reasonably well told, with nice supporting characters like Hobart Cavanaugh as a shill for Cotter's stage act, or William Frawley as an agent. There's also a lot of opportunity for both Jolson and Faye to sing, and fans of 1930s music will probably like all of the songs.

Rose of Washington Square is a competent and endearing movie, but it's also one of those that probably won't ever be remembered as rising significantly above the other musical movies of its era.