The Barkleys of Broadway

Back in December, TCM ran a night of movies starring Oscar Levant (or at least co-starring since he wasn't usually the male lead). Among the movies I had not blogged about here before was The Barkleys of Broadway.

Levant plays Ezra Millar, a pianist (there's a stretch) and good friends to the Barkleys, Josh (Fred Astaire) and Dinah (Ginger Rogers). The Barkleys are a successful Broadway couple, doing light musical comedy together. Their latest show has just opened up, and it's a big success, with the couple getting a large amount of applause when the curtain comes down. When they do their curtain call, they flatter each other to the point that you wonder whether or not something is going on in the background.

Unsurprisingly, we soon learn that there is in fact something between the two. In one of the post-premiere parties, Dinah meets director Jacques Barredout (Jacques François), who is going to be doing a play based on the early life of renowned French actress. Barredout admires Dinah, and thinks that she'd be perfect for the lead role. But this is a drama, and Dinah has never done real drama before. Still, Barredout praises Dinah's interpretation in the one point of her current show with Josh where Josh had criticized it, so Dinah decides she's going to try drama.

Josh doesn't like this, thinking Dinah isn't a good fit for drama, and not wanting to lose her from his show. They eventually get in an argument about it, and Dinah decides she's going to leave Josh entirely to do the show, which frankly makes no sense, as they could easily have remained married.

Josh still loves Dinah, and he decides he's going to try to win Dinah back through an elaborate scheme that's going to have him imitate Barredout and giving her advice on how to handle certain scenes in the play. It's a scheme that you'd think would get caught out straight away, but somehow it doesn't. Ezra, for his part, also tries to bring the couple back together at a benefit, but it's too much emotionally for Dinah.

Of course, this being a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie (their final one together a decade after The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle), you know that after all the misunderstandings they're going to wind up together in the final reel, and that does indeed happen with Josh realizing Dinah has the chops for Dinah and Dinah realizing Josh actually had well-intentioned advice for her and is happy doing light comedy.

Even though Astaire and Rogers hadn't done a movie together for ten years, The Barkleys of Broadway follows the tried and true formula of their other comedies, although this one isn't nearly as madcap as the 30s movies. In addition to the dance numbers, with Levant in the cast we get a couple of longer piano scenes as well, notably Khachaturian's "Sabre Dances" and Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. Frankly, I found that these slowed the movie down a bit.

Still, I think anybody who likes the Rogers/Astaire movies from the 30s will enjoy The Barkleys of Broadway. It's available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive collection.