The Belle of Broadway

I think I mentioned the last time I did a silent movie, back on Silent Movie Day a few weeks back, that I have a fairly substantial backlog of silent films to get through, like with foreign films, so it means those two genres are going to show up a bit more often than they normally do. Up next is a silent from Columbia that I hadn't heard of before it showed up on TCM: The Belle of Broadway.

Oddly enough, Broadway really has precious little to do with the movie, other than the fact that one of the two main characters supposedly starred on Broadway in her youth. That character is Mme. Adèle. As the movie opens, it's 1896 in Paris, and Adèle (played here by Betty Compson) is the toast of the Paris stage, playing her most celebrated role, Madame du Barry, who was the last mistress of French King Louis XV in the 1760s and 1770s. Adèle has all sorts of men swooning over her, such as Count Raoul. However, she's also got a husband Fabio, who is set up in the orchestra box and can see all of the men who are not Mr. Adèle like he is trying to woo her. Fabio decides he's had enough of this, and leaves his wife. Worse for her, however, is that he also takes their infant son with him.

Fast forward to the present day, or at least 1926 when the movie was made. Adèle has, like everyone else, grown 30 years older. Acting is, for women, the same as it's always been: a profession where the audience wants young, beautiful things. Adèle (now played by Edith Yorke) is pushing 60, and looking like a woman of 60. Not terrible by any means, but no longer what the audience generally wants in a leading role. The stage producers can no longer find any good roles for her.

Living in the same building as Adèle is young Marie Duval (that's Betty Compson again, so you can guess where the movie is going). She's walking along the sidewalks of Paris on a rainy day when she gets her shoe stuck in a mud puddle. A kind young man named Paul (Herbert Rawlinson) rescues her from her predicament and takes her home. It's at this point that Marie and Adèle finally meet, and Adèle notices the similarity between her younger self when she was playing Mme. du Barry, and Marie. This is also where the plot starts getting ridiculous.

Adèle and the people close to her decide that they could give Marie her big break. But, it would come as Marie pretening to be Adèle, having been rejuvenated by all sorts of plastic surgery and other fountain of youth-type treatments that as I understand it were the rage in the 1920s when the movie was made. Marie goes on stage, and all those suitors Adèle had 30 years prior come out of the woodwork despite the fact that they're now lecherous sexagenarians, The Thin Man joke about the meaning of sexagenarian aside. Marie obviously doesn't remember these people, but they remember who they think she is, and are going to put her in compromising situations.

But if that's not bad enough, the plot is going to get even more ridiculous. Paul, the man who saved Marie from the mud and brought her home, is actually the son of Fabio and Adèle. Dad died when Paul was a kid, and he obviously never met his biological mother. So by going out with Marie who is trying to pass herself off as Adèle, the suitors would consider this an incestuous relationship.

The plot of The Belle of Broadway gets ridiculous in the latter half of its brief running time, but the movie is still a fun one. Granted, if I were trying to introduce people to silent film, this isn't the one I'd pick, but for people who are already fans of the genre, I'd absolutely recommend it.