Romance, not melodrama

Ginger Rogers started her screen pairing with Fred Astaire back in 1933 with a supporting performance in Flying Down to Rio. But sometimes it feels like RKO didn't know what to do with Rogers when they had to put her in a movie without Astaire. A good example of this is the 1935 film Romance in Manhattan.

We don't see Rogers first; that honor goes to her co-star, Francis Lederer. Lederer plays Karel Novak, a Czech who at the start of the movie is at Ellis Island on his way into the country. He's followed all the rules for becoming an immigrant, or at least he thinks he has. Apparently at some point after he booked passage to America, the law changed from requiring an immigrant to have $50 with him to having $200. Since Karel only has about $60, he's not legal so it's straight back on the boat for him. Come back when you've got $200.

So Karel does what anybody would do in that situation, which is to squeeze through a porthole and literally jump ship, swimming back to a harbor where he's more or less fished out of the water because he's about to drown. In another shame for Karel, he loses his wallet which has his money and ID, so now he's in Manhattan without any money, not even the $60 or so he had had.

While roaming Manhattan, he passes a stage door where, just outside, a young chorus girl is having lunch. The show has apparently put on sandwiches, donuts, and the like, so this young lady gives Karel some food figuring he's one of the army of the unemployed since there's still a depression on. This young woman is of course the Ginger Rogers character, named Sylvia Dennis. Even better for Karel is that Sylvia says she's got a brother who might be able to help Karel get a job.

If this were a Warner Bros. movie or a woman not played by Ginger Rogers, you might think that Karel is going to be sucked into a life of crime, but her offer is more or less legitimate, or at least well-intentioned. Said brother is actually her kid brother Frank (Jimmy Butler), who makes extra money as a paperboy, the two living together since their parents are dead; Frank might be able to get Karel a job selling newspapers. However, Frank is continally skipping school to earn that extra money, and now the social worker types want to put Frank in an orphanage.

Karel is willing to do any work, and does, although things keep conspiring to make life more difficult for him. Along the way, Karel and Sylvia fall in love, which means that the rest of the story is basically the journey to the requisite happy ending.

I don't know exactly what immigration law was like back in the 1930s, but there's no doubt about the fact that Karel has violated federal laws. Not that the movie is trying to make any of the sort of commentary that a movie in 2025 would be making about immigration, of course. But that's one of what felt to me like a plot hole. Never mind Karel being incredibly naive, or the owner of the building where Sylvia lives never noticing that she put Karel up on the roof to sleep since you couldn't have an unmarried couple shacking up together. The movie also feels like it didn't know how to write a gritty character for Rogers.

Then again, I don't think that Romance in Manhattan would have been conceived of by the studio as anything other than a programmer at most. Looking back 90 years at it, I'd say that it's interesting as a time capsule, but nothing particularly noteworthy otherwise.