Broadway to Hollywood

Mickey Rooney was TCM's Star of the Month last December, and I suppose I should probably start getting through some of the movies that I recorded not having blogged about before. First up will be one of his juvenile roles which is actually fairly brief, in the movie Broadway to Hollywood.

Rooney is, as I mentioned above, not the star here; that honor goes to Frank Morgan and to a slightly lesser extent Alice Brady. They play Ted and Lulu Hackett respectively, and as the movie opens it's probably some time in the 1880s, although I don't think everything quite fits in terms of the movie's timeline. Ted and Lulu are stars on the vaudeville circuit, which as I understand it would be the early days of vaudeville at least in the US. Ted and Lulu love each other, although Ted has difficulties being faithful, sometimes cavorting with women and sometimes cavorting with the bottle.

Eventually they have a son together, Ted Jr. (played by Jackie Cooper as a juvenile and Russell Hardie as an adult) and bring him up in the world of vaudeville, training him to become part of the act and turn it into a true family act instead of a double. Unfortunately, Ted Sr. and Lulu don't really do anything to innovate or keep the act up with the changing times, with the result that the parents become a bit less successful over time while Ted Jr. grows up to be a success on his own and having the clout to get his parents bit parts in a revue which will star him.

One generation follows the other, and Ted Jr. meets a nice woman in the show named Anne Ainsley (Madge Evans), falls in love with her, and eventually marries her, although she gets the distinct feeling tht Ted's parents don't really approve of the relationship. Perhaps she should be worrying about her husband, though, as the Hackett and Ainsley partnership seems to be going the way of the relationshp Ted Sr. and his parents had. Ted Jr. takes to both drink and women, which causes Anne all sorts of anguish, even though they have a kid of their own, Ted III (Mickey Rooney as a juvenile and Eddie Quillan as an adult). Eventually, Anne confronts Ted Jr., leading to tragedy. Ted Jr. deals with it by leaving Ted III with his parents while going off to fight in the Great War and getting himself killed in action.

Another decade or more passes, with movies taking over for vaudeville. Ted III grows up and is discovered by Hollywood to have great talent, although there's not much use for his parents. Ted III becomes successful enough that he can bring his parents out to Hollywood and give them a comfortable retirement. But, like his father and grandfather before him, Ted III lets success go to his head, having problems with both drink and women that threaten to derail his career too.

Broadway to Hollywood was released in 1933, and the first thing that I noticed is that the musical numbers in the movie are all badly filmed, as though they didn't know of the influence of Busby Berkeley and 42nd Street which came out early in 1933. Apparently, the bigger production numbers were archive footage: MGM had planned to make a sequel to The Hollywood Revue of 1929 in 1930 but never released it. Eventually, they used some of that footage in Broadway to Hollywood, which would explain what those musical numbers are so creaky. They're actually from 1930.

That fact, combined with Broadway to Hollywood being a decided programmer instead of a prestige picture, give the film an atmosphere of being not quite up to snuff in terms of production values. That's a bit of a shame, since even though the idea isn't terribly original, is one that could have wound up much better instead of a dated time capsule. Broadway to Hollywood is still worth one watch, but is definitely just a pedestrian movie in the end. Watch also for some famous names in small parts, and see if you spot Curly and Moe Howard without looking up their roles in the credits first.