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Monday, July 30, 2018

BROADWAY BABIES (1929)

Half backstage musical/half cardsharp gambling racket, this Early Talkie is all technical birth pangs & little payoff since no one’s got the goods to break thru the mechanical limitations of the early sound technology. Once popular Alice White, looking a bit like Goldie Hawn from some angles, is the B’way Babe in question, engaged to dance director Charles Delaney, and living in the same theatrical rooming house. But an arranged date with Detroit businessman Fred Kohler goes so well, the guy falls hard, offering a way out with riches and a proposal. But first, he’ll have to survive the rigged high-stakes poker scam he’s fallen into. (A flight above the game room, a xylophone player spies and taps out Morse Code. Yikes!) Director Mervyn LeRoy, in his first Talkie*, is plenty stiff with both sides of the drama, submitting to sound technicians who use a surprising amount of dubbed effects and underscoring. (At the time, sound mixing was so primitive, it makes the voices sound underwater.) Delaney, as the disappointed beau, has an intriguing unvarnished quality, but everyone else is awfully stilted, especially Ms. White. LeRoy, who’d already made three silents with her, didn’t think she could act anyway without constant detailed coaching. Now, with the addition of sound, it’s clear she also can’t sing, can’t dance: a Triple Threat.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/DOUBLE-BILL: *LeRoy’s sloppy auto-bio (TAKE ONE) misremembers a late silent with White, NAUGHTY BABY/’28, as his first Talkie. (And a Part-Talkie with White, HOT STUFF/’29, came between BABES and BABIES.) And while LeRoy improved quickly with his best work coming in the mid-30s @ Warners, White was soon demoted to supporting roles. See her at her best as a chess playing secretary in EMPLOYEES’ ENTRANCE/’33, made after a year's hiatus.

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