This film is a production code era remake of "The Broadway Melody of 1929", and quite ironically one of several titular successors to that film - "The Broadway Melody of 1940" - was a great film made this same year of 1940 that shared not a trace of the original's storyline. "Two Girls on Broadway" doesn't share the franchise title, but has the same storyline as the original Broadway Melody. The problem is, the first Broadway Melody was made before the production code and at the dawn of sound and its quirks and brashness made it special. This successor therefore looks tired and drab next to it, in spite of the vast improvement in the writing of dialogue and production values over the intervening eleven year period. The scrubbing the censors gave to the original's hard edges worsens matters even more.
Here, we still have the Mahoney sisters being recruited for a new Broadway musical involving song and dance man Eddie Kerns, with Eddie originally engaged to the older sister but finding he is attracted to the younger sister once he meets her. However, now our sisters are named Molly and Patricia, rather than Hank and Queenie, maybe to please the censors and make them seem more lady-like? Gone are the jokes about undressed chorus girls, gone is the hard-edged dialogue - although they gave it a decent try with the ever wonderfully brassy Joan Blondell as the older Mahoney sister, and gone is the colorful and temperamental backstage crew, some with ambiguous sexual orientation and all with attitude and mouth to spare.
Our now thoroughly sanitized plot even paints the lecherous playboy that pants after the younger sister - here 'Chat' Chatsworth versus 29's Jock Warriner - as a serial groom. In the original, he was sleeping with chorus girls and tossing them aside. Here, of course, he's had five wives and plans to make Pat his sixth for six months or so. Apparently, all this sleeping around is fine with head censor Joe Breen as long as there is a marriage license involved in every case.
In the end, like in the original, the noble older sister steps out of the way so that Eddie and her younger sister can be married with no feelings of betrayal by either. However, here Eddie rescues younger sister Pat from a mob scene of a wedding at city hall, not a near rape at a prohibition party as in the 29 film. Afterwards, older sister Molly decides to go back to Nebraska, to the simple pleasures of farm and county fair, rather than continue on hoofing with a new partner as predecessor Hank did. I guess in 1940 Broadway was no place for a nice girl, or at least that seems to be the lesson of this film.
I give this one a 5 because, although I thoroughly disliked the plot, I really liked the performances. I've already mentioned the wonderful Joan Blondell, but there's also Lana Turner who is just perfect as the wide-eyed innocent Pat who knows the score of what she's letting herself in for with Chatworth but is willing to do just about anything so that older sister Molly can have her happiness. George Murphy does a good job of recreating the same energy and enthusiasm that Charles King brought to the part of Eddie Kerns in the original.
My recommendation is that if you've seen the Broadway Melody of 1929 you'll likely be disappointed in this obvious remake, but if you haven't or you're not into the earliest sound films you just might like it.
Here, we still have the Mahoney sisters being recruited for a new Broadway musical involving song and dance man Eddie Kerns, with Eddie originally engaged to the older sister but finding he is attracted to the younger sister once he meets her. However, now our sisters are named Molly and Patricia, rather than Hank and Queenie, maybe to please the censors and make them seem more lady-like? Gone are the jokes about undressed chorus girls, gone is the hard-edged dialogue - although they gave it a decent try with the ever wonderfully brassy Joan Blondell as the older Mahoney sister, and gone is the colorful and temperamental backstage crew, some with ambiguous sexual orientation and all with attitude and mouth to spare.
Our now thoroughly sanitized plot even paints the lecherous playboy that pants after the younger sister - here 'Chat' Chatsworth versus 29's Jock Warriner - as a serial groom. In the original, he was sleeping with chorus girls and tossing them aside. Here, of course, he's had five wives and plans to make Pat his sixth for six months or so. Apparently, all this sleeping around is fine with head censor Joe Breen as long as there is a marriage license involved in every case.
In the end, like in the original, the noble older sister steps out of the way so that Eddie and her younger sister can be married with no feelings of betrayal by either. However, here Eddie rescues younger sister Pat from a mob scene of a wedding at city hall, not a near rape at a prohibition party as in the 29 film. Afterwards, older sister Molly decides to go back to Nebraska, to the simple pleasures of farm and county fair, rather than continue on hoofing with a new partner as predecessor Hank did. I guess in 1940 Broadway was no place for a nice girl, or at least that seems to be the lesson of this film.
I give this one a 5 because, although I thoroughly disliked the plot, I really liked the performances. I've already mentioned the wonderful Joan Blondell, but there's also Lana Turner who is just perfect as the wide-eyed innocent Pat who knows the score of what she's letting herself in for with Chatworth but is willing to do just about anything so that older sister Molly can have her happiness. George Murphy does a good job of recreating the same energy and enthusiasm that Charles King brought to the part of Eddie Kerns in the original.
My recommendation is that if you've seen the Broadway Melody of 1929 you'll likely be disappointed in this obvious remake, but if you haven't or you're not into the earliest sound films you just might like it.