A Broadway matinee idol famous for his black-face portrayals anonymously joins an amateur acting troupe and falls in love with the leading lady.A Broadway matinee idol famous for his black-face portrayals anonymously joins an amateur acting troupe and falls in love with the leading lady.A Broadway matinee idol famous for his black-face portrayals anonymously joins an amateur acting troupe and falls in love with the leading lady.
Joe Bordeaux
- Auditoning Actor
- (uncredited)
Sidney Bracey
- Don's Valet
- (uncredited)
Sidney D'Albrook
- J. Madison Wilberforce
- (uncredited)
Mary Gordon
- Woman in Audience
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis restored version runs 57 minutes but is still missing about five minutes. The restoration was a joint venture of the Cinematheque Francais, the Motion Picture Academy and Sony Entertainment.
- Quotes
Don Wilson, Harry Mann: [after meeting a feminine actor] Who is that? Helen of Troy?
- Alternate versionsIn 1997, Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., copyrighted a 56-minute restored version of this film with a musical score arranged and conducted by Robert Israel, The addition of modern credits stretched the running time to 57 minutes.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Frank Capra's American Dream (1997)
Featured review
Has potential, has its moments
This film genuinely brought tears to my eyes at one point, and it is quite funny, although some of the gags are milked for too long (example: crawling around on Don's dressing-room floor). I felt that it had potential which was perhaps ill-served in this case by a rather pedestrian musical accompaniment -- the picture needs broad burlesque emotion for the broad acting and appropriate showtunes for the stage/blackface moments, rather than the inoffensive steady vamp which was what we were getting. And it took quite a long time to get going; the gags at the beginning ("Broadway runs North and South and wild"?!) went down completely flat.
Bessie Love is very good. I found Johnnie Walker a little nondescript, without either the charisma or the charm implied by his casting as a major Broadway star; it's hard to warm to Don Wilson, and I didn't care what happened to him as I did what became of Ginger Bolivar. Lionel Belmore has an effective supporting role as her Falstaffian father, a bellowing ham actor of the old school.
The plot hinges around a somewhat improbable misidentification, as Don courts the girl in two personae at the same time, but even in intimate moments she never notices their resemblance; however, in film terms one more or less has to take this as given. (I can't help feeling that while Don might have pulled it off on stage from a distance during one rehearsal, he was really pushing his luck!) The final denouement, though, I found hard to swallow -- again, I don't think Johnnie Walker has the charm to manage this convincingly. Perhaps here too the trouble was that I found Ginger a lot more appealing than her beau.
On reflection I feel that with a different leading man and more responsive accompaniment I would probably have liked this film better; I'm rating it six out of ten ('inoffensive; nothing special') to reflect my actual average experience, however.
Bessie Love is very good. I found Johnnie Walker a little nondescript, without either the charisma or the charm implied by his casting as a major Broadway star; it's hard to warm to Don Wilson, and I didn't care what happened to him as I did what became of Ginger Bolivar. Lionel Belmore has an effective supporting role as her Falstaffian father, a bellowing ham actor of the old school.
The plot hinges around a somewhat improbable misidentification, as Don courts the girl in two personae at the same time, but even in intimate moments she never notices their resemblance; however, in film terms one more or less has to take this as given. (I can't help feeling that while Don might have pulled it off on stage from a distance during one rehearsal, he was really pushing his luck!) The final denouement, though, I found hard to swallow -- again, I don't think Johnnie Walker has the charm to manage this convincingly. Perhaps here too the trouble was that I found Ginger a lot more appealing than her beau.
On reflection I feel that with a different leading man and more responsive accompaniment I would probably have liked this film better; I'm rating it six out of ten ('inoffensive; nothing special') to reflect my actual average experience, however.
helpful•00
- Igenlode Wordsmith
- Oct 31, 2010
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Languages
- Also known as
- Stjärnan På Broadway
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 hour 6 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content