Broadway Through a Keyhole (1933)

Director:

Lowell Sherman

Writers:

C. Graham Baker (writer)
Gene Towne (writer)

Release Date:

2 November 1933 (USA)

Genre:

Musical

Plot:

Racketeer Frank Rocci is smitten with Joan Whelan, a dancer at Texas Guinan's famous Broadway night spot...

Plot Keywords:

Beautiful Woman | Farce

Cast

Constance Cummings	...	Joan Whelan
Russ Columbo	...	Clark Brian
Paul Kelly	...	Frank Rocci
Blossom Seeley	...	Sybil Smith
Gregory Ratoff	...	Max Mefoofski
Texas Guinan	...	Tex Kaley
Abe Lyman	...	Orchestra leader
Hugh O'Connell	...	Chuck Haskins
Hobart Cavanaugh	...	Peanuts Dinwiddie
Frances Williams	...	Frances Williams
Eddie Foy Jr.	...	Joan's partner
George Mann	...	Himself
C. Henry Gordon	...	Tim Crowley
William Burress	...	Thomas Barnum
Helen Jerome Eddy	...	Esther

Also Known As:

Broadway Love (USA) (working title)
Broadway Thru a Keyhole (USA) (new title)

Runtime:

90 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Noiseless Recording)

Company:

20th Century Pictures

Trivia:

Film is based so exactly on the courtship of Ruby Keeler and Al Jolson that Jolson, having read the script, knocked out Walter Winchell when they met accidentally at the Hollywood American Legion stadium on the night of July 21, 1933. Keeler, who was a dancer at Texas Guinan's nightclub, was dating gangster Larry Fay when she met Jolson. Fay visited Jolson after hearing of this just to tell him that he could marry her.

Movie Connections:

Edited into Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America (1997) (TV)

Soundtrack:

I Love You Pizzicato

Russ Columbo was an unfinished talent

In his all too short career, this turned out to be the first of only two feature films that starred crooner Russ Columbo. Until his accidental death in 1934, Columbo was the main singing rival of Bing Crosby. But where as Crosby was singing far more than ballads even that early in his career, Columbo's small output of recordings were strictly syrupy love songs which he certainly did very well.

The plot of Broadway Through a Keyhole is nothing original, your typical backstage show business story so popular in the 1930s. But it's good to see talents like Eddie Foy, Jr., Constance Cummings, Blossom Seeley and Texas Guinan doing their thing. Paul Kelly is his usual competent self as the gangster rival of Russ's for Constance Cummings. But if you can see the film, the main reason to see it and why it ought to be preserved is as a showcase for Russ Columbo.

Columbo's commercial records, done mostly for RCA Victor, are love songs. He has two numbers in Broadway Through a Keyhole, You're My Past, Present, and Future which is a nice Harry Revel-Mack Gordon ballad which he never commercially recorded. He also sings a duet with Constance Cummings titled I Love You Pizzicato which displays a nice comic touch.

Russ Columbo only recorded about 30 sides commercially from 1930 to 1932. A contractual dispute kept him out of the recording studio until August 31, 1934 where he recorded four sides under a new contract for Brunswick records. On September 2, 1934 he was shot to death in a freak accident involving an antique cap and ball dueling pistol.

Columbo was no great actor in this film, but that's not to say that he might not have become one as Crosby did or Crosby's main rival Frank Sinatra. The Sinatra you see in Higher and Higher, his first feature film part, was no great actor either, not like he later became.

See the film if you can and speculate for yourself about the unfinished talent that was Russ Columbo.