Queen of Broadway (1942) User Reviews

Amazingly good for a PRC movie.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 6 February 2021]

"Queen of Broadway" is a B-movie from PRC, a cheap outfit that specialized in making these types of films. What is a B? Well, there' a lot of confusion as many assume a B is a bad film...which is often not the case. A B-movie is a film that was intended as a second and lesser film for a double-feature...and double-features were the norm in the 1930s and 40s. So, the A-picture was the more expensive, longer and more prestigious film and the B was shorter (50-70 minutes), more cheaply made and were often made by studios (such as PRC) which specialized in making Bs.

Unfortunately, PRC's B-movies are generally among the weakest you can find....though "Queen of Broadway" is unusual in that it's far better quality than most of their output. As a B, it features either no-name actors (such as the leading lady, Rochelle Hudson) and second/third-tier actors such as Buster Crabbe and Vince Barnett. And, as a B, it runs at 64 minutes.

When the story begins, you see that Sherry Baker (Hudson) is a sports handicapper...the best in the business. But when she finds a cute little orphan and wants to adopt him, she has problems because she's not married and she hangs out with gamblers. Back in the day, you simply couldn't adopt a child given these circumstances. But her boyfriend Ricky Sloane (Crabbe) has a solution...to marry and settle down with him. But there are problems...the biggest of which is she doesn't want to marry. What's to become of the kid?

I noticed that at least one reviewer didn't like the film because it's very sentimental and features a cute kid. I can understand that...but I guess I'm a sucker for these sorts of family films. Worth seeing and practically an Oscar-winner compared to the usual cheap PRC fare. Believe me....a rating of 6 is amazing good for PRC!!

Way Too Cute For Me

[boblipton · 5/10 · 24 April 2020]

That's Rochelle Hudson, an odds-setter for every sport under the sun, who won't hand out a tip for the two-dollar bettors who collect their money a nickel at a time -- she'll take the money and buy War Stamps for them. She's patriotic, all right, but no sucker, and when newly orphaned Donald Mayo shows up, she's all for sending him to an orphanage. That idea doesn't last long in this faux-Runyonesque second feature from PRC.

This being a sentimental movie with a preciously cute little kid, I don't like it in the least. Sam Newfield directs by the numbers, and although cinematographer Jack Greenhalgh was no slouch, the usual shoddy print is the only one that's available.

Miss Hudson had first been signed to a contract in 1930, at the age of 14. She soon failed to distinguish herself in B pictures and as the voice of Honey in early Merrie Melodies. THat's not to imply she wasn't a talented performer, just that she rarely got the chance to perform in pictures with some meat on them. SHe went missing from the marquee for five years after this movie, then eight movies over the following twenty years. She died in 1972, aged 55.

A Damon Runyon story without all the colorful characters.

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 7 November 2020]

Queen of Broadway has many connotations, and in 1942, queen of Broadway to many people meant Ethel Merman. But that's musical comedy queen, and certainly, there were also drama queens like Judith Anderson, Tallulah Bankhead and Katharine Cornell, debutante queens like Brenda Fraser and many society matrons who voted for the title of society queen. So it comes off as a surprise that the character that Rochelle Hudson plays here is actually the queen of sports betting. In fact, on her way into work, the common people she encounters all asked her for different sporting advice, and she gives them a different kind of advice. But when it comes to her own life, she needs a lot of advice, and that's the issue she faces here.

1930's Olympic hunk Buster Crabbe plays her partner, and they often seem to be at odds. There's a little boy, Donald Mayo, who hangs around, and when his dipsomaniac mother passes away, Hudson and Crabbe try to find a new home for him. Obviously, Hudson and crab seem to be secretly in love, and the answer is them marrying and taking Mayo in. But the women who run the foundling division of the courts don't quite approve of Hudson as a mother so that stands in the way of illegal adoption going through. Then, there's the antagonism between Hudson and Crabbe that continues even after they marry. chances of them working out their differences for the benefits of this boy seems slim.

While this is basically a comedy, it often becomes modeling and sentimental even though the characters surrounding Hudson and Crabbe are typical New York sports enthusiastic. But don't be looking for Sky Masterson or Nicely Nicely Johnson or Nathan Detroit in this low-budget comedy drama. Those types of characters aren't here, and that takes away from any colorful detail that the film might have had otherwise. It's a pleasant time filler but not much else because it ends up being very predictable. Another issue is the lack of familiar character actors, the only ones I was able to recognize being Vince Barnett and Fred 'Snowflake' Toones.