Puttin' on the Ritz (1930) User Reviews

Will success spoil Harry Raymond?

[lugonian · 6/10 · 28 July 2001]

"Puttin' on the Ritz" (United Artists, 1930), directed by Edward Sloman, marks the movie debut of then popular night club entertainer Harry Richman (1895-1972). He plays Harry Raymond, a song promoter working at Wagner Music Publishers. After he meets Dolores Fenton (Joan Bennett), the two team up and rise to fame with their signature number, "With You." With the passing of time, Harry opens his own night club and becomes the singing sensation. Success eventually goes to Harry's head, causing him to shun his old friends in favor of being in with the society swells, causing Dolores to walk out on him for being so conceited. During a drunken frenzy at a party, Henry drinks some bad liquor which causes his blindness. The society crowd bid him farewell while his closest friend, Jimmy (James Gleason), sticks by him. However, as a favor to Harry, Jimmy is sworn not to tell Dolores of his unfortunate circumstance. What happens before the final fadeout will be up to the viewer to find out.

Musical drama with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin include such tunes, mostly sung by Richman, as: "I'll Get By" (by Roy Turk and Fred Ahlert); "With You," "I'll Get By" (reprise); "Singing a Vagabond Song" (by Sam Messenheimer and Val Burton); "With You" (reprise); "Puttin' on the Ritz," "There's Danger in Your Eye, Cherie" (by Harry Richman and Jack Meskill); "Puttin' on the Ritz" (reprise); "Singing a Vagabond Song" (reprise); "Alice in Wonderland" (performed by Joan Bennett, sung by unknown and unseen vocalist); and "With You" (reprise/finale).

Although the opening credits list production number "Alice in Wonderland" to be presented in Technicolor, it exists today only in black and white. Originally released in theaters at 88 minutes, current TV prints, which can be seen occasionally on American Movie Classics, run 69 minutes, which explains not only why the story plays so fast, but the sudden appearance of Goldie Devere (Lilyan Tashman) with the three central characters (Richman, Bennett and Gleason) after they are seen leaving Wagner Publishers as a threesome and entering a theater in the rain as a foursome in the very next scene. Tashman's character in the plot development phase and some other dialogue scenes are possibly part of the now missing 20 minutes of footage. But as what I can figure out, Goldie is Dolores's roommate who later becomes Jimmy's partner and wife.

Early talkie musical with lavish sets is occasionally entertaining, somewhat better than some of Hollywood's other primitive musicals at the time, but it really comes to life during the musical interludes. The production number, "Puttin' on the Ritz" plays loud and fast, but the choreography, compliments of Maurice L. Kusell, is really no threat to Busby Berkeley. Harry Richman, whose movie career was all too brief, is an adequate singer with a style all his own, but sometimes gives the impression to be too full of himself, and while Joan Bennett isn't a great singer, this cute blonde manages to get by as long as she has Harry.

Also in the supporting cast are Aileen Pringle, Purnell B. Pratt and Richard Tucker. "Puttin' on the Ritz" is worth a look mainly for those curious about the movie in itself or those who are entertained in watching primitive "talkie" musicals decades before lavish Technicolor and stereophonic sound set in. One final note: Listen to the lyrics to the title song, and compare it with the lyrics sung by Fred Astaire 16 years later in "Blue Skies" (Paramount, 1946). Same score but different wording. (***)

Blind Musical

[Cineanalyst · 2/10 · 19 August 2020]

There were a lot of musicals made in the early talkie era of Hollywood, and "Puttin' on the Ritz" is one of the more inept ones. It's a creaky backstage musical where the singing and dancing exists because the characters are theatrical performers, but the musical-within-the-musical is a revue--a variety of melodies unrelated to the outer narrative. Most of the numbers are bland or mawkish. The eponymous "Puttin' on the Ritz" may be the best, but you can see it performed much better in "Young Frankenstein" (1974). There's also an "Alice in Wonderland" tune (reused for the opening of the 1931 adaptation of Lewis Carroll's book), which is jazzy and was probably more appealing in its original two-strip Technicolor (as with the rest of the picture, it exists today only in black and white), but is placed within this narrative as if arranged by Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Among other things, the Alice books are remarkable for their lack of a moral--at least, they don't contain the usual blatant and trite lecture. This is the last big number in a film, however, that is all about blatant and trite lecturing.

Not only is this early talkie blind musically, the filmmaking and acting tend to be tolerable at best and atrocious at worst. "Puttin' on the Ritz" begins with some nice tracking shots, but this seems to be an instance of a popular stratagem whereby a film begins with interesting cinematography or editing to disguise the fact that the rest of the picture is primitively composed. The acting is dreadful, too, including by Harry Richman and Joan Bennett. Poor direction, framing and editing surely did them no favors, either. The line readings are bad, and they often don't even seem to know how to stand or move their bodies naturally. James Gleason is a bit better only because he does his usual schtick. Oh, and the moral is that fame and fortune leads to Richman's character, Harry Raymond, becoming arrogant, as well as a joke to high-society types and a jerk to his former friends. The resolution is ridiculously punitive, although it's a good analogy for the entire production overall being blind.

Even more curious when you realize this was a hit in its day...

[AlsExGal · 6/10 · 26 May 2012]

...but remember that the day was a short one. Harry Richman - starring almost as himself as a crooner whose head grows with his fame - was going through a short period of notoriety as a playboy, not to mention he was a popular singer in his own right with his own club at the time this film was released. Joan Bennett as Delores, Harry's love interest, was still a teenager, just getting restarted in a career that would ultimately span half a century. Then there is James Gleason as Jimmy, who actually wrote the dialogue for this one as well as acting in a supporting role as a love interest to ... Lilyan Tashman??? There's about 15 minutes missing from what's left of this film and I sure hope it's found someday and turns out to be scenes between Tashman and Gleason... Oh the possibilities! Tashman was well known at the time, but Gleason was just getting started in front of the camera with sound giving him a golden opportunity as a character actor and as a character in general.

What makes this one interesting has little to do with plot, or acting or even music, in spite of the fact that the songs were written by Irving Berlin. Instead what is breathtaking is the art design. Made just after the stock market crash and before the Depression took hold, it is an art deco lover's dream. If F.W. Murnau had been making a musical in 1929 it would have looked like this.

Of course, this one will always be remembered for just one number - the title one, "Puttin on the Ritz". Sure it's clumsily choreographed, but the nightmarish scene of buildings and billboards coming to life and swaying to the beat of Berlin's syncopated tune decades before any CGI could add to the spectacle is not to be forgotten.

Then there are more than a few riddles today for which we have no answers. Why, when Goldie and Jimmy visit at Harry's Christmas party full of society swells are they wearing matching fur hats and plaid coats? Are they married, if so when did they get married? Why is Delores such a big hit in her own show at the end of the film when all she does is skip and wrinkle her nose with delight during a number about Alice in Wonderland while the chorus does all of the actual singing and dancing? Why would anyone ever believe that the incredibly talented Joan Bennett was a viable singer in the first place? Harry Richman's character is Harry Raymond, yet the neon sign on his club is shown as "Club Richmond". Did they change his character's name and not bother to re-shoot this probably expensive shot of the exterior of the club thinking nobody would notice? Again, if only we could find the missing 15 minutes of this film, maybe some of these questions could be answered. Watch this one for its cast at strategic points in their careers, for the title number, for the spectacular art design, and for an object lesson in the host of problems that plagued so many back-stagers such as this at the dawn of sound.

Harry Richman, Star

[drednm · 25 December 2014]

This was in production for quite a while before it was finally released in 1930 as a showcase for Broadway and nightclub star Harry Richman. He stars as a singer who teams up with blonde cutie Joan Bennett after he loses his job with a music publisher. Eventually they make it a foursome with his pal (James Gleason) and her former stage partner (Lilyan Tashman). They get discovered but the Broadway producer only wants Richman and Bennett.

They become Broadway stars and he opens a swanky nightclub where he pals around with high society swells out for a thrill, especially one woman (Aileen Pringle). Bennett leaves him and goes on to solo stardom in a show that features an "Alice in Wonderland" number. Harry keeps on partying until he gets some bad liquor and goes blind. Will the society babe stick to him? Will Bennett come back? Richman sings a bunch of songs in his strong Broadway voice and is notable in the bizarre "Puttin; on the Ritz" productions number that features two groups of chorus dancers as well as swaying skyscrapers. This number as well as the "Alice" number were filmed as now-lost Technicolor sequences.

The film was a hit at the box office, but Richman's ego scotched any real chances for film stardom.

Fantastic Effort, Bizarre Results

[glockenspiel · 3 June 2001]

Since _Movie Mirror_ did a fine job of outlining the movie, I won't go into the plot too much. But there are some odd bits I'd like to comment on:

Everything seems to happen quickly in this movie, with the characters' lives changing every few scenes. Harry and Dolores get engaged to each other almost immediately. Harry instantly becomes a star, and wastes no time in starting up his own restaurant/club. Then, before you know it, he goes blind from some bad whisky. Ahh, to be amongst the beautiful people...

The stage sets in the bigger production numbers are beautiful, especially during the title song, where the backdrop of bobbing buildings is quite surreal. Just imagine what it would have been like, to be in the audience at that moment.

Overall, it's fairly easy to tell that this is an early talkie movie. The actress playing Dolores occasionally looks like she's acting in silent pictures. The shallow plot is strung out by a bad case of "excessive musical number-itis". And Harry's voice becomes increasingly difficult to tolerate/take seriously. But it's a good time, and an interesting point in the history of cinema.

The dangers of drinking

[AAdaSC · 5/10 · 19 November 2018]

Goodness me, that was a bit depressing. If you drink alcohol, you go blind! If you pull your plonker, you go blind. You can't do anything that is fun otherwise you will go blind. Who is putting this nonsense forward as factual?

Harry Richman (Harry) is a singer songwriter who makes it big and leaves his friends behind only to get his comeuppance. Can ex-partner Joan Bennett (Dolores) forgive him?

The story is a bit boring and doesn't flow because chunks of the storyline have been edited out. Don't watch for that. See the film for 3 of the musical segments - the song "With You", the weird Alice in Wonderland section and the standout "Puttin' on the Ritz" which is without doubt the best version of the song put on film. This alone makes the film keeping onto as well as it being an interesting museum piece and time capsule with the film sets.

The Dazzling Title Song

[kidboots · 8/10 · 20 April 2015]

In 1930 Irving Berlin was at a cross roads, his song writing talents which went back to the rag time era were now considered passé among the more sophisticated talents of Rodgers and Hart. He decided to sink or swim with movie songs - and one of the first was "Puttin' on the Ritz" with the song that became a standard. The man who was called upon to put it over was Harry Richman. He wasn't hugely well known away from the big city cabarets but at the time he was having a well publicized affair with Clara Bow and it was hoped that the scandal would bring in the public in droves.

Just like Richman, his part of Harry Raymond was a conceited song and dance man who starts off as a song plugger. When lovely show girl Dolores Fenton (Joan Bennett) comes to the publishing house to try to interest people in a song she has written, "With You", Harry's over the top enthusiasm of it gets him fired. That's okay, he and Dolores team up with Jimmy (James Gleason) and Goldie (the wonderful Lilyan Tashman who acidly comments that Harry needs an 18 day diet for his fat head!!). Richman gets to put across "Singing a Vagabond Song", but his big headedness ("by the time I get through singing, you'll probably want me to sing all night") gets him into trouble again, especially when he invites the "beau-hunks" in the audience to come and have a sock at him if they dare!! Needless to say, that is the quartet's last night. They split up - Jimmie and Goldie go to the sticks, while Harry and Dolores dazzle the Great White Way - Dolores tries to give Harry a pep talk about being humble and not so much of the "I,I,I's and me, me, me's" but it falls on deaf ears. She also has to contend with fickle society dame (Aileen Pringle) who tells Harry all he wants to hear. Of course there is the scene where during a night club performance of "There's Danger in Your Eyes, Cherie" he completely ignores Dolores and sings only to Mrs. Van-Renssler!!

Wonderful to see and hear Harry Richman put over "Puttin' on the Ritz" in a great production number that has strutting dancers, jiggling buildings and a glowing alley cat - knowing that this is the movie that introduced this standard!! Whatever you think of Richman, he had a powerful, almost sensual voice that sold songs. He and Dolores split up - no-one will touch Harry due to his ego but surprisingly Dolores (Bennett could neither sing or dance) is given the lead in "Alice in Wonderland". Would have been a stunning production in the original colour with the Tenniel characters coming to life on the stage. Joan Bennett couldn't have felt comfortable in the few musicals she was given at this time but her blonde looks were made to order for this sumptuous production number - as she skipped and danced with the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. At the end of the show the audience call for her to sing "With You" but she can't sing it without Harry. Where has Harry been? - Well he is now blind after drinking rotten liquor at his Christmas party but he makes Jimmy promise not to reveal his condition to Dolores. In a scene that had it's origins the year before when Al Jolson stood up in the audience of Ziegfeld's "Show Girl" and sang "Liza" as his wife Ruby Keeler danced on stage, Harry stands up and sings "With You" to a faltering Dolores.

Apparently Joan Bennett said that when she began to sing a duet with Harry, he really blew his top and Irving Berlin had to step in and take her side. "Puttin' on the Ritz" was a huge movie hit in it's day with critics dubbing Richman the find of the year!! - but outside the cities audiences didn't care for the pushy Richman or his tabloid romances. After the initial success Richman was found not to live up to his hype and he went back to New York but in a scene that could have come from the movie, he was given a contract for some shorts only to have it taken away when he demanded too much!!

Highly Recommended.

Musical Segments Cant Rescue Turkey - Puttin' on the Ritz

[arthur_tafero · 4/10 · 6 October 2022]

The term puttin' on the Ritz refers to people who have achieved a certain level of success and leaving their old friends and neighborhood behind. Millions have done this in the past, and millions more will do this in the future. This film is just one of those stories, and, unfortunately, is not done very well. If you drink and have sex, you will wind up badly, NO-KAY (reference to Mr. Mackey of South Park intentional). Man moves up from Vaudeville to be a star in nighlclubs and leaves his girl and friends behind. WIll his old girlfriend forgive him and take him back? Who cares, one way or the other. Musical numbers fun; the rest is strictly C movie stuff.

Why don't you go where fashion sits?

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 2 April 2013]

For an early talkie musical, this one is actually pretty memorable even if it creaks as loudly as the stairs of "The Cat and the Canary". Crooner Harry Richman is a singer with a personality and ego as big as Jolson's and Joan Bennett is the young singer he falls in love with. If the story isn't close to Jolson's real-life with dancer Ruby Keeler, then I don't know what is. James Gleason is his hard-boiled but good hearted manager and offers some much needed humor. What is impressive here are the big musical numbers, very similar to those of MGM's big budget smash "Broadway Melody" the same year (when it won an Academy Award for Best Picture), the standouts being the title song (sung here on screen for the first time before Clark Gable, Fred Astaire and Dr. Frankenstein and his monster laid into it) and the "Alice in Wonderland" spoof which almost seems like a live-action cartoon. Richman's personality may not appeal to modern audiences, but at one time, he was as big as Jolson. This is a difficult film to rate as a majority of the print is missing and what remains is choppy at best. Still a curiosity for movie musical buffs, it is worth a look for an era of film long gone. The Jolson/Keeler story was also "fictionally" dramatized in 1933's "Broadway Through a Keyhole", another lavish musical influenced more by the release of "42nd Street" in which Keeler went out a youngster but came back a star.

The original performance of Berlins' "Ritz," and an impressive stage show

[SimonJack · 7/10 · 2 April 2022]

"Puttin' on the Ritz" is an early sound picture by a small production company, Feature Productions, that made just 41 pictures, and after Al Jolson's "Halleluiah, I'm a Bum" of 1933, went out of business. And, the technical quality of this film shows much of the early woes of filmmaking of all of Hollywood during the transition from silent to sound pictures.

But this film may be of interest to movie buffs for a number of reasons. The music is by Irving Berlin, and that makes it quite good. It's the first silver screen production of Berlin's "Puttin' on the Ritz," a very popular tune, that is so catchy that it has become popular a couple of times since then, if not on the music bandstands, then in movies with historical settings. Harry Richman was the first to sing the song that was written for him - 16 years before Fred Astaire would revive it in "Blue Skies." But, that wasn't even the first after Richman's debut of the song. Astaire's performance was a dazzling one that featured his solo dancing. While Richman also did some hoofing, he was mostly known for his singing. His voice was a tenor with a sound that was later identified as "megaphone."

Then, with that number and some others, this small film company staged a lavish production with numbers that had dozens of dancers, and a set with painted skyscrapers that bent, waved, and swayed to the music. It's a pretty amazing show of stage craft and artistry of the time. When the 21st century is so used to CGI and other screen trickery, it's something to imagine that audiences actually saw such creative things that were all done mechanically and by hand.

This is one of just five films that Harry Richman made, so it's a look at that entertainer who was mostly known and hailed for vaudeville and his night club performances in New York and other cities. Another reviewer, kidboots, gives some interesting background on Richman.

Another unusual aspect of this film is its considerable portrayal of a staged "Alice in Wonderland" show. Again, this is on stage, performed before an audience, all of which is filmed for this movie. Just look at the extent to which the makers created the costumes for the characters in Alice. Joan Bennett was just 20 years old and this was just her second co-starring role after "The Mississippi Gambler" of 1929. Bennett wasn't a singer, so the scene in which the audience wants her to sing is part of the story in which Richman then saves her by joining in the duet from the balcony.

As for the plot, it may be the earliest version in sound pictures of a story that has been played a number of times. An entertainer becomes very famous, and his (or her) success goes to his head and he forgets his former friends, turns to drink or drugs, and falls into infamy. In this one, and with a few more films, the discarded lover comes to the rescue.

I know of one other film in which a top star performs "Puttin' on the Ritz." As unlikely as it seems, it was Clark Gable. And he was quite good, singing and dancing the number with a bevy of girls in his troupe, in the 1939 film, "Idiot's Delight." That's a good comedy and satire just before WW II, with an impressive cast. In addition to Gable, it has Norma Shearer, Ed Arnold, Charles Coburn, Burgess Meredith, and Joseph Schildkraut. That film's worth watching just to see Gable doing "The Ritz."

Here are my favorite lines from this film.

James Tierney, "So you finally went and done it!" Harry Raymond, "How many times have I gotta tell ya never to say you went and done it?" Tierney, "Neve mind my grammar."

Harry Raymond, "I was too good for her when I was a success. Well, she's too good for me now. And what's more, know it."

Dracula?

[HandsomeBen · 4/10 · 14 March 2021]

A man loses sight of what's important after reaching fame.

This is good for people who like watching theatre. There's a lot of singing and stage performances. You get full musical numbers and point of view from the audience members as if you're watching a real play. Wish the Alice in Wonderland scene was in color. The movie itself is ok, the biggest highlight was when people were making fun of Harry behind his back, other than that it kinda dragged mainly cause the movie focuses on music, which I wouldn't mind if I liked the songs. Also why did the make up department make Harry look like Dracula. It was unsettling.