Broadway to Hollywood

Broadway to Hollywood is the story of a vaudeville couple, Ted and Lulu Hackett played by Frank Morgan and Alice Brady, and their trials and tribulations over a 30 year period.

The problem for a contemporary viewer is that the people in cameos and the names that are dropped are probably unknown to the MTV generation. You would have to know that Joe Weber and Lew Fields for instance were a great vaudeville comedy team who then went into the producing end of the business in order to appreciate a scene where Joe Weber wants to hire young Ted Hackett II, and will give the elder Hacketts small bits in his show in order to get him.

Because it is revived every year around the 4th of July, I suppose Yankee Doodle Dandy is the best comparison to this film to make. The elder Cohans there are a show business family whose kids are raised in the theater atmosphere the way the Hacketts raise their son. Of course here we go into a third generation of Hacketts.

Doing a small unbilled part in this film is Nelson Eddy who sings In the Garden of My Heart during a show. Ironically in two years Eddy would be starring in Naughty Marietta and Frank Morgan would be supporting him.

In reading the credits I was flabbergasted to read that the brothers Howard of the 3 Stooges played a pair of clowns who essentially roll a drunken Ted Hackett Jr. as he's being fired from a show. Certainly Moe and Curly who started in vaudeville would know all about that venue of show business. They are unrecognizable in their clown make up.

When the film is nearing it's conclusion it's now Ted Hackett III who is hitting the big time in Hollywood played by Eddie Quillan. His parents were played by Russell Hardie and Madge Evans. Still it's Morgan and Brady who carry this. It's like if Walter Huston and Rosemary DeCamp were the central characters of Yankee Doodle Dandy.

It's a nice film with a good story, but I fear it's too dated for today's audience.