At the beginning of Broadway Malady (1985), 63 year old Rita Bristol is watching the projected black and white movie that she says is Moon Over Rio. That movie's scene is actually from the technicolor movie Three Little Girls in Blue (1946), and 24 year old Vivian Blaine, wearing a light blue dress, is singing "Somewhere in the Night" (Music by Josef Myrow, Lyrics by Mack Gordon). Although the movie was not released until September 1946, in April 1946 25 year old Betty Jane Rhodes also recorded Somewhere in the Night.
The climax of Broadway Malady (1985) was to include a featured musical production number with guest star Vivian Blaine surrounded by a chorus of male and female dancers. Hollywood's famed choreographer Miriam Nelson rehearsed the dancers with a cascade of balloon shafts as part of the choreographed finale. The filmed sequence, because of timing, ended on the editing room floor. Instead, Grady, Jessica's nephew, is on a telephone in the theater's stage right wings, on the telephone with his Aunt Jessica Fletcher, who is sitting in her Cabot Cove, Maine, kitchen. In the ending scene clip, over Grady's left shoulder standing in the right side wings, a glimpse of the stage musical's finale is viewed as dancers depart opposite stage left with the shafts of balloons, concluding the epic (edited-cut-out) finale.
Jessica is surprised to hear that her nephew, Grady, has a new girlfriend named Kate. In The Murder of Sherlock Holmes (1984), he was dating Kitty Donovan ( Jessica Browne ), and before Jessica said goodbye to them she told them not to go off and elope because she wanted to host their wedding in her parlor.
Lorna Luft (Patti Bristol) is the daughter of Judy Garland. Judy Garland and Angela Lansbury (Jessica Fletcher) starred as rivals in the 1946 movie musical The Harvey Girls (1946).