Broadway Rhythm

I can hardly believe that Broadway Rhythm started out as Very Warm For May on Broadway, one of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, II's flop musicals. A look at the biography of Jerome Kern by Gerald Bordman tells me that other than it being a backstage story, the plot of Very Warm For May and Broadway Rhythm is completely different. The character names have been changed and almost an entire new score was written for the film.

The one song retained from Kern's score is one of the best he ever wrote, All The Things You Are. It happens that way sometimes, a flop musical can yield a gem of a hit. Ginny Simms sings it beautifully.

Don Raye and Gene DePaul wrote the original songs, nothing terribly memorable. Some other material was interpolated among them my favorite George Gershwin song, Somebody Loves Me which guest star Lena Horne sings to perfection. Oddly enough the song Broadway Rhythm isn't heard here or may have wound up on the cutting room floor.

George Murphy plays a Broadway producer and son of an old time vaudeville performer Charles Winninger. Winninger thinks Murphy has gone too high hat and feels that sentimentality and schmaltz will always sell on Broadway. To prove it he and movie star Ginny Simms who Murphy is trying to get to star in a new show he's producing go out and invest their money and produce an old show that Murphy had discarded years ago.

Broadway Rhythm has a lot of good talent in the cast like Nancy Walker, Ben Blue, Hazel Scott, and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. Sad that it was all wasted on a very trite backstage story.