She's Back on Broadway

Catherine Terris (Virginia Mayo) is fading from the Hollywood spotlight. She is willing to take bit parts, but her manager Mitchell Parks insists that she gets leads or nothing. Instead, he suggests going back to Broadway and director Rick Sommers (Steve Cochran) who got her a big break. Rick however still holds a grudge after she left him for Hollywood.

This tries to be a look behind the curtain on Broadway. Some of it is reasonable. Some of it is almost insightful. I can do with less song and dance. The actual musical is of no importance. It is the relationship and my personal taste is for them to go their separate ways. This ending is not my preference, but I'm not going to destroy it.

Virginia Mayo is kaput in Hollywood. Agent and would-be husband Larry Keating persuades her to regain her magic by returning to the Great White Way. Unknown to her, he arranges the financing. But the director is the man who made her a star, and former lover Steve Cochran.

It's a putting-on-a-show musical with a great supporting cast, and choreography by Leroy Prinz. It's certainly engaging, and the songs are good, if not great. One of the problems is Miss Mayo's line readings; she's dull in the emotional speeches, although her legs certainly make up a lot for that. The highlight is the big set number near the end, "Behind the Mask", with Gene Nelson showing off his athleticism. With Frank Lovejoy and Patrice Wymore.

Catherine Terris (Virginia Mayo) is an actress whose films have recently been bombs. So her agent convinces her to return to Broadway where she had her first successes and then, if this goes well, she can return to Hollywood. But she didn't count on having her old lover, Rick (Steve Cochran), directing the show....and they both have a lot of baggage from this old romance. Not surprisingly, Rick ends up resenting the heck out of her...and he treats her like dirt. Soon the two can't stand each other and the show might not be a go after all.

While Virginia Mayo is known most for playing molls and various light parts for Warner Brothers, here she gets to sing and dance...and while she's not the greatest actress in these roles, she's quite good. It's nice to see a different side of this actress...even if I don't adore song and dance numbers. Plus the film simply had too many of these numbers...as if we are getting to see almost the entire Broadway show. Had they cut a bit of this, it would have made the film a bit more interesting. Still, the film fits the bill if you're looking for a pleasant time-passer.

Once upon a time a young director played by Steve Cochran took a young lady from the chorus and made her a Broadway star. The two fell in love and it should have been a storybook ending. But the new star left the play after six months and Virginia Mayo found success in Hollywood.

Now with her career slipping Mayo is thinking maybe Broadway will give her another vehicle to revive a now sagging career. At least producer Frank Lovejoy thinks it will if he can only get Cochran back as the director. In any event, She's Back On Broadway.

I counted 25 different songs in the score, some original, some from the considerable library at Warner Brothers, in any event they were kind of lucky to get the plot in. Helping with the musical numbers because God knows Frank Lovejoy and Steve Cochran had little talent in that direction was Gene Nelson who's singing and dancing complemented Mayo.

The story gets the short shrift here as the numbers are just piled in. A pity because Cochran and Mayo should have gotten more non- musical time in She's Back On Broadway.

Warners, I guess, wanted this backstage musical to have a little more heft and gravitas than their Doris Day standard at the time. So along with the usual production numbers and leggy chorus girls and backstage wisecracks, they grafted a rather serious story of a chorus-cutie-turned-movie-star and her Pygmalion director and their rather somber and complicated history together. Virginia Mayo and Steve Cochran play it competently, but it's just not very interesting, and the outcome is never in doubt. He's billed below both Gene Nelson and Frank Lovejoy, but neither of them has much to do, and there's a great deal of footage of Cochran sulking, drinking, and vacillating between Mayo and Patrice Wymore, who actually seems a better fit. That's a problem: You don't really want to see Mayo and Cochran end up together, especially as it leaves Wymore and Larry Keating, as Mayo's lovestruck agent, with nobody. One appreciates the effort at wringing real emotion out of a backstager, but there's no denying, it doesn't really work. Insipid songs--did Bob Hilliard ever write a good lyric in his life?--and perfunctory direction by Gordon Douglas don't help.