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.

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.

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.

Virginia Mayo is largely associated with lightweight Danny Kaye movies and occasional dramatic roles ('White Heat' and 'The Best Years of Our Lives'). "She's Back on Broadway" is an attempt to star Ms Mayo in a musical with some real substance to it. This movie fails at most of what it sets out to do, but it's an interesting failure with some genuine merit and some good performances.

Several months before starring in "She's Back on Broadway", Virginia Mayo starred in another Warners film which is better than this one: "She's Working Her Way Through College". These two films are not related, but their similar titles and similarity of tone suggest that somebody at Warners was trying to exercise an overall strategy for Mayo's film career.

In "She's Back on Broadway", Mayo plays Catherine Terriss, a Hollywood actress who starred in several movies a while back, but whose film career is now idling. (Ironically, Mayo herself was never as great a star as the character she plays here!) The opening scene grabs our attention, and promises that this will be no typical frothy musical. Catherine is sitting at the pool of her movie-star mansion, reading a newspaper headline about another film actress who has just committed suicide. The other actress was only slightly older than Catherine, with a similar career arc: Catherine tells her manager (the excellent Larry Keating) that she's afraid she'll land up the same way. Desperate to give her career a jolt, she quits Hollywood and returns to where she started: Broadway. Using her own savings, she bankrolls a stage musical and hires big-deal director Rick Sommers to direct it.

Sommers is played by Steve Cochran, an underrated actor who never got the career he deserved ... possibly because Cochran had leading-man looks but his talents were geared more towards character roles. He gives a fine performance in this movie as the dynamic Broadway director, but Cochran is lumbered with some gimmicky dialogue. After giving his cast a spirited pep-talk, he abruptly relaxes and tells them something which contradicts everything he's already said: 'You'll find we're very easily satisfied...' Then, before this can sink in, he straight away changes mood again and barks: '...with perfection! And nothing less!'

Gene Nelson (an ingratiating song-and-dance man whose gymnastic talents were never properly utilised) auditions for a role in the show. He barely sings four bars before Cochran tells him to come back tomorrow '...and bring a pen'. There's an annoying and unfunny running gag about a pawky and untalented young man who auditions as a bass singer, as a baritone, as a tenor ... until Cochran finally casts him in a non-speaking part so he won't show up at the audition for sopranos! I found all of the audition and rehearsal sequences in this film extremely unrealistic.

The problem with "She's Back on Broadway" is that its plot isn't gripping enough to succeed as straight drama, and its songs aren't tuneful enough for this to be more than a sub-average musical. All of the songs are dull and unmemorable. Gene Nelson never gets a chance to cut loose with the spectacular acrobatics he displayed in other films. (I still savour the incredible standing back salto he performed in 'Tea for Two', with its Olympic-class amplitude.) The 'best' song here (not saying much) is 'Breakfast in Bed', a tinkly little ditty performed by Mayo in a ludicrous costume. Steve Condos, formerly of the Condos Brothers, does a jazzy dance number that has him bojangling his way up and down a tiny plywood staircase.

SPOILERS??? COMING. We get a lot of turgid dialogue here about how everybody's career is at stake, and everybody is taking huge risks ... but it's absolutely no surprise at all that the Broadway show is (of course) a huge hit. "She's Back on Broadway" keeps threatening to be something much more substantial than just another let's-put-on-a-show story, but never lives up to the promise of that starkly dramatic first scene. This film is a pleasant time-passer with glimpses of greatness. I'll rate "She's Back on Broadway" 5 out of 10.

This is more than a review of the 1952 feel-good comedy loaded with as many hardships and frowns as smiles, taking place mostly indoors without much sunshine: Except for the opening scene as a poolside Virginia Mayo, playing a has-been actress, is taking business with her faithful but weary agent, trying to find her a leading role and suggesting she go back on... Refer to the title...

In the first two of three films, Virginia Mayo was snatched from Cult Film Freak's two all-time favorite actors by tall, dark and viciously handsome b-actor Steve Cochran: First in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, finishing Dana Andrews (not so happy) marriage so the perky dame can enjoy the nightlife...

And her most famous role as a reluctant gun-moll for ultra-violent James Cagney... He can only trust his tough old mom since his temperamental, discontented moll-wife is, once again, cheating with handsomely swarthy Cochran - and now it's his turn to sweat and stress over the pretty gal as bitter stage director Rick Sommers.,,

While looking more like a famous director's chain-smoking, cool and smooth, womanizing, multi-faceted and downright lethal bodyguard, it's the heated chemistry... or perhaps, in this case, the bitter and hardened anti-chemistry... between Cochran and Mayo that makes SHE'S BACK ON BROADWAY a better picture than an idyllic and breezy title begging for second placement on a marquee...

Despite the boatload of music, it's not a musical since most of the film is the actual musical's cast and crew getting prepared for a show called 'Breakfast In Bed' that Mayo is nervous about initially but then Cochran... in scenes where she's a natural with one of the greatest all-time dancers, Gene Nelson... he's the only person with second thoughts, basically playing a coldhearted jerk, seeming like an inspiration for Michael Douglas in A CHORUS LINE and best yet, Alan Rachins in SHOWGIRLS...

Some of the most humorous scenes take place during a prolonged audition showing the rejected bad and chosen great dancers, leaving little time for a few more rehearsals as a somewhat uninspired melodrama's unveiled as Cochran and Mayo bicker in front of everyone...

And then, alone, the pair becomes more interesting since they'd shared a past together, and only she benefited from it... He was her first stage director before she shot to stardom, and she took Hollywood's big picture bait, leaving the show that went bust because of it, and so he remained grounded because...

Well that's part of the dialogue as involving as the songs are semi-catchy, and it's fun to watch the musical being ignited by the talents of Mayo and Nelson, followed by Frank Lovejoy as the stressful producer...Which makes Cochran fourth in the credits, rather misleading since the movie's really about his refusal to let our pretty star shine bright...

Big Steve with his wild dame from the greatest post-war and gangster-prison flick make an edgy couple, yet there's little urgency from Mayo, and for a little while it's tough to buy that Cochran is anything but a tough, swarthy actor meant to cut in on other guy's women. But it's a nice, smooth nightcap, and Virginia looks better than ever wearing less than usual. Many bravos.