The Shannons of Broadway

It is mainly known for being the next to the last film of Mary Philbin, lead actress in The Phantom of The Opera, and also the first film appearance of Lucile Gleason and her husband James Gleason, together in the same film. It was, according to the New York Times review of the film, apparently translated from a play that the Gleasons were in just a few years before. Talking pictures gave them a chance to move their act from stage to screen, like so many performers of the time.

The film is about a vaudeville family that has their show cancelled and needs a place to stay. The owner of the only hotel in town won't let them stay there because he does not like actors, but when they offer him a lump sum up front, he relents. They hear that land nearby is going to be needed to build an airport, and use all of their remaining money to buy some adjacent property. They then try to fix up the innkeeper's property in hopes of raising the selling price of their own property nearby. That story actually doesn't make sense because I would have assumed that whatever was standing on their property would need to be torn down for the airport, but that is the description of the plot. It's too bad it is lost, because it sounds like it would have been a great slice of 1920's life - vaudeville as it fades and the rising aerial business.

Anybody claiming that they saw this film in modern times is not truthful as the film has been lost for many years, although the sound discs apparently have been found. The odd thing about this film is that the 1938 remake, "Goodbye Broadway", also made by Universal, apparently has an unknown status, with no reviews on this website, and not showing up on the lists of any lost films. 1938 would be a rather late date for a film to be lost.