Lullaby of Broadway

1951 "Big and Gay as the Gay White Way!"
6.7| 1h32m| NR| en
Details

Pretty Melinda Howard has been abroad singing with a musical troupe. She decides to return home to surprise her mother whom she thinks is a successful Broadway star with a mansion in Manhattan. She doesn't know that her mother is actually a burnt-out cabaret singer with a love for whiskey. When she arrives at the mansion, she is taken in by the two servants who are friends of her mother's. The house actually belongs to Adolph Hubbell, a kind-hearted Broadway producer who also gets drawn into the charade. Hubbell takes a shine to Melinda and agrees to star her in his next show. Melinda also finds romance with a handsome hoofer who's also in the show. All is going well for Melinda except that she wants to see her mother who keeps putting off their reunion.

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Reviews

Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
HeadlinesExotic Boring
Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies
Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
Steven Torrey Isn't here a line in a movie where one of the characters is singing an old time favorite and attempting to pass it off as new--and the auditor says something like--"Yeah, I already remember that..." This 1951 movie brought out the old songs in a revue format--so that they are not old songs in new garb--but old songs in old garb.Doris Day sings "Just one of those things" in a tux and steals the show at the outset. Never mind she gives verve to a song about dumping a flame after a few dates. "Bye Bye mien Herr" from 'Cabaret' gives the same jazzy up-temps to the same topic of moving on quickly from one affair to another. But in any event--Doris Day knocks the song out of the park--so to speak.The comedy team of Billy de Wolfe and Anne Triola are a delightful comedy duet--actors acting as servants so they don't starve to death."Lullaby of Broadway" is a delightful romp, showcasing many talents to produce something lite and frothy and surprisingly enduring. The froth disguises something dark and central to the acting profession. People who are washed up too early for the wrong reasons--yet endure beyond reasonable expectations. The song "Lullaby of Broadway" is itself a ballad/ode of what amounts to frenzied and self-destructive lifestyle. Gene Nelson pretending he can't dance when he is a great dancer--all to seduce Doris Day; well that's trickery and deceit which she rightfully resents. And Doris Day's own mother is not a world class performer but a barely and rarely sober cabaret singer in a gin joint. "Your getting to be a habit with me" is one of those nightmare scenarios of addiction that no actor wants to fall into--and yet many do. And, of course, the whole premise of the movie to fool Doris Day into thinking this palatial residence actually belongs to her mother.Despite the dark central themes to the move, it appears light and frothy--one more deception, this time on the movie goer.One wonders how this movie could have been made with different actors and one suspects it couldn't be made any better.
Bobby Samadhi Light entertainment at its best, a great guilty pleasure for your pc.This film boasts surprisingly strong performances by a solid cast: let's say it, a cast humble enough to throw themselves into an odd sort of film: part melodrama, part musical, part fashion show for its star.Radiating joie-de-vivre, out-singing anyone of her time, serious one moment then tongue-in-cheek the next, Day is a star, an under-rated one these days.Gene Nelson's dancing is important to see if only to better understand Fred Astaire's. The Astaire difference was this: talent, yes, Nelson had it as well, but not the ability to bring us to the brink of something endless through his motions: to make you know he was on the edge of something vast and mysterious; to suggest a whole unseen world by dancing in this one. Bravo, Fred!
nk_gillen If you're a pushover for Fifties movie-musicals that stress music over story, "Lullaby of Broadway" may represent that genre's prototype. This is not to say that musicals with thin storylines are necessarily bad. The success of the earlier Astaire-Rogers films depended on dancing, music, and an occasional wisecrack or a fancy bit of dialogue--in that order. "Lullaby" isn't in the class of "Top Hat" by a long way. But it does represent a trend of movie-making that Warner Brothers embarked on briefly during the early 1950's: Cheesecake a la Day ("It's a Great Feeling," "On Moonlight Bay," "By the Light of the Silvery Moon," etc.). In her autobiography, "Doris Day: Her Own Story" (published in 1976), the actress describes her early years as a contract player for Jack L. Warner and the heated disputes she had with the autocratic movie czar regarding miscasting and bad scripts. But in "Lullaby," there is virtually no script to complain of. It's a revue, and thus, not a movie in the traditional sense. But what a revue! From Ray Heindorf's jazzy 1951 arrangement of the old title tune (from "Gold Diggers of 1935") over the opening credits, to the Prinzs' inventive choreography, this movie clicks along in high gear from one showstopper to the next.Day also recalled in her memoirs that "Lullaby" contained, by far, the toughest dance routines of any film she ever made. One particularly challenging scene called for her to perform an intricate series of steps on a huge staircase--while weighted down in a gold-lame dress. At first, she balked, warning the crew to have an ambulance waiting after the first take. With encouragement from the director David Butler and others, however, she did manage to successfully complete the dance number."Lullaby of Broadway" is not the best of the Day/Warners musicals--that distinction goes to "Calamity Jane" (1953)--but it's as good as the rest. With Gene Nelson as Day's dance-partner, Billy De Wolfe as a vaudevillian-turned-valet, and the almost unbearable S. Z. "Cuddles" Sakall, as a Broadway "angel."
willrams Another of my most enjoyable movie musicals with my favorite star, Doris Day, singing and dancing with Gene Nelson. I'll never forget the tap dance they did together going up a staircase-fantastic! An excellent cast includes Gladys George, and two of the funniest men around in the 50s: cute S.Z. Sakall and that buggy-eyed looney Billy DeWolfe who will tickle your funnybone. Sakall played in most of Doris' musicals and he is a character to remember! Whatever happened to Gene Nelson? He was surely a fine dancer!