Broadway Thru a Keyhole (1933) User Reviews (10)

Song, dance, danger, and romance in B'way roman-a-clef

[melvelvit-1 · 7/10 · 8 September 2014]

Manhattan mobster Frank Rocci (Paul Kelly) helps out a childhood friend by getting her sister Joan Whelan (Constance Cummings) a job as a chorine in Tex Kaley's (Texas Guinan) nightclub and quickly falls in love with her. He buys the place so's he can showcase Joan in a Max Mefoofski (Gregory Ratoff) revue which makes her a star and out of gratitude, she agrees to marry him. Before the wedding can take place, however, rival racketeer Tim Crowley (C. Henry Gordon) makes an attempt on Rocci's life so he shuffles Joan off to Miami with her motherly girlfriend Sybil Smith (Blossom Seely) and both gals promptly fall in love: Joan with crooner Clark Brian (radio heartthrob Russ Columbo) and Sybil with his busom buddy, the none-too-bright Peanuts Dinwiddie (Hobart Cavanaugh). Rocci gets wind of it and orders Joan back to New York and Clark, hot on her heels, humbly asks Rocci for Joan's hand. The tough-guy touchingly gives his consent but when Crowley's gang kidnaps the bride on her wedding day, bloodshed, sacrifice, and hope lie ahead...

Broadway reporter-at-large Walter Winchell's saga of song, dance, danger, and romance so closely resembled the real life love triangle between entertainer Al Jolson, hoofer Ruby Keeler, and racketeer Johnny "Irish" Costello that Jolson punched Winchell out when he saw him at a Hollywood Legion prize fight, causing the columnist to sue for $500,000. The Fox film (a Darryl Zanuck Production) opens with a POV peek thru a keyhole that becomes a montage of the Great White Way (called "The Stem" at the time) where the underworld really can meet the elite. There's plenty of musical numbers on display and a couple of them are fairly inventive including tuxedo-clad songstress Frances Williams' rousing rendition of "Doin' The Uptown Lowdown" and a Busby Berkeley-style number with hoola hoops and crotch shots. There's also a romantic duet by handsome Russ Columbo and pretty little Constance Cummings, who's later seen in a transparent dress. Since it's Pre-Code, Connie's in step-ins a lot, too, and un-PC moments include a typical-for-the-time gay stereotype and derogatory slang for Jews. There's quite a bit of double intendre gender-bending going on as well- bits include Seely, dressed in a man's suit and fedora, puffs on a cigar and kisses her gangster boyfriend (after which the guy wipes his mouth) and handsome milquetoast Russ Columbo (he nearly swoons over a cut to his finger) has a too close relationship with his pal Dinwiddie, predicting the one shared by John Hodiak & Wendell Cory in DESERT FURY over a decade later.

As this film shows, silent leading man Lowell Sherman quickly became a capable director at the advent of talkies and he remained so until his untimely death in December, 1934. The British-born Constance Cummings was a popular leading lady for a couple of years in the early '30s and in addition to a top-notch supporting cast, the Broadway luminaries on hand included notorious "Queen Of The Speakeasies" Texas Guinan, the Sophie Tucker-ish Blossom Seely, singer/dancer Frances Williams, Eddie Foy, Jr., Abe Lyman & His Orchestra, and Winchell himself. Young Lucille Ball has a bit as a Miami Beach golddigger as does Ann Sothern & Susan Fleming (soon-to-be Mrs. Harpo Marx) as chorines. Lots of fun!

Early musical

[adf-3 · 23 September 1999]

An interesting musical curio featuring some legendary names like Texas Guinan and the late Russ Columbo. Columbo shows promise as a cowardly crooner but he's only in the last half of the film. The stars are Paul Kelly and the lovely Constance Cummings who showed great unfulfilled promise as a musical comedy star. The Film is infamous as the reason for Al Jolson punching co-writer Walter Winchell. Jolson thought the story was too closely based on the real life adventures of his wife Ruby Keeler and her gangster pals.

Russ Columbo was an unfinished talent

[bkoganbing · 8/10 · 21 January 2004]

In his all too short career, this turned out to be the first of only two feature films that starred crooner Russ Columbo. Until his accidental death in 1934, Columbo was the main singing rival of Bing Crosby. But where as Crosby was singing far more than ballads even that early in his career, Columbo's small output of recordings were strictly syrupy love songs which he certainly did very well.

The plot of Broadway Through a Keyhole is nothing original, your typical backstage show business story so popular in the 1930s. But it's good to see talents like Eddie Foy, Jr., Constance Cummings, Blossom Seeley and Texas Guinan doing their thing. Paul Kelly is his usual competent self as the gangster rival of Russ's for Constance Cummings. But if you can see the film, the main reason to see it and why it ought to be preserved is as a showcase for Russ Columbo.

Columbo's commercial records, done mostly for RCA Victor, are love songs. He has two numbers in Broadway Through a Keyhole, You're My Past, Present, and Future which is a nice Harry Revel-Mack Gordon ballad which he never commercially recorded. He also sings a duet with Constance Cummings titled I Love You Pizzicato which displays a nice comic touch.

Russ Columbo only recorded about 30 sides commercially from 1930 to 1932. A contractual dispute kept him out of the recording studio until August 31, 1934 where he recorded four sides under a new contract for Brunswick records. On September 2, 1934 he was shot to death in a freak accident involving an antique cap and ball dueling pistol.

Columbo was no great actor in this film, but that's not to say that he might not have become one as Crosby did or Crosby's main rival Frank Sinatra. The Sinatra you see in Higher and Higher, his first feature film part, was no great actor either, not like he later became.

See the film if you can and speculate for yourself about the unfinished talent that was Russ Columbo.

It actually gets worse as it goes on!

[1930s_Time_Machine · 1/10 · 19 February 2023]

Al Jolson punched and knocked out the writer of this picture apparently because he thought the story was based on his wife, Ruby Keeler whereas in reality surely he did this simply because Jolson was so annoyed that he'd written such an awful film?

This must have been embarrassing for Darryl Zanuck. After overseeing most of the early thirties' greatest films at Warner Brothers then flouncing off to create Twentieth Century Pictures (Fox would join soon) he seemed to have expected that just he, himself was all that was needed to make fantastic films. But he made this! He may have taken his impressive talent, his progressive and campaigning attitude with him but not, by the look of this, any actors who could act (acting in this is uniformly atrocious by everyone), directors who could direct and writers who could write.

Compared with similar musicals from this time: his own classic Busby Berkeleys at Warners or what Victor Saville was doing at Gaumont-British (with Jessie Matthews), this seems like it was made either years earlier or using obsolete ancient equipment that Zanuck managed to stash in the back of his car on his last day at Warners; it looks so cheap.

Watching this gives the impression that the setting up of Twentieth Century hadn't quite been completed by the time they made this. It was just their second ever film and it really shows. Since Zanuck had made the greatest musicals and gangster pictures up to that date, he thought he could combine both his speciality genres and make millions with this. The result however is awful: the blending of a hard-hitting crime drama with an upbeat, cheerful musical doesn't work. We just end up with the worst of both worlds.

Parallels to real-life show business personalities makes this rare film a delightful curio.

[mark.waltz · 8/10 · 25 April 2014]

It is so ironic that this film has both Texas Guinan and Blossom Seeley in it, both ladies whom decades later firecracker Betty Hutton would play on screen in "Incendiary Blonde" (1945) and "Somebody Loves Me" (1952). The late era of prohibition is documented here at Guinan's club (although her character has a last name), giving the famed "Hello, Suckers!" greeter to say lines like "If you see something on somebody else's table that you want, just reach and try to grab it." She's spiky and tough and fun, and was only on screen a few times, so this is truly at least a historical document for that.

The dramatic storyline focuses on a rising young female star (Constance Cummings) torn between a gangster (Paul Kelly) and a band leader (Ross Columbo). They were said to be parallels to the romance of young Ruby Keeler and superstar Al Jolson with this story, released just as she was gaining her footing over at Warner Brothers as the dancer who went out on stage as a youngster but came back a star. Deliciously pre-code, this is one of those fun, campy musicals which includes such production numbers as "Doin' the Uptown Lowdown" and "When You Were a Girl on a Scooter and I the Boy on the Bike". Every element of this makes you think you've gone back in time when you actually could see a truck filled with live chickens going down 42nd Street.

Gregory Ratoff plays the imperious choreographer, parodying Busby Berkeley's obviously rumored militaristic perfectionism. Constance Cummings and Ross Columbo play the variation of Keeler and Jolson, but is Guinan who you will remember with every quip of hers a gem. Kelly is multi dimensional as the gangster who pays for Cummings' rise to fame in more ways than one. With several future famous faces in the chorus, this is more deserving of being a classic.

If you love something, let it go...

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 3 February 2022]

"Broadway Thru a Keyhole" is a strange movie with one very inconsistent character. Paul Kelly plays Frank Rocci, a mobster who works the protection racket. His Poultry Protection Association offers to prevent 'accidents' in order for a piece of the profits. Yet, oddly, you are expected to believe he's fallen in love with Joan (Constance Cummings) and is so smitten and honest that he really only wants what's in her best interest! So, when she falls for another man, Clark (Ross Columbo), Frank isn't all that upset! What's next? Watch the film...or not.

While I found this film reasonably diverting, I must admit that the script was a bit hard to believe from time to time. Not a terrible film but one that should have been better...and less schmaltzy.

Trite and Lazy

[view_and_review · 2/10 · 22 January 2024]

"Broadway Thru a Keyhole" is a very basic love story with the added element of a gangster. Take that away and it's straightforward love triangle bull malarkey.

Girl has feelings for bad boy, not quite love. Bad boy loves girl. Girl willing to marry bad boy out of gratitude. Bad boy sends girl to Miami for her safety. Girl meets another boy who's not bad. Girl falls in love with good boy. Good boy falls in love with girl. Bad boy not happy.

That's the movie. I'll give some names to make it more sensible.

The girl was Joan Whelan (Constance Cummings). She was broke and needed some work so her sister took her to their childhood friend Frank Rocci (Paul Kelly), a known gangster--well known to everyone but Joan. Frank hooks Joan up with a job in a show at a club over the protestations of Max Mefoofski (Gregory Ratoff), the show director. Rocci (pronounced Rocky) even goes so far as to buy the club and force Max to make Joan a headliner. Max does all of this because he likes breathing, and Joan takes the handouts while feigning ignorance of the source of her newfound career. I'm sure later in life she'd be one of those celebrities trying to convince everyone that she worked for everything she got.

Eventually, Rocci informs Joan that he's a gangster and she replies that she already knew, but she's so grateful to him that it doesn't matter.

That was her second mistake. Her first mistake was not getting out when she realized she was being showered with favors by a gangster. The second mistake was to admit she knew what he was, yet didn't care. At this point my thoughts were that if she gets hit by a stray bullet, then she brought it upon herself.

Sure enough Rocci was the target of a shooting. No bullets hit him or Joan, but he decided to send Joan to Miami until he could settle things. I didn't have to strain to guess that she would fall in love while in Miami, and that's what she did. She fell in love with a crooner named Clark Brien (Russ Columbo).

She told Clark that she essentially belonged to Rocci, but Clark didn't care because of LOVE. He cared so little that he went to New York and crashed Joan's club to see her, knowing there was a high likelihood of him running into Rocci. I guess he was willing to die just to show Joan he loved her.

Not a smart move.

He gave some lame, monotone, I-love-her-more-than-my-own-life speech to Rocci. I don't know if this was supposed to leave the audience clasping their chests and saying "aaawwwww" or what. It was like any other love speech minus any kind of feeling. He may as well had been reading from cue cards. And like that, Rocci got up, said, "OK. Just be good to her," and left.

It didn't quite end there though it should've. The rest was superfluous. BTaK was very underwhelming and yawn-inducing.

Free on YouTube.

Russ Columbo! Blossom Seeley! Texas Guinan!

[drednm · 19 September 2005]

Ostensibly the story of Ruby Keeler and Al Jolson, this snappy musical about Broadway, gangsters, molls, and chorus girls directed by the wonderful actor, Lowell Sherman. While Sherman does not appear in this film, the Walter Winchell tale boasts a few stars and a few Broadway legends.

Constance Cummings stars as the ambitious Joan who allows gangster Rocci (Paul Kelly) to feature her in a show at a night club he buys from Tex Kaley (legendary Texas Guinan, the original Queen of the Nightclubs). She becomes a star but has to skip off to Miami when gangland wars threaten Rocci. She takes an old friend (legendary Blossom Seeley who doesn't get to sing) as a chaperone but falls in love with a local crooner (Russ Columbo).

Somce nice plot twists and snappy numbers keep this one interesting. There's also some interesting sexual innuendo going on with Rocci's devoted "pal" (Hugh O'Connell), Seeley in drag and being taken for a man by a porter, and Columbo playing a wimp who's afraid of the sun and practically panics when he gets a sliver in his finger. Lots of nice little twists.

The film is a rare showcase for Frances Williams, who was a big Broadway star. She gets to sing the best song: The Uptown Low Down. She dances too. Hobart Cavanaugh, Gregory Ratoff, Eddie Foy Jr., C. Henry Gordon, Helen Jerome Eddy, Fred Santley, and Wheeler Oakman co-star. Also look for the two bimbos accompanying Louis the Lug. They are Ann Sothern and Lucille Ball as bleached blondes. One of the wisecracking dames during the early rehearsal scene is Esther Muir, noted for several Marx Bros films. Guinan and Seeley steal all their scenes.

Lowell Sherman, Texas Guinan, and Russ Columbo would all be dead within a year of the film's completion. Sherman had a 20-year career as a star in films and turned out several excellent films as a director, most notably Morning Glory and She Done Him Wrong.

Worth a look.

Nice B Musical Melodrama

[Kalaman · 29 November 2003]

"Broadway Through a Keyhole" is an infrequently rewarding B musical, made for Fox before it became known as 20th Century Fox. I never heard of it before but since it is a Fox musical it aroused my interest and I had to see it.

It is directed by Lowell Sherman ("Morning Glory", "She Done Him Wrong") and written by the famous radio announcer and gossip columnist Walter Winchell.

Constance Cummings is the center of the picture as Joan Whelan, the gifted dancer at Texas Guinan's famous Broadway night club. Ms. Cummings displays a certain depth and innocence to her character and really makes fall in love with her. Joan is being promoted by the pompous gangster Frank Rocci in order to woo her, but things get really interesting when Joan becomes infatuated with one of the nightclub's band leader Clark (Russ Columbo).

Not a classic but "Broadway" is very enjoyable for its cast and musical numbers. Look for a young Ann Southern as one of the burlesque dancers.

Memorable Cast, So-So Movie

[GManfred · 4 September 2016]

The only reason to see "Broadway Thru A Keyhole", is because for perhaps the one and only time you can see Russ Columbo, Texas Guinan and Blossom Seeley in the same movie. They were all famous in their own right for other things than motion pictures, but here they are. All downhill after that, as the story is a pedestrian love triangle between Paul Kelly and Columbo, and with Constance Cummings as the hypotenuse. It was supposedly fashioned after the lives of Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler and a gangster, but that doesn't make it a better or a more interesting story.

The music was written by the team of Bert Gordon/Harry Revel but the songs are not good ones and none became a standard. This was the biggest letdown when watching the movie, even more so than the uninspired screenplay. I guess the only thing to recommend it is the novelty of the appearance of the three stars in the same picture. The title is merely a tantalizing come-on for a small return.