Themes: Class Differences, College Life, Opposites Attract
Main Cast: George Murphy, Ginny Simms, Charles Winninger, Gloria de Haven, Lena Horne, Nancy Walker
Release Year: 1944
Country: US
Run Time: 111 minutes
Plot
The plot of the overinflated MGM musical Broadway Rhythm can be summed up briefly: Musical comedy producer Jonnie Demming (George Murphy) dismisses his vaudevillian dad Sam Demming (Charles Winninger) as old-fashioned. Jonnie signs Hollywood star Helen Hoyt (Ginny Simms) to a Broadway show, but she turns it down. Sam saves the day by dredging up an old script he'd done in summer stock-which, of course, Helen agrees to play. All of this can be forgotten, and in fact will be forgotten, once the film's parade of "guest stars" gets under way. Such stage and screen luminaries as Lena Horne, Ben Blue, Nancy Walker, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Hazel Scott and Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra make up for the narrative banalities with such musical numbers as Gershwin's "Somebody Loves Me" and Jerome Kern's "All the Things You Are." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Everything but the studio canteen's kitchen sink is crammed into this musical hodge-podge, which reportedly was designed for the tap-dancing Eleanor Powell. But someone high up in MGM's executive wing wanted instead to showcase his girlfriend and Powell was summarily replaced by band singer Ginny Simms. Although a pleasant enough vocalist, Simms was no dancer, an unfortunate handicap considering that her leading man was hoofer George Murphy. Hence the appearance of a seemingly endless series of specialty acts ranging from Lena Horne to the dancing Russ Sisters to impressionist Dean Murphy. Throw in a very young Nancy Walker, who does full justice to a ditty called "Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet," and it should come as no surprise that Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's 1939 Broadway hit Very Warm for May, of which Broadway Rhythm was ostensibly based, tends to disappear in the general din. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
