Broadway Rhythm (1944) is an MGM Technicolor musical film. It was produced by Jack Cummings and directed by Roy Del Ruth. The film was originally announced as Broadway Melody of 1944 to follow MGM's Broadway Melody films of 1929, 1936, 1938, and 1940. The movie was originally slated to star Eleanor Powell and Gene Kelly but Louis B. Mayer and MGM loaned Kelly out to Columbia to play opposite Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl (1944). The film starred George Murphy- who had appeared in Broadway Melody of 1938 and Broadway Melody of 1940. Mayer then replaced Powell with Ginny Simms. Other cast members included Charles Winninger, Gloria DeHaven, Lena Horne, Nancy Walker, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, the Ross Sisters, and Ben Blue, as well as Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra.
Murphy plays a successful Broadway musical comedy producer named Johnnie Demming. He needs a star for his new show. He’s smitten with the glamorous film star, Helen Hoyt (Simms), and offers the part to her, but she turns him down because she wants to be sure she’s in a hit. Johnnie’s father (Winninger), retired from vaudeville, wants to do his own show. He gets his daughter, Patsy (DeHaven) and also Helen. Johnnie feels betrayed by his father.
The film is very loosely based on the Broadway musical Very Warm for May (1939). However, all the songs from the musical except for "All the Things You Are" were left out of the film. Some of the songs from the movie are by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II:
- All the Things You Are
- That Lucky Fellow
- In Other Words
- Seventeen
- All in Fun
Famous quotes containing the words broadway and/or rhythm:
“The name of the town isn’t important. It’s the one that’s just twenty-eight minutes from the big city. Twenty-three if you catch the morning express. It’s on a river and it’s got houses and stores and churches. And a main street. Nothing fancy like Broadway or Market, just plain Broadway. Drug, dry good, shoes. Those horrible little chain stores that breed like rabbits.”
—Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993)
“My brain sang
a rhythm I never dreamt to sing,
“I will be gay and laugh and sing,
he is going away.””
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)