Broadway Babies, aka Broadway Daddies (UK) and Ragazze d'America (Italy), is a 1929 all-talkingPre-Code black and white American musical film produced and distributed by First National Pictures, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. The film was directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starred Alice White and Charles Delaney. This was White's first sound film with dialogue. As a copyright renewed work from 1929, the film will enter the American public domain on January 1, 2025.[a]
Plot
Chorus girl Delight "Dee" Foster (Alice White) is in love with stage manager Billy Buvanny (Charles Delaney) and he also loves her. They plan to marry until bootlegger Perc Gessant (Fred Kohler) steps in. Dee is led to believe that Billy is in love with another girl, so she agrees to play around with Gessant when he becomes interested in her. When Gessant proposes marriage, Dee accepts. As they are about to be married, rival gangsters shoot Gessant and he ends up dying. Dee is reconciled with Billy and they become engaged.
Armand Kaliz as Tony Ginetti, the nightclub manager (uncredited)
Production
Broadway Babies was one of the many movie musicals with a Broadway setting that were made at the dawn of the "talkie" era. Such films were called "backstagers", a vogue that evolved during the emergence of sound pictures and from the success of The Jazz Singer (1927) and The Singing Fool (1928), both also Warner Bros.' films.[2]Broadway Babies was also one of a number of similar vehicles created for Alice White; it was White's first all-sound as well as her most successful picture.[3] The film was adapted from "Broadway Musketeers", a story by Jay Gelzer.[4]
As was common in the era, a silent version was also prepared for theatres not yet equipped for talkies. Only the sound version survives, as a 16mm reduction positive in the Library of Congress collection, although it has been preserved and is shown occasionally on Turner Classic Movies. The film's trailer also survives incomplete.[6][7][8] The film was released on DVD by Warner Archive in 2017.
^Bennett, Carl (ed.). "Broadway Babies". Progressive Silent Film List. Retrieved September 12, 2015 – via SilentEra.com.
^Catalog of Holdings The American Film Institute Collection and The United Artists Collection at The Library of Congress p.22 c.1978 by The American Film Institute