Touches You

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Lana Turner gets to show off her dance skills with George Murphy and Joan Blondell in 1940's "Two Girls on Broadway." Mostly lighthearted fun as George Murphy plays dancer Eddie Kerns, who resorts to trickery to catch his big break in New York and smoothtalks his producers into bringing over his fiance (Joan Blondell) and her kid sister (Turner), who are also dancers. Turner plays the fresh faced ingenue who attracts attention for her looks and talent while Blondell has to face the harsh realities of show business when you are past your prime. Murphy plays the aw shucks hoofer torn between Blondell and Turner (guess who he wants the most? Gee I wonder?) Blondell gets a chance to play more than the usual wise-cracking sidekick. Turner shows she wasn't just a pretty face back then and has some real talent. Look for a cute scene where she comes home drunk late at night and tries to keep her sister from waking up. The movie runs a tight 73 minutes, so enjoy as much as you can before it's over.

This film is a production code era remake of "The Broadway Melody of 1929", and quite ironically one of several titular successors to that film - "The Broadway Melody of 1940" - was a great film made this same year of 1940 that shared not a trace of the original's storyline. "Two Girls on Broadway" doesn't share the franchise title, but has the same storyline as the original Broadway Melody. The problem is, the first Broadway Melody was made before the production code and at the dawn of sound and its quirks and brashness made it special. This successor therefore looks tired and drab next to it, in spite of the vast improvement in the writing of dialogue and production values over the intervening eleven year period. The scrubbing the censors gave to the original's hard edges worsens matters even more.Here, we still have the Mahoney sisters being recruited for a new Broadway musical involving song and dance man Eddie Kerns, with Eddie originally engaged to the older sister but finding he is attracted to the younger sister once he meets her. However, now our sisters are named Molly and Patricia, rather than Hank and Queenie, maybe to please the censors and make them seem more lady-like? Gone are the jokes about undressed chorus girls, gone is the hard-edged dialogue - although they gave it a decent try with the ever wonderfully brassy Joan Blondell as the older Mahoney sister, and gone is the colorful and temperamental backstage crew, some with ambiguous sexual orientation and all with attitude and mouth to spare.Our now thoroughly sanitized plot even paints the lecherous playboy that pants after the younger sister - here 'Chat' Chatsworth versus 29's Jock Warriner - as a serial groom. In the original, he was sleeping with chorus girls and tossing them aside. Here, of course, he's had five wives and plans to make Pat his sixth for six months or so. Apparently, all this sleeping around is fine with head censor Joe Breen as long as there is a marriage license involved in every case.In the end, like in the original, the noble older sister steps out of the way so that Eddie and her younger sister can be married with no feelings of betrayal by either. However, here Eddie rescues younger sister Pat from a mob scene of a wedding at city hall, not a near rape at a prohibition party as in the 29 film. Afterwards, older sister Molly decides to go back to Nebraska, to the simple pleasures of farm and county fair, rather than continue on hoofing with a new partner as predecessor Hank did. I guess in 1940 Broadway was no place for a nice girl, or at least that seems to be the lesson of this film.I give this one a 5 because, although I thoroughly disliked the plot, I really liked the performances. I've already mentioned the wonderful Joan Blondell, but there's also Lana Turner who is just perfect as the wide-eyed innocent Pat who knows the score of what she's letting herself in for with Chatworth but is willing to do just about anything so that older sister Molly can have her happiness. George Murphy does a good job of recreating the same energy and enthusiasm that Charles King brought to the part of Eddie Kerns in the original.My recommendation is that if you've seen the Broadway Melody of 1929 you'll likely be disappointed in this obvious remake, but if you haven't or you're not into the earliest sound films you just might like it.

The revelation here is Lana Turner's dancing ability. Though she was known privately to be an excellent nightclub and ballroom dancer, Miss Turner rarely got the opportunity to demonstrate this ability on film.So, viewers take notice! Here, MGM were clearly still trying to determine in what direction they would develop the still young starlet, and were, therefore, consigning her to everything from Andy Hardy to Doctor Kildaire.In "Two Girls on Broadway," however, she is given an excellent opportunity to display her native rhythm and ability to shift tempo in the lavish production number, "My Wonderful One, Let's Dance." This number, is conceived and filmed, as a sort of hybrid between a Busby Berkely style extravaganza and the sort of routines Hermes Pan was designing for Astaire and Rogers at RKO.Thus, the number opens with George Murphy and Miss Turner depicted as bar patrons (with full chorus) before a curtain of black lame wherein Mr. Murphy croons the number to Miss Turner. Then the camera, (on a boom) pulls backward in a remarkable crane shot to reveal an enormous stage, and a rotating set equipped with steps, columns, enclosures and sliding walls.From this point on, Murphy and Turner execute a fast stepping variety of moods and attitudes, including lifts, spins, soft shoe, and ending with an electrifying series of conjoined pirouettes that concludes with Murphy both lifting and rotating Turner with thrilling speed to a racing orchestra.All told a dizzying feat that proves Miss Turner was fully capable of more than holding her own as a dancer, though I daresay most of her admirers would balk at relinquishing her from her throne as the queen of melodrama.

It's one of those films you only watch because you either want to see anything Lana Turner - if you're a fan - or it's three am and you have no sleeping pills.Watchable but nothing special.