Dance Team
Cast & Crew
Sidney Lanfield
James Dunn
Sally Eilers
Ralph Morgan
Minna Gombell
Nora Lane
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Jimmy Mulligan, an ambitious out-of-work Bostonian, meets Poppy Kirk, who recently lost her job as a cigarette girl, when they both dance some steps in front of a radio shop in New York City. Jimmy, who boasts he will be the dancing sensation of New York, is overjoyed to learn that Poppy also wants to be a dancer. At a five-cent dance hall, Poppy rhapsodizes that she forgets her troubles when she is dancing, and Jimmy is astonished to find someone else who really knows what dancing is. After he starts a fight when another dancer bumps Poppy, they are thrown out. In her room in an apartment house filled with many out-of-work actors, they decide to become the dance team of "Mulligan and Kirk" and agree to not let love interfere with their dream. When Poppy gets discouraged, Jimmy cheers her up, and his promise to stick by her always is sealed with a friendly kiss, which turns passionate. After a stunt devised by Jimmy to get them a job ends in a fight, Poppy convinces him to persist. At Roseland dance hall, they attract the attention of agent Benny Weber, who gets them a job as Spanish dancers in a "chop suey joint." As they are about to go on, Poppy glimpses Jimmy praying for her to be great. She sprains her ankle, however, and cannot go on. After Jimmy gets work as a tour bus barker, a woman tries to entice him to visit her apartment. He gives in, but later wakens Poppy in the middle of the night to tell her that he loves her, and she confesses her love for him as well. They both get jobs at Coney Island, where Weber sees Poppy and introduces her to two millionaires, Alec Prentice, who runs nightclubs for fun, and Frederic Penworthy, who takes an immediate liking to her. Penworthy gets Poppy and Jimmy an audition at Prentice's new nightclub, The Lido, but as Poppy and Jimmy celebrate their success, they learn that her neighbor, a great circus clown who has been unable to get work in three years, has killed himself. Subsequently, Mulligan and Kirk are a hit, but Poppy spends an increasing amount of time with Penworthy, while Jimmy, who now is the target of wealthy socialite Jane Boyden's advances, drinks a lot. When she sees that Jimmy still loves Poppy, Jane encourages him to fight for her, but just as Poppy has decided to try again with Jimmy, he picks a fight with Penworthy and disrupts the Lido. In anger, Poppy agrees to marry Penworthy and breaks up the act. Sometime later, Jimmy, now down-and-out, runs into Herbert Wilson, a former monologist who was Poppy's neighbor. While Jimmy prays for Poppy's happiness, Herb secretly telephones Poppy, and she immediately visits. After Jimmy fights her driver for making insinuations about her, Poppy and Jimmy reconcile and decide to call their first child Kirk Mulligan.
Director
Sidney Lanfield
Cast
James Dunn
Sally Eilers
Ralph Morgan
Minna Gombell
Nora Lane
Harry Beresford
Claire Maynard
Edward Crandall
Charles Williams
Crew
Alfred Bruzlin
Edwin Burke
Margaret Clancy
William Darling
Guy S. Duty
Jack Epstein
J. E. Gardner
James F. Hanley
Jack Holland
James Wong Howe
June Knight
Paul Lockwood
Raymond Nolan
David Ragin
Charles Woolstenhulme
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
According to a memo in the Twentieth Century-Fox Records of the Legal Department for this film, director Sidney Lanfield and writer Edwin Burke wanted to change to name of the character "Dervaline," the circus clown who kills himself, to "Marceline," which was the name of a famous clown of the New York Hippodrome who died years earlier. Ultimately, the name "Dervaline" was used. Sources vary greatly concerning the film's running time. The time of 57 minutes, listed in later Motion Picture Herald release charts, May have been for a shortened version. Variety notes that the film was reported to have cost only $160,000, which was considerably less than most Fox productions of the time. Film Daily calls it "easily the best of all the many stories of hoofers that have reached the screen." According to New York Times, James Dunn appeared on stage at the Roxy Theatre in New York before the showing of this film, performing a scene from Bad Girl, an earlier hit in which he starred with Sally Eilers.
