Manhattan Heartbeat
Cast & Crew
David Burton
Robert Sterling
Virginia Gilmore
Joan Davis
Edmund Macdonald
Don Beddoe
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Department store salesgirls Dottie Haley and Edna Higgins take a vacation at Camp Mohawk, which Dottie scornfully refers to as a "marriage bureau." On the train back to Manhattan, Edna dines with fellow vacationer Spike, while Dottie's patience is tried by woman-hater Johnny Farrell, who disparages marriage as a racket to enslave men. Johnny's hard-boiled claim that he cares only for airplanes is proven false soon after, when he visits Dottie and Edna at work. Edna, who sees through Johnny's crusty exterior, tries to make him jealous by intimating that Dottie is dating their supervisor, Mr. Preston. Despite a few more false starts, Dottie and Johnny begin seeing each other and quickly fall in love. One night, while Johnny is telling Dottie about his plan to buy the airport owned by his boss Sweeney, an unwitting Preston, who is dining at the same restaurant, compliments Dottie on her appearance. Believing that Preston is making a pass at Dottie, Johnny punches him. Dottie furiously explains that Preston was on the level, and when she states that she will have to apologize, Johnny vows to marry her before he will let her "eat mud." Ten weeks later, after Dottie and Johnny's wedding, Dottie confides in Edna that she is pregnant. Dottie is terrified, for her own mother died in childbirth. She is also afraid of how Johnny, who is saving all of his money to buy the airport, will take the news. When Johnny arrives home, he tells Dottie that he has given Sweeney a deposit and will pay him the rest tomorrow. Desperate to have enough money for a good doctor, Dottie asks Johnny if she can return to work. He refuses, and in order to keep him happy, Dottie does not tell him about her pregnancy. Johnny thinks that Dottie is sad because she wants nice things, and so he uses the money he was saving for the airport to buy a big apartment and lovely furniture. He is disappointed by Dottie's stunned reaction to their new home, but finally understands when Edna tells him Dottie's secret. Johnny cannot fathom why Dottie is so upset about the baby, and as the months pass, it is again Edna who enlightens him by telling him why Dottie is so afraid. Johnny determines that Dottie will have the best physician, a society doctor named Bentley, despite his high fees. Johnny does everything he can to raise money, including performing a dangerous test flight of a new plane, but discovers that he still does not have enough. When Dottie goes into labor, Johnny rushes to Bentley's posh home, where he begs the doctor to attend to his wife. Touched by Johnny's sincere love for Dottie, Bentley agrees, and the hysterical Dottie is calmed by Bentley's appearance at the hospital. With Bentley's expert guidance, Dottie safely delivers a healthy boy, and the generous doctor pays her hospital bill and gives her fifty dollars to start a savings account for the baby. Dottie and Johnny then show off their son to Edna and Spike, and laugh at Spike's reaction when Edna asserts that she also wants a baby.
Director
David Burton
Cast
Robert Sterling
Virginia Gilmore
Joan Davis
Edmund Macdonald
Don Beddoe
Paul Harvey
Irving Bacon
Mary Carr
Jill Dennett
Bob Hoffman
George Chandler
Ann Doran
Frances Morris
Harry Denny
James Flavin
Kenneth Seiling
Ed Dearing
Jan Duggan
Harry Tyler
Gaylord Pendleton
Margaret Brayton
Louise Lorimer
Ruth Warren
Emmett Vogan
Catherine Craig
Lenita Lane
Dennis Kaye
John Ardell
Edward Earle
Ed Stanley
Forbes Murray
Eddie Acuff
Murray Alper
Archie Twitchell
Harry Hayden
Milton Kibbee
Cecil Weston
George Reed
Dick Winslow
Robert Shaw
Lillian Porter
George Walcott
Marjorie Cooley
Lyle Moraine
Jerry Cecil
Vivian Coe
Bernadene Hayes
Crew
Joseph E. Aiken
Clark Andrews
Harold Buchman
David Burton
Richard Day
George Dudley
Herschel
Jack Jungmeyer Jr.
Harry M. Leonard
Thomas Little
Virgil Miller
Cyril J. Mockridge
Sam Schneider
Edith Skouras
Alexander Troffey
Sol M. Wurtzel
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
This film's working titles were Rain or Shine and Marriage in Transit, and it was reviewed by Daily Variety under the title Manhattan Heartbreak. A Hollywood Reporter news item also states that the picture was formerly titled Bad Girl. Film Daily and Hollywood Reporter both reported erroneously in news items that "Rain or Shine" was an original story by Viña Delmar. Hollywood Reporter news items noted that actress Virginia Gilmore was under joint contract to Twentieth Century-Fox and Samuel Goldwyn, who split her salary costs, and that actor Don Beddoe was borrowed from Columbia. Although many contemporary sources stated that Gilmore and Robert Sterling made their screen-acting debuts in this film, Gilmore earlier had appeared in the 1939 United Artists picture Winter Carnival (see below), and Sterling had played bit parts in numerous earlier Columbia productions. This film marked their first starring roles. The train station scenes in the picture were filmed at the Inglewood, CA railroad station. Delmar's book and the play she co-wrote with Brian Marlowe were first filmed by Fox in 1931 as Bad Girl and Marido y mujer. According to the Twentieth Century-Fox Records of the Legal Department at the UCLA Theater Arts Library, the 1944 film Take It or Leave It, which was directed by Ben Stoloff and starred Phil Baker and Phil Silvers, contained "one of the basic elements in the story line...and was suggested by Bad Girl." Delmar, however, wrote to Fox that she did "not desire or expect the name 'Viña Delmar' [to be] used in any connection whatsoever with the picture." The records also indicate that Fox planned to remake Bad Girl again in 1949, but the project was not completed.
