Applause
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Rouben Mamoulian
Helen Morgan
Joan Peers
Fuller Mellish Jr.
Jack Cameron
Henry Wadsworth
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Burlesque queen Kitty Darling gives birth to a baby girl shortly after learning that her husband has been executed. A few years later, Kitty refuses the marriage proposal of her friend, comic joe King, because she dreams of "making it big" on Broadway, but takes Joe's suggestion to send her beloved April to a convent school. Years later, Kitty is an alcoholic who still dreams of Broadway. Her current lover, Hitch Nelson, is a two-timing gigolo who demands that Kitty send for the now seventeen year-old April when he learns that Kitty has been paying for the girl's education. April is disgusted by New York's seedy burlesque environment, but her love for Kitty makes her stay. When she meets Tony, a young sailor, they fall in love and want to marry, delighting Kitty but infuriating Hitch, who wants April to go on stage to support him now that Kitty is a has-been. Realizing that her career is over and Hitch has only been using her, Kitty sends April to Tony, then takes an overdose of sleeping pills. April returns to her mother after telling Tony that she won't marry him, then goes on stage when Kitty is too weak to perform. April is a success, but rushes offstage crying. Tony arrives, knowing that April didn't mean what she said earlier, and unaware that Kitty has just died, they decide to take her with them to Wisconsin.
Director
Rouben Mamoulian
Cast
Helen Morgan
Joan Peers
Fuller Mellish Jr.
Jack Cameron
Henry Wadsworth
Dorothy Cumming
Jack Singer
Crew
John Bassler
Monta Bell
Irving Berlin
Joe Burke
George Folsey
Garrett Fort
Garrett Fort
E. Ray Goetz
Jay Gorney
E. Y. Harburg
Harry Link
Dolly Morse
Billy Rose
"fats" Waller
Walter Wanger
Pete Wendling
Joe Young
Ernest F. Zatorsky
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
The subway scene was filmed at Chambers Street on what is now the BMT Nassau Street line in lower Manhattan. Chambers Street was a terminus at the time this movie was made, and the train, consisting of a single Triplex unit, operated from the southern end of the station on the second track from the east side and stopped where the camera was situated. The platform used by the passengers in the movie is still in use today.
Notes
Working titles of the film included Portrait and Every Day Is Sunday. Applause marked the motion picture debut of Russian-born director Rouben Mamoulian, who had been a successful opera and theatrical director from the time of his arrival in the United States in 1923. Three years after accepting George Eastman's invitation to direct the George Eastman Theatre in Rochester, Mamoulian went to New York City. In 1927, he directed the Theatre Guild production of Porgy, considered a Broadway milestone. Mamoulian revealed in interviews years after Applause was made, that intitially, during the production, he met with considerable opposition from his crew, particularly from cameraman George Folsey. The reputation of Mamoulian's highly stylized and innovative direction has increased over the decades. He was the first director to utilize two simultaneous sound tracks, and several reviews pointed out the advances Applause made in the development of motion picture sound.
When the picture opened in New York City, various Catholic officals in the United States took exception to a line in the film in which "Kitty" tells "April" that many "Shakers" are "just as good Catholics as others," saying that they "would be just as well satisfied if the picture makers had attempted to compliment the Methodists." To remedy this situation, the Hays Office suggested that the word "Catholic" be deleted from the film during the exhibition by instructing theatre owners to "turn down the fader or blur the dialogue at that point." In the viewed pring the word "Catholic" is, in fact, inaudible.
