King of Burlesque
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Sidney Lanfield
Warner Baxter
Alice Faye
Jack Oakie
Mona Barrie
Arline Judge
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
After a successful year of producing burlesque shows on Fourteenth Street in New York, Kerry Bolton wants to move uptown and do big musical revues, as does his singer and choreographer Pat Doran, who loves him. Kerry's partner, Joe Cooney, however, is cynical about the idea and refuses to join them. Four years later, Kerry's nickname has changed from "King of Burlesque" to "Broadway Czar," as he has produced hit after hit. Kerry, Pat, Joe, now Kerry's general manager, and Joe's girl friend Connie, who wants to marry him, go to an auction at the Park Avenue home of the Cleves, who have recently lost all their money. When Rosalind Cleve sees Kerry poking fun at the plight of her family, she refuses to sell a model ship in which he is interested. In response, Kerry, to insult her, buys much of the remaining merchandise at prices far below their worth. However, when he finally meets her and realizes that she is the type of woman he has dreamed of, he tries to make up by offering to pay a good price for the model, but she refuses. Kerry has Joe investigate Rosalind, and he learns that she is a widow of twenty-six and is engaged to an opera student named Stanley Drake. In need of money, Rosalind visits Kerry during a rehearsal and offers to sell the model ship for $1,500. He agrees, but when he reveals that he has learned that its value is only $400, she pridefully tears up his check. When Kerry suggests that he could help Drake get a start at the Metropolitan, she accepts his dinner invitation. At dinner, Kerry tells her that she has everything he wants in a woman--beauty, brains and class--and predicts that she will be his wife one day. After Kerry and Joe surreptitiously arrange for an institute of music to sponsor Drake to study in Italy, Rosalind, because of her desperate financial situation, agrees to marry Kerry on a business basis with a written contract stipulating that Kerry send her sister to a good school and provide Rosalind with $100,000 in securities in case the marriage fails. Hurt by the news, Pat accepts an offer to work in London. After the honeymoon, Kerry cancels the show under preparation and announces that his next show will have class and style. Rosalind convinces him to put Drake, who has returned, in the lead, and the new "modernistic revue," entitled "Rhythm in Color," becomes Kerry's first flop. When Joe calls Kerry a "chump," for putting Rosalind's "boyfriend" in the show, Kerry slaps him. Although Kerry tries to apologize, Joe leaves him. In London, Pat becomes a big hit as a performer. When she learns that Kerry has had three flops in succession and that Rosalind has left him, she returns and formulates a plan with Joe to get Kerry, who is now down-and-out, to start up a new show. Joe pays an out-of-work Russian immigrant named Kolpolpeck to pose as a millionaire backer, but Kerry is unable to come up with an idea until he sees Rosalind and Drake, who is wearing his coat, come out of a car together. Kerry socks Drake, recovers his coat and tells Joe that he now has his idea. With Kolpolpeck secretly fronting for Pat, Kerry purchases an old theater on Fourteenth Street and has most of the seats in the center removed. He then hires Pat to choreograph all the people who wanted a chance to show their talents when he was too busy for them, including his old telephone operator, elevator operator, doorman, office boy and a seemingly washed-up actor. Cynical about the show's prospects, Joe agrees to marry Connie if the show is a hit. The show, which combines burlesque and Broadway, includes a revolving stage and girls swinging on trapezes above an upper-class audience seated in tables below. After Joe deems it a hit, he and Connie embrace, as do Kerry and Pat.
Director
Sidney Lanfield
Cast
Warner Baxter
Alice Faye
Jack Oakie
Mona Barrie
Arline Judge
Dixie Dunbar
Gregory Ratoff
Herbert Mundin
Fats Waller
Nick Long Jr.
Kenny Baker
Charles Quigley
Paxton Sisters
[al] Shaw And [sam] Lee
Andrew Tombes
Shirley Deane
Harry "zoop" Welsh
Claudia Coleman
Ellen E. Lowe
Herbert Ashley
Jerry Mandy
Keye Luke
Gareth Joplin
Torben Meyer
Sally Adair
Eddie Allen
Mary Arden
Ward Arnold
Florine Bale
Jim Blair
Ethel Bryant
Bud Carpenter
Peggy Carroll
Pokey Champion
Georgia Clarke
Jack Crosby
Pat Dahlin
Bobby Dale
Bryn Davis
Margaret Davis
Dixie Dean
Marie Deauville
Chuck Deshon
Pauline Easterday
Frank Edmunds
Clarette Ellis
Frank Erickson
Jill Evans
Eddie Foy
Ken Gatewood
Jack Geiger
Beverly Haines
Gus Hyland
Maxine Jerome
Harriett King
Louise Larabee
Elsie Larson
Perk Lazelle
Patsy Lee
Lucile Lehman
Margie Mckay
Allen Mathews
Fred Mayon
Gordon Merrick
Lucille Miller
Inez Mortensen
Jack Morton
Jim Notaro
Emmett O'brien
Maureen O'brien
Lorraine Page
Dorothy Panter
Hal Rand
Barbara Reilly
Marjean Roach
Dorothy Sander
Ray Santos
Muriel Scheck
Marjorie Seavey
Rudy Shaves
Julie Sheldon
Paul Siegel
Ann Lavel Smith
Ed Stanbridge
Juana Sutton
June Terry
Valerie Traxler
Ardelle Unger
Buddy Van Fleet
Mimi Wagner
Gertrude Webber
Chiquita Wilcox
Ercell Woods
Aloha Wray
Jane Wyman
Crew
Victor Baravalle
Bartlett Cormack
Viña Delmar
Ralph Dietrich
Finley Peter Dunne Jr.
Philip Dunne
Ed. Ebele
A. F. Erickson
H. W. Hanemann
Roger Heman
Ray Henderson
William Hurlbut
Ted Koehler
Sammy Lee
Thomas Little
Kenneth Macgowan
Gene Markey
Peverell Marley
Jimmy Mchugh
William Murphy
Hans Peters
Lew Pollack
Joseph M. Schenck
James Seymour
Wallace Smith
Harry Tugend
Jack Wagner
Gwen Wakeling
E. Clayton Ward
Jack Wells
Jack Yellen
Darryl F. Zanuck
Film Details
Technical Specs
Award Nominations
Best Dance Direction
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
Vina Delmar's unpublished, uncopyrighted story was entitled "The Day Never Came," which was one of the film's working titles; the other working title was Blue Chips. According to various news items, the film was under preparation by Fox Film Corp. in 1934 as a Erich Pommer production. According to information in the Twentieth Century-Fox Produced Scripts Collection at the UCLA Theater Arts Library, an early draft of the screenplay was entitled "Mr. Manhattan." According to an Hollywood Reporter news item, Irving Cummings was originally scheduled to direct, but by the time shooting was to begin, he had not sufficiently recovered from a recent operation. In November 1935, Darryl Zanuck wrote a memo to the Screen Achievements Bulletin complaining that they had included too many contributing writers in their listings, in view of the regulation that a writer had to contribute at least 10% of the film to be listed as a contributor. In subsequent Screen Achievements Bulletin listing, only William Hurlbut was listed as a contributor, in addition to the writers who received screen billing. According to a Hollywood Reporter news item, Victor Baravalle, the head of M-G-M's music department, was loaned to Fox to be the musical director of this film. Earle Hodgins and Earl Clyde are listed as cast members in a Hollywood Reporter production chart, but their participation in the final film has not been confirmed. In 1943, Twentieth Century-Fox produced a remake entitled Hello, Frisco, Hello that did not credit Delmar with the story. That film was directed by Bruce Humberstone and starred Faye, Oakie and John Payne.
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States 1935
Released in United States March 1977
Released in United States 1935
Released in United States March 1977 (Shown at FILMEX: Los Angeles International Film Exposition (The Mighty Musical Movie Marathon) March 9-27, 1977.)
