What Price Glory? started an epidemic of soldier pictures, many of them revolving about a feud between two members of the AEF over a girl. The original feud between Captain Flagg and Sergeant Quirt was continued by Victor McLaglen and Edmund Lowe in a talkie of 1929, The Cockeyed World. The bone--if one may be so ungallant--of contention this time was Lily Damita.
Jeanette MacDonald was teamed with a French musical-comedy star who had caught the movie public's fancy with his first picture, The Innocents of Paris--Maurice Chevalier. Their combined talents, plus Ernst Lubitsch's sly direction, made The Love Parade an instant success.
Another musical was Rio Rita, which Luther Reed directed for RKO in 1929. The screen version was as popular as the original stage production had been. The costars, seen here, were John Boles and Bebe Daniels. The comics Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey were also in it.
Sunny Side Up had a thin plot, but it had songs by DeSylva, Brown, and Henderson, lavish sets, and the current top romantic couple, Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor. And they talked and sang. The sum total was another big moneymaker.
Broadway, an adaptation of the famous prohibitionnight-club play, wasn't exactly a musical film, but it had lots of singing and dancing in its cabaret scenes. Rather than go East for its Broadway atmosphere, Universal elected to build its own Broadway.
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