Between the fifth and sixth of her eight MGM films with Nelson Eddy (1938's Sweethearts and 1940's New Moon), Jeanette MacDonald appeared without her most frequent leading man in Broadway Serenade (1939). Stepping in as MacDonald's costar, in the only film he ever made with her, was Lew Ayres. One of the few MacDonald vehicles to have a contemporary setting, the movie follows a classic formula of many another show-business story ranging from Burlesque to A Star Is Born: A struggling couple is driven apart as one of them finds fame and glory and the other hits the skids.

MacDonald and Ayres play singer Mary Hale and pianist/songwriter Jimmy Seymour, a married couple whose vaudeville act is broken up when she's spotted by Broadway "angel" Larry Bryant (Ian Hunter) and hired to appear in an upcoming revue. Mary quickly becomes a star, leaving her husband in a cloud of gloom and the show's former leading lady, Harriet Ingalls (Katharine Alexander), in the mood for revenge. After Harriet spreads the rumor that Mary and Larry are having an affair, the couple separates and Mary files for divorce. As time passes, Jimmy at last finds his own share of success -- but it may be too late for reconciliation because Mary is headed for the altar with Larry...

Frequently interrupting the melodramatic plot are musical performances by MacDonald ranging from pop songs and traditional tunes to excerpts from classical numbers. There's also comic relief from Frank Morgan (The Wizard of Oz (1939) himself) as the Broadway show's producer and vaudevillian Al Shean of "Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean" fame.

The score includes "Broadway Serenade for Every Lonely Heart" (adapted by Herbert Stothart, Edward Ward and Gus Kahn from Tchaikovsky's "None But the Lonely Heart"), "High Flyin'" and "One Look at You" (Stothart, Ward, Bob Wright, Chet Forrest), "Time Changes Everything" (Kahn, Walter Donaldson), Sigmund Romberg's "No Time to Argue," Victor Herbert's "Italian Street Song," "Musetta's Waltz" from Puccini's La Boheme and "Un Bel Di" from Puccini's Madame Butterfly.

Late in the production, MGM executives decided Broadway Serenade needed a stronger ending and brought in Busby Berkeley, noted for his lavish and kaleidoscopic musical numbers at Warner Bros., to stage a finale built around a reprise of "Broadway Serenade for Every Lonely Heart."

Berkeley later recalled, "I had the art director build me a huge set in varying elevations --all covered with black oilcloth. I wanted a hundred musicians and 30 male singers dressed in black frocks and wearing specially made Benda masks to represent all the great composers. Then there would be 20 female singers dressed in simple flowing black dresses..." The effect was completed with the studio orchestra in full dress banked on the opposite side of the screen, and MacDonald -- in an exquisite cape and gown -- standing on a 30-foot-high pedestal to sing her lyrics. The scene was spectacular enough to win Berkeley an MGM contract.

Ayres, a big-band pianist and guitarist before he became an actor, was right at home in the scenes in which Jimmy accompanies Mary at the piano. Ayres would later say of MacDonald that "She had more dignity with warmth, exuberance tempered with a sweet, calm control, graciousness unsullied by affectation than any other person I've ever known...above it all a most delightfully whimsical sense of humor." He was especially amused by an episode in which, after wincing at the "overwhelming volume" of her voice on the playback as she filmed her musical scenes, he was presented by his costar with a carton of earplugs.

One person unamused by MacDonald's performance in the film -- especially her rendition of the Madame Butterfly aria -- was rival soprano Grace Moore, who also had performed "Un Bel Di" in her Columbia film One Night of Love (1934). Like MacDonald, Moore had performed the aria on a setting with a Japanese bridge. In the MGM tradition, however, MacDonald's bridge was on a grand scale, larger and higher than anything Columbia's designers could have conceived. In a newspaper interview, alluding to MacDonald's interpretation of Puccini, Moore sniffed, "The height of the bridge does not determine the quality of the Butterfly."

Producer/Director: Robert Z. Leonard
Screenplay: Charles Lederer, from story by Lew Lipton, John Taintor Foote and Hanns Kraly
Cinematography: Oliver T. Marsh
Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons
Original Music: Walter Donaldson, Herbert Stothart, Edward Ward Editing: Harold F. Kress, W. Donn Hayes (uncredited)
Costume Design: Adrian, Valles
Cast: Jeanette MacDonald (Mary Hale), Lew Ayres (James Geoffrey "Jimmy" Seymour), Ian Hunter (Larry Bryant), Frank Morgan (Cornelius Collier, Jr.), Wally Vernon (Joey, the Jinx), Rita Johnson (Judith "Judy" Tyrrell), Virginia Grey (Pearl), William Gargan (Bill Foster), Katharine Alexander (Harriet Ingalls), Al Shean (Herman).
BW-109m.

by Roger Fristoe