Tin Pan Alley (1919)

After Tommy Breen, a virtuoso violinist, loses his factory job because the employees have extended their lunch hour listening to him, June Norton, a cigarette girl who lives in the same boardinghouse as Tommy, sympathizes with him and becomes the inspiration for his song, "When You Smile with Your Eyes in Mine." Song publisher Simon Berg signs Tommy, and after the song becomes a great success, Tommy forgets June as he surrounds himself with Broadway lowlife, spends extravagantly, and becomes infatuated with Mona Merwin, a musical comedy performer. When Berg tells Tommy to write a song about home, Tommy, never having had one, fails. After June asks Berg to help her save Tommy from himself, he decreases Tommy's royalty checks. Tommy's Broadway friends desert him when the checks stop coming, and Tommy becomes destitute until Berg sends him to a country cottage he has purchased in Flatbush, where Tommy finds June waiting to marry him. Now inspired, Tommy writes a hit song about home.