Musicals

Cantor Rabinowitz is concerned and upset because his son Jakie shows so little interest in carrying on the family's traditions and heritage. For five generations, men in the family have been cantors in the synagogue, but Jakie is more interested in jazz and ragtime music. One day, they have such a bitter argument that Jakie leaves home for good. After a few years on his own, now calling himself Jack Robin, he gets an important opportunity through the help of well-known stage performer Mary Dale. But Jakie finds that in order to balance his career, his relationship with Mary, and his memories of his family, he will be forced to make some difficult choices.

Al Stone is singing waiter in a speakeasy who is in love with Molly, the singing star at the speakeasy, but she spurns him. Al gets his big break and goes on to become a Broadway sensation.

Hank and Queenie Mahoney, a vaudeville act, come to Broadway, where their friend Eddie Kerns needs them for his number in one of Francis Zanfield's shows. Eddie was in love with Hank, but when he meets Queenie, he falls in love to her, but she is courted by Jock Warriner, a member of the New Yorker high society. It takes a while till Queenie recognizes, that she is for Jock nothing more than a toy, and it also takes a while till Hank recognizes that Eddie is in love with Queenie.

The Desert Song is a 1929 American Pre-Code operetta film directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring John Boles, Louise Fazenda, and Myrna Loy.

Mr. Hammer runs a bankrupt Florida hotel. He'll try anything to make money, even make love to rich Mrs. Potter. But his main scheme, selling real estate, is in danger of sabotage from zanies Chico and Harpo, who also reduce the schemes of a pair of jewel thieves to chaos. A subplot involves the star-crossed love of Polly Potter and architect Bob Adams.

Lila Beaumont is an understudy in a Broadway musical. Her boyfriend, George Shelby, arrives in New York hoping to take Lila back home with him to marry. George buys a majority interest in the show, planning to fire Lila after she refuses to quit the show. But when Lila goes on in place of the temperamental star, she is a great success and George is able to sell the show back to the original investors at a profit.

A naive young dancer in a Broadway show innocently gets involved in backstage bootlegging and murder.

Conrad Nagel, representing the Hollywood movie community, and Jack Benny, representing the Broadway stage community, act as the interlocutors of a musical comedy revue. A plethora of chorus boys and girls are featured front and center in some of the song and dance numbers, and provide back-up to some other acts. But the revue primarily is a vehicle to highlight a cavalcade of Hollywood movie and Broadway stage stars. One early running gag has both Nagel and Benny playing straight man to Cliff Edwards, who just wants a nice introduction to his act. Edwards would return later to be featured along with the Brox Sisters in one of the highlights of the second act, a production number around the song "Singin' in Rain", complete with rain soaked stage. A reprise of the song with the entire cast acts as the revue's finale.

Dee lives with her two girlfriends in a boarding house. Billy is in love with Dee and runs the show where Dee is in the chorus. He has Dee stepping from the chorus to featured dancer. Gessant is a importer and gambler from Detroit. A gang is trying to keep him in town to fleece him and they use Dee as bait. He is introduced to Dee after her show and she and her friends go out with Gessant and his gambling buddies only because Dee is mad at Billy. Gessant helps her get another job as headliner at the New Moon Club. Billy and Dee break up over this job and Gessant falls for Dee. But Billy still loves Dee and Gessant loves Dee and Dee must choose who she wants.

Burlesque entertainer Skid and specialty dancer Bonny meet, fall in love, and marry. As a comedy-dance team they play the circuit until Skid gets an offer from a Broadway talent scout. Bonny remains "on the road" while Skid, a sensation in New York, resumes an affair with Sylvia Marco, an old flame in the same show. Aware that Skid is unfaithful, Bonny decides to divorce him and marry wealthy rancher Harvey Howell. Unable to go on without Bonny, Skid begins to drink heavily, and he loses his job. Bonny returns and helps Skid walk through the first performance of his new job.

In a juke joint, sharecropper Zeke falls for beautiful dancer Chick, but she's only setting him up for a rigged craps game. He loses $100, the money he got for the sale of his family's entire cotton crop. His brother Spunk is mortally wounded in the shoot-out that follows. Zeke goes away, then returns as Brother Zekiel the preacher. His forceful preaching draws the faithful in large numbers. Even Chick wants to be saved. Zekiel has asked the pretty Missy Rose to marry him, but Chick can still cast a spell over the preacher.

Three Broadway chorus girls seek rich husbands.

This early example of the "backstage" musical genre tells the story of Kitty Darling, a fading burlesque star who tries to save her convent-educated daughter April from following in Mom's footsteps.

Two Marines who spend their lives battling each other find themselves stationed in Russia, where they fight over a sexy Russian girl; from there they go to Brooklyn, where they both set their sights on a pretty blonde who flirts outrageously with both of them; and finally they wind up in a South American country where they fight for the favors of a beautiful senorita and try to put down a rebellion by the locals at the same time.

Marty Reid, the star quarterback at Sanford College, is constantly singled out by the opposition for punishment, and he swears to his pal, Honey Smith, and to Coach Wilson that he will quit the game forever. Ed Kirby, who dislikes Reid, calls him yellow, and Wilson gets Patricia Carlyle, the college vamp, to induce Reid to play. At a sorority dance, where only football players can cut in, Kirby persecutes Reid by dancing with Pat, and as a result Reid does apply to play in the game. When he learns of her trickery, however, Reid fumbles in the game, and both he and Kirby are withdrawn and start a fight in the locker room. Convinced that Reid is no coward, Kirby joins him and they win the game.