Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Really Surprised!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

No color movie. Boo and hiss. Jeanette lovely voice. No Nelson Eddy. 1939 movies included Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind. Here is Frank Morgan from WOZ also in this movie. Color could have been used here, like WOZ and GWTW. I guess MGM put the money into color for those movies, but not this little gem. (MGM distributed the GWTW Selznick vehicle). Jeanette becomes a star in this movie. I love those old performer gets famous films. This movie is reminding me of Red Shoes and A Star is Born. Man gets less attention than the leading lady. Nice to see Mary Gordon from The Little Minister. I liked Jeanette's costumes. I liked her performance hairstyles. I did not like the lederhosen male stereotypes. War was afoot in Europe. Hitler bombed Poland in 1939. This was way too creepy. The scene may have been Switzerland, but German themes were all too obvious. 8/10

From 1939, Broadway Serenade is an odd movie, containing all kinds of music. Lew Ayres is a composer/pianist who apparently wrote or ripped off None but the Lonely Heart, I couldn't decide; the Macdonald-less Jeanette is his lovely singer wife. During his audition of a new song for a big Broadway producer (Frank Morgan) and his investor (Ian Hunter), it's Jeanette who gets the job and Hunter's heart. She has to go on the road with the show; she comes back a star, and her husband, hearing rumors of a romance with Hunter and not doing too well himself, rejects her, though the rumors aren't true. He becomes drunk and disorderly while her star ascends.I guess the big, lirico-spinto/dramatic soprano arias were the popular ones, because in movies where she sang opera, Jeanette MacDonald was always doing something like Tosca or Madama Butterfly, which she does here - so totally out of her vocal type, which was way too light for that sort of music. Her repertoire was operetta and roles like those in the French repertoire: Delibes, Gounod, or Bellini and Donizetti. She had a nice middle voice and beautiful, lyrical pianissimos, but her very high notes had a whitish, straight sound - basically that's how female singers were taught back then. I always loved her acting. She and Ayres are both good although an unlikely couple, he being boyish and she being diva-ish.Some bizarre musical numbers, such as the one at the end. A mixed bag. There are better musicals - an understatement.

Through no fault of the players, this must be one of the worst major studio films of a great year for cinema--1939. Jeanette is charming as always, although I'd like to see her try Butterfly on stage without amplification. I'm afraid the orchestra would win that round! That said, she warbles beautifully and is great fun to watch.Lew Ayres plays a nearly saintly husband (albeit with a temper) and the supporting cast is just fine. The problems: a hackneyed script, and an incredibly tasteless and vulgar Busby Berkeley number to end the affair. Of course we expect BB's numbers to be over the top, we just don't expect them to be so poorly designed. Without this final extravaganza, I'd have given this a 5 at least, but after seeing that debacle, I'm giving it a 3.

Jeanette MacDonald filmed Broadway Serenade while her usual screen partner Nelson Eddy was busy doing Balalaika with Ilona Massey. She's married to Lew Ayres, musician and would be composer. They're a duo working in some real dives when we first meet them. Ayres has a short fuse involving his wife and manages to get himself fired after punching out a drunk. MacDonald dutifully follows her man.After that it's the usual backstage story for both of them. She becomes a big Broadway star and he has dreams of presenting his concerto, a treatment of Tschaikovsky's famous None, But the Lonely Heart. And they run into the usual situations involving her beauty and his temper.Jeanette sings beautifully and Ayres steps out from his Dr. Kildare image. At the time Broadway Serenade was being filmed, just as Jeanette was taking a break from Nelson, Ayres was on hiatus from the Dr. Kildare series which was at the height of its popularity.Also in the cast is Frank Morgan as a Broadway producer, the same role he had in Sweethearts and Ian Hunter as the playboy backer of Morgan's shows who's got a yen for Jen. But the best supporting part in Broadway Serenade is Al Shean who is sidekick and confident to Lew Ayres. This may have been Al Shean's best screen role. But what this film is probably best known for is the climax sequence involving Lew Ayres's concerto. Busby Berkeley did the number and it goes down as one of his worst.Berkeley who did so well at Warner Brothers with Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler and later on at MGM with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, makes a ghastly debut at MGM. His None But the Lonely Heart dance number is like the number that Jack Buchanan did in The Bandwagon. Only that was supposed to be satiric, this one was for real.If Ayres's concerto had been presented simply as just an instrumental piece it would have been sooooooo much better. It was one bad creative decision to give Busby Berkeley an assignment here. Other than that, Jeanette's fans will go for this. She has some fine numbers to sing her in both the classical and popular vein.