Broadway. 1929. USA. Directed by Paul Fejos. Screenplay by Edward T. Lowe Jr., Charles Furthman, based on the play by Philip Dunning and George Abbott. With Glenn Tryon, Evelyn Brent, Merna Kennedy. New York City premiere. 105 min.
A landmark in early sound filmmaking, Paul Fejos’s Broadway decisively challenges the persistent myth that the arrival of synchronized dialogue resulted in static, stage-bound cinema. Adapting Philip Dunning and George Abbott’s 1926 hit play about romance and crime in a Prohibition-era nightclub, the Hungarian-born Fejos—an avant-garde filmmaker recruited by visionary Universal executive Carl Laemmle Jr.—deployed what was then the largest camera crane ever constructed, creating elaborate tracking shots that sweep through a massive multilevel set with a fluidity that wouldn’t become standard for decades.
Against the backdrop of a lavish Times Square nightclub, ambitious hoofer Roy Lane (Glenn Tryon) and chorus girl Billie Moore (Merna Kennedy) are pursuing dreams of stardom, but become entangled in a web of bootlegging and murder when gangster Steve Crandall (Robert Ellis) sets his sights on both the club and Pearl (Evelyn Brent), Roy’s former dance partner.
This new restoration from Universal synthesizes several different sources and includes the surviving Technicolor sequences.
4K digital restoration by Universal Pictures from the 35mm nitrate original negative, 35mm composite fine grain, and 35mm two-strip (red/green) original.