How often do you see Zasu Pitts and Tom Moore billed over the likes of Lilyan Tashman, Joan Crawford, and Myrna Loy? Probably only in this film.
The print I saw was pretty bad, there was no music track added, so it really is "silent". It only ran 53 minutes, probably because the Technicolor portions that are part of the show are lost. It's about a Broadway show entitled "Pretty Ladies" that is pretty typical for the time. There are dance numbers and comedy routines, and there is backstage melodrama aplenty.
Show headliner Selma Larson (Lilyan Tashman) is angry because comic Maggie Keenan (Zasu Pitts) makes her entrance too close to Selma's applause. She swears she'll get back at her somehow. Al Cassidy is a musician in the orchestra pit who is an aspiring songwriter. The movie makes a point of saying that while all of the "pretty ladies" of the show have a date after their performance, Maggie goes home alone. However, she must be doing pretty well financially, because she has a large house and a maid. Regardless, she is lonely, and has taken to eating with her "dream lover", imaginary companion, Conrad Nagel.
When she stumbles - and I mean literally - into Al Cassidy's world, perhaps Maggie will finally have something that Selma deems worth stealing from her.
There are some interesting scenes here that recommend this. First, the opening scene shows some men sitting around playing cards when a light on the wall flashes. At first I thought this must be a speakeasy and the light a signal. Nope, it is simply to tell the musicians that the show is about to start and to go into the orchestra pit. The waiting room they were sitting in is joined to the pit with a long dark stairwell. Maybe a little bit of Broadway architectural history?
The second memorable scene is when Maggie is performing Al's song "The House Fly Blues". Al is on stage, on drums. There is a long line of chorines dressed as housewives with rolled up newspapers, and Maggie (Zasu) is dressed as a giant housefly. It really is bizarre. Did Irving Thalberg approve this script???
I will tell you that I never spotted Myrna Loy or Norma Shearer. I think I did see Joan Crawford - this was her first credited role - in the changing room scene with all of the other chorines. They might have just been extras, or they could have shown up in the missing Technicolor footage. Recommended only for the film history buff.
