LULLABY OF BROADWAY
*½/**** Image A Sound A
starring Doris Day, Gene Nelson, S.Z. Sakall, Billy DeWolfe
screenplay by Earl Baldwin
directed by David Butler
CALAMITY JANE
**½/**** Image A- Sound A
starring Doris Day, Howard Keel, Allyn McLerie, Philip Carey
screenplay by James O'Hanlon
directed by David Butler
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's a pseudo-indie movie whose title escapes me that thought it would get an easy laugh by having a pretentious film theory major call her paper "Doris Day as Feminist Warrior." The joke was bad not because it was too exaggerated–as it happens, it wasn't much of an exaggeration at all. Doris Day was such a cottage industry for '90s pop-cult studies that she was (distantly) second only to Madonna as an item for rescue and reclamation, making such a title not only plausible but also inevitable. It's easy to see why: while the "legendary" screen goddesses stood around waiting to be claimed by the hero, Day was going ahead with a career or obliviously transgressing some other gender rule–not enough to topple Hollywood patriarchy, but enough to give clear-eyed individuals fugitive moments of pleasure.
The test of the movies in her oeuvre is not who helmed it (she worked with some pretty flabby filmmakers), but how much it develops the Doris Day semiotic machine. Thus Lullaby of Broadway, a Gosh-I-want-my-name-in-lights musical, ranks pretty low. Day is one in a long line of ingénues on the road to the Great White Way; her mother (Gladys George), someone she hasn't seen in ages, is an ex-Broadway queen who, unbeknownst to Day, is a washed-up alcoholic working as a domestic for beer kingpin S.Z. Sakall. All of Sakall's help are failed actors covering for mother, leading Day to believe that Sakall is actually renting the house for an extended period. Only in America.
A plot like that is basically marking time between song numbers, and here we have a dog's breakfast of refried Gershwin and Cole Porter sandwiched in-between lesser and lesser-known tunes. Day is just the eye of the storm for a painfully wacky supporting cast that includes Billy DeWolf and Anne Triola as a helpful pair of betrothed servants. Sakall gets Day's Melinda into show business while taking her out on the sly, and Gene Nelson is the obligatory first-rejected, then-accepted love interest/co-star. There's no real text here beyond Broadway is neat and show people are zany, hence there's no real addition to Day's perception, the music's perception, or anything else. Suffice it to say that by the advent of the normally delightful title tune, I was humming the riff from "Seven-Nation Army" to numb the pain.
Two years later, the situation changes dramatically. Despite the same dreary director (David Butler) and an obvious capitalizing on the smash hit Annie Get Your Gun, Calamity Jane is a powder keg of Day's special brand of gender treachery. The star is posited as the eponymous Jane, a Dakota cowgirl whose familiarity with feminine ways is passing at best: she fights Indians, tells tall tales, and dresses in such a mannish way as to discourage the army lieutenant she fancies from returning the affection. But when one of her boasts sends her to Chicago to find famous actress Adelaid Adams (Gale Robbins) and bring her back to perform at Deadwood's saloon, she's introduced to bustles and other hitherto unheard-of garments by a woman posing as the sought-after star, Adams' own dresser Katie Brown (Allyn McLerie).
The urgent question of the film becomes: will Jane capitulate to the womanly paradigm she defies? For a good portion, she doesn't. Initially, she takes on Indians and rescues men, even the one suggestively straddling the tree to which he's tied, and she seems happily unaware of female behaviours. Too, insinuations of lesbianism run rampant, first when Katie mistakes Jane for a man in Adams' dressing room, then once the two set up house and cut an unmistakable man-and-wife profile. But Katie is a bad influence, making her beautiful for unwitting suitor Wild Bill Hickok (Howard Keel)–which, though it doesn't entirely de-masculinize her, puts her disappointingly in her place. Still, until then it's a semiotic jungle full of teasing suggestions and backroads mapped, if sadly untaken.
Warner's Lullaby of Broadway disc is first-rate. The full-frame image is tops, with shimmering colour, fine definition, and vibrant saturation that manages not to bleed. The Dolby centre-channel mono audio is similarly well-handled, sounding smooth and sharp without exhibiting noticeable defects. The only extra is a Day trailer gallery encompassing Lullaby of Broadway, Romance on the High Seas, It's a Great Feeling, April in Paris, By the Light of the Silvery Moon, and Lucky Me.
The fullscreen image on the same studio's keepcase repackaging of their 2002 DVD release of Calamity Jane also sports excellent, vivid colour and superb saturation, though there is a slight blurring that renders fine detail a hair too hazy. The Dolby 1.0 mono sound has no such complaints: sharp and full, it's a credit to the disc. Extras begin with two newsreels, one of which covers the film's premiere and contains a potted tribute to Calamity Jane and Bill Hickok, while the other recaps the PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE awards given to, among others, Doris Day for most popular actress. Both segments run under one minute. Also featured: a cast and crew list; a short behind-the-scenes write-up (through which we learn the more storied career of the titular Jane); an awards page (the film won an Oscar for the song "Secret Love"); and Calamity Jane's theatrical trailer.
- Lullaby of Broadway
92 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 1.0; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner - Calamity Jane
101 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 1.0; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner
