Applause (1929)

Applause (1929) is one of the two films directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Applause is very innovative in many ways compared with the stage-bound, bolt-the-camera-to-the-floor look of nearly all the earliest sound films. This makes Applause as downright astounding. The movie itself is pure melodrama, essentially it is a vehicle for torch singer Helen Morgan. Applause is not really a musical, though there are bits of musical numbers within in. The main plot concerns a fading burlesque queen, Kitty (Morgan), determined to keep her pure 17-year-old daughter, April (Joan Peers), out of the show business. But Kitty's no-good boyfriend, Hitch Nelson (Fuller Mellish), has designs first on April's earning potential then on April herself. But she falls for a kind sailor from Wisconsin named Tony (Henry Wadsworth), and finally Kitty must choose between her own happiness and the happiness of her daughter.

The film was shot at Paramount's Astoria Studios in New York, the same place where the first two Marx Bros. movies were shot. The places where most of Woody Allen's pictures are shot as well. However, Mamoulian took his cast and crew into the big city for several key sequences. There are effective scenes filmed at a real subway platform atop a skyscraper to study the Manhattan's skyline and on the Brooklyn Bridge. The idea to integration of these dazzling locations add a verisimilitude to its urban setting was new for a film shot 75 years ago. Yet indeed another asset to the picture is the authenticity carried over to its burlesque scenes. Applause captures the workaday bustle and excitement of that long-lost form of American entertainment. Here in this film, the chorus girls are run-down and flabby, the audience sweaty and mean.

Helen Morgan fits right in. At that time she was 28 years old when the picture was made. But with her skinny legs, jowly features buggy eyes, she looks well past 40, probably owing to the alcoholism that eventually killed her. She is best remembered today for originating the role of Julie in Show Boat. But Applause leans more on her acting than her singing. And Morgan isn't really quite up to the task. Rather grotesque in a blond, Harpo-like fright wig, she plays to the back of the theater in broad gestures with a raspy voice same as Bette Davis and generally looks like a broken-down tart. On the other hand, Joan Peers seems to have attended Kathleen Freeman's School of Elocution, with a very mannered performance common to the period of time.

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