Customer Reviews

Two Tickets to Broadway [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With a story by Sammy Cahn, this is a typical story of a small town girl going to Broadway to make it big. Initially she gets ripped off by a lovable rogue agent, played with great comedy by Eddie Bracken. Janet Leigh's character teams up with aspiring singer Dan and the crux of the movie is whether they will get their big break and whether (of course) they will fall in love!

Unlike many of its contemporaries, this musical features none of the huge stars of the day such as Howard Keel or Doris Day, but what must have been considered a second rank of musical performers. To give you an idea, the guest star is not Bing but Bob Crosby! That said, Janet Leigh (who would later become a much bigger name) acquits herself well in the singing and dancing, and as we know, she's a fine actress. Tony Martin is so-so as the leading man, but has a fine baritone and can dance reasonably well.

The stand out song is I'll Take Manhattan with that classic Cahn rhyming of Manhattan with 'the Bronx & Staten...island'.The colourful costumes the girls wear in the Busby Berkeley choreographed dance make this a first rate number.

A very enjoyable minor movie musical. I do not intend to do a full review - instead I would like to make a few comments.

First, contrary to what the previous reviewer wrote, the clever lyricist who wrote "I'll take Manhattan/The Bronx and Staten...Island" was not Sammy Cahn but Lorenz Hart (in the early days of his collaboration with Richard Rodgers).

"Two Tickets To Broadway" is interesting as it contains a rare screen performance by the vaudeville comedy duo Smith & Dale. While they are reasonably humorous, their interest to modern viewers would be that they were the act that Neil Simon based his Sunshine Boys on - a comedy team who worked well together but actually hated each other offstage.

Finally, I'm not sure I go along with the description of Tony Martin as "bland". In real life, he married Cyd Charisse and stayed married to her for many years. Any guy who can keep one of the world's most beautiful women happy for that long must have something going for him!

I highly recommend this musical. It has everything, romance, comedy, and dance. Also some great singing. Janet Leigh and Tony Martin make a great couple in this film.

The song and dance numbers cannot rescue this musical from the silly plot and weak characters. The film goes nowhere. I found it hard to identify with the characters and thus very hard to watch. Perhaps a disk that had only the songs and the dances?