Opinion
There are things to enjoy in Chasing Rainbows, Metro’s third backstage musical, but it must be said that the film struggles to overcome one thing: Charles King.
In The Broadway Melody, King gave an unsophisticated but largely unmannered performance as Eddie, the cocky songwriter and unlikely love interest of two women. In The Hollywood Revue of 1929, all King really had to do was sing, and he was pretty good at that. But in Chasing Rainbows he is required to act emotions that are simply beyond his abilities.
It does not help that King’s character, Terry Fay, is a mug and a cause of constant irritation to those around him. But we can never for a moment believe in his love or his despair. Especially his despair. Staring at the ground and frowning do not demonstrate any kind of believable anguish. It is true that his fellow actors in the company of Goodbye Broadway always ridicule Terry’s pain, but it should at least appear that he believes in it himself, if only for the moment. It is unsurprising that King’s acting career faded so quickly.
The two performers in MGM’s first musicals who could always make a film watchable were Bessie Love and Marie Dressler. Love is as natural and believable as ever, even when acting off the blank wall that was King, and despite the flagrant attempt by the filmmakers to replicate the emotion of the dressing room scene in The Broadway Melody.
Dressler had no great respect for these musicals, and advised Bessie Love to stop letting the studio force her into unworthy material. But her scenes with Polly Moran stand out comedically, as does her rendition of ‘Poor But Honest’. It is regrettable that Dressler’s second number, ‘My Dynamic Personality,’ was in one of the two Technicolor sequences lost during the 1965 MGM fire (though the audio has survived). The earlier Technicolor section featured Bessie Love performing ‘Everybody Tap,’ which she presumably did with her usual winning lack of finesse.
That sequence also contained an early example of plot progression during a musical performance. While Terry sings ‘Love Ain’t Nothing But the Blues,’ Carlie overhears Daphne explaining to Cordova her plan to exploit Terry.
Chasing Rainbows could not be said to have a great or memorable score, with one exception. ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ became the anthem of the Roosevelt administration and a standard, featured frequently as incidental scoring in many other pictures.
