Children of Pleasure

Opinion

Harry Beaumont directed the first MGM musical, The Broadway Melody. He was brought in to save the unsaveable Lord Byron of Broadway, but Children of Pleasure should be treated as his second genuine effort (he appears to have been a last-minute replacement for Marshall Neilan). It makes an interesting contrast with the earlier film.

There are broad areas of similarity: both pictures are about a singer-songwriter who is too stupid to recognize the girl [sic] who really loves him. In Broadway Melody, Eddie ploughs right on and marries the wrong girl, leaving Hank with a broken heart and the film with a slightly downbeat ending. In Children, however, Danny realizes his mistake at the last minute and chases after self-sacrificing Emma. Result: an upbeat ending. 

In Broadway Melody, ‘You Were Meant for Me’ was the first example of a song performed without a diegetic musical source, specifically to develop the narrative. A number of songs in Children comment on the narrative but, interestingly, none is set as boldly in a non-performance space as in the earlier film. Danny is usually performing for a diegetic audience, though sometimes with non-diegetic accompaniment. 

The production numbers ‘A Couple of Birds with the Same Thing in Mind’ and ‘Dust’ both feature May Boley and the MGM chorus line, led by Ann Dvorak. Their presentation is perhaps a little tighter than in Broadway Melody, perhaps because the great Blanche Sewell was responsible for the editing, but the staging of Beaumont and choreographer Sammy Lee has not made any great progress. The camera resolutely stays outside the playing area, varied only by a change of camera angle. In ‘Dust,’ May Boley is featured entirely in full-length and extreme long shots, while the camera gets no closer than medium full for the chorus. (Although the surviving Technicolor version, which was an alternative take, does include some brief and rather clumsy medium close ups.)

The acting in Children of Pleasure is no great shakes, though Wynne Gibson is pretty good in the type of role Bessie Love must have been tired of by this stage. Benny Rubin lays on his schtick with a trowel, but plays effectively with May Boley.

Children of Pleasure is based on a Crane Wilbur stage play that was inspired by Irving Berlin’s marriage to society heiress Ellin Mackay. In the film, Danny’s Jewishness may be inferred, but is not stated explicitly.