As his name makes clear, Francis Everly Bushman (1903-78) was the son of the screen’s original Messala in Ben-Hur (1925), who himself made an uncredited appearance in Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry.
Bushman Jr had a less prestigious career, though he did feature in They Learned About Women as the practical joker Haskins. Some years later he turned up uncredited in Let Freedom Ring.
Tom Dugan (1889-1955) was an Irish actor who appeared in well over 250 Hollywood films. He started out at the tail-end of the silent era, and featured in the first full-length talking picture, Lights of New York (1928). Two of his many appearances stand out. In Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not To Be (1942) he is the first character seen, the Polish actor Bronski wandering down a city street disguised as Adolf Hitler. And in On the Town he played the sentimental Officer Tracy, who passes around the hat for the three sailors and their girls.
Dugan’s other MGM musicals were They Learned About Women, San Francisco (uncredited), Nobody’s Baby, Easy to Wed (uncredited), as Pooch in the 1947 Good News, Take Me Out to the Ball Game and The Belle of New York (uncredited).
John Charles Nugent (1868-1947) was a vaudeville performer who became a playwright, actor and screenwriter. Several of his plays were adapted for the screen. He was the father of Elliott Nugent, who appeared in So This Is College.
Nugent had supporting roles in They Learned About Women and Love in the Rough.
August Von Glahn (1886-1968) and Joseph Thuma Schenck (1891-1930) were a popular vaudeville, Broadway and recording duo. They combined comedy and singing in their act, with Van’s baritone and Schenck’s light tenor combining in pleasant harmonies, which Schenck accompanied on the piano. They were the first to record, in 1917, ‘For Me and My Gal,’ which went on to become a standard. They also scored a big hit with ‘Ain’t We Got Fun’ in 1925, a song with almost anthemic significance in the 1920s. Gus Van was a talented dialect comedian, and was able to carry that skill into his singing.
Van and Schenck’s first Broadway success was in The Century Girl (1916), the show in which Ziegfeld first launched his signature celestial staircase. Throughout the 1920s they were regular top-liners at the Palace, the New York venue discussed in reverent terms in so many backstage musicals.
Van and Schenck appeared for Vitaphone and MGM in four musical shorts in 1928-29 before their feature debut in They Learned About Women. Any further film career was cruelly curtailed by Schenck’s sudden death from a heart attack at the age of 39.
Gus Van continued performing, latterly in nightclubs, for another 38 years, but never with the same success. His film career ended after a few more musical shorts.
Synopsis
Jerry Burke and Jack Glennon are baseball players for the Blue Sox who perform as a vaudeville act during the off-season. They are on a train to Florida for the start of the new season, along with a bevy of chorus girls. Jerry is very drunk, but insists they perform one more song before going to bed [He’s That Kind of a Pal].
Jack gets Jerry into bed, then hears golddigger Daisy Gebhart crying. Her tears are fake, but he is fooled by her pretence of innocence. Meanwhile, Jerry slips out of bed and goes back to entertaining the girls.
The next morning, Jack finds that the carriage containing Jerry was left behind during the night. Jack’s girl, Mary Collins, meets him at the station. As the train is pulling out, Jack thinks he hears Jerry’s voice. He jumps on board, but it turns out to be a record.
Later that day, the Blue Sox are training, while Mary types for the team’s owner, Stafford. Jack reunites with his friends Sam Goldberg and Tim O’Connor. Haskins, a new signing, upsets Coach Brennan with his practical jokes.
Jerry arrives in a taxi, still in his pyjamas. Brennan tells Jack and Jerry to get Haskins out. They succeed when they realize he cannot handle slow balls.
Several days later, the team is relaxing in a hotel. Mary sews on a button for Jerry, who asks if she will still do it when she is married to Jack [A Man of My Own]. Jack is talking to Daisy about her problems; she wheedles money from him and then kisses him. He says they probably should not see each other again, but agrees that they can write to each other. Jack introduces Mary as his fiancee and Daisy leaves [Does My Baby Love?; There Will Never Be Another Mary]. While Jack is talking to Mary, it is clear he still has Daisy on his mind, even though he says “a guy would be crazy to think of anyone but you”.
Half-way through the season, Jack receives a letter from Daisy, to whom he has been writing regularly. [Ten Sweet Mamas]. Jack asks Jerry to have dinner with Mary because he has a business meeting. At a nightclub, Jerry spots Jack and Daisy at another table. He tries to get Mary out, but she notices Jack and Daisy dancing while Jerry is fetching his hat. Mary pretends to be happy while Jerry puts her into a taxi, but cries as it drives away. Jerry goes back into the nightclub and pretends to be drunk, forcing Jack to take him home.
Back at the hotel, Jerry tells Jack he is a fool if he is ditching Mary for Daisy. He leaves Jack alone with Mary, who tells Jack she saw him with Daisy and now realizes that she and he are not really in love with each other. They agree to remain friends, but afterwards Jerry finds Mary distraught.
The next morning, Jerry tells Sam that Jack has been out all night. They find Daisy waiting in reception and insult her. Back in their room, Jerry and the others try to persuade Jack to stay away from Daisy, but he reveals that they got married that morning.
In the off-season, Daisy accompanies Jack and Jerry on tour, but there are gossip column reports of friction in the dressing room. Daisy is trying to persuade Jack to include her in the act. Meanwhile, Jack is impervious to how much Jerry and Daisy hate each other. The ball team and Mary are in the audience that evening, and are meeting Jerry at the hotel afterwards. Daisy says she and Jack cannot join them, because they are going to another party where a big booker will be present, but Jack persuades Daisy to go alone.
Daisy is trying to get bookings for herself and Jack as a double act, but Jack is feeling guilty about Jerry and about his plan to give up baseball [Dougherty Is the Name; I’m an Old-Fashioned Guy]. In the audience, Tim shouts for them to sing ‘Mary’, until Sam forces him to stop. [Harlem Madness].
At Jerry’s party, Mary gives him and Jack their contract for next season. Jack and Mary are awkward together, while Jerry torments Daisy when she calls to speak to Jack. Sam and Tim try out their new double act, ending when Sam accidentally knocks out Tim with a candlestick.
Daisy arrives, but Jerry has told the house detective not to let her in. She sneaks in anyway and tells Jerry and the others that Jack is through with baseball and that they are throwing Jerry out of the act. When Jack shows signs of weakening, Daisy tells him that Jerry made a play for her before they were married and has been pestering her ever since. Jack punches Jerry and leaves with Daisy. Mary comforts Jerry.
Later, the Blue Sox are on a winning streak, largely owing to Jerry’s pitching. A bottle is thrown at Jerry during a match, and Jack, who is in the crowd, punches the offender and is reunited with Jerry. Afterwards, Jack tells Jerry and Mary that his new act has not been doing well, then finally confesses that Daisy has left him and he has not worked for months. Jerry says Jack can come back to the team and goes to speak to Brennan. Jack tells Mary that he has never really loved anyone but her, and she tells him that she is going to marry Jerry. Jack tells her to forget what he said.
Later, the Blue Sox are to play in the World Series. Jack is back on the team, but is not pitching well and is benched after the Blue Sox lose their first game. Jerry realizes that Jack is still in love with Mary. At the deciding game, the Blue Sox are trailing badly. During a break for rain, Jerry tells Brennan he should play Jack, and he tells Jack that he cannot go through with his marriage to Mary. Jack confesses that he still loves her, which is why he has been playing badly. When play resumes, Brennan sends Jack on to pitch and he throws well. When the Blue Sox are put in to bat, Jack is hit in the head by the ball. But he plays on and Jerry hits a home run, winning the game. Jack collapses and comes to in Mary’s arms. She tries to pull away from his embrace, Jerry selflessly indicates that everything is all right.
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.
Russell Franks (1901-73) worked in the MGM sound department under Douglas Shearer. After acting as assistant on The Hollywood Revue of 1929, he was recording engineer onChasing Rainbows and Good News.
Reggie Montgomery (1906-??) co-write musical numbers for three MGM musicals–Chasing Rainbows, Children of Pleasure and Good News–and for the abandoned The March of Time.
Edward Ward (1896-1971) was a composer and musical director, seven-times Oscar nominated, though with no wins.
In 1930 he co-wrote a number for Chasing Rainbows, later composed music for Reckless, Maytime and The Firefly.
Ward also composed music used in the trailer for Broadway Melody of 1936.
