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outran its stage competitors. Box-office receipts, however, proved all too clearly that nothing like this occurred. The admirable sound picture, which won the approval of nearly all New York critics, has fallen far short of its producer’s expectations. And why?
Simply because the picture was released nearly three years after the vogue began. Dozens of inferior night life pictures were unreeled before movie fans throughout 1927 and 1928, and the first half of 1929. When Broadway reached the screen in the early summer of 1929, the entire public had been so fed up on this particular brand and flavor of entertainment that the picture barely missed being a flop in the large cities. Nobody can enjoy the twentieth dish of ice cream, even if it happens to be much better than the first nineteen dishes which he has stuffed inside of him.
Writers may note that some pictures have succeeded without sex appeal. First of all, the pictures of Charlie Chaplin. Then those of Douglas Fairbanks and Harold Lloyd. Then Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon. Then come occasional pictures, with lesser stars, such as The Covered Wagon, The Big Parade, The Four Horsemen, and so on.
Have all of these anything in common? Only one feature stands out unmistakably. In every one of them, sex interest is completely submerged. It is subordinated to character drawing, or to complications, or to sheer spectacle. Whenever you find a romance here, it is thin and tacked onto something far bigger or far funnier. And you find no trace of red hot sex appeal, such as Pola Negri injected into the screen.