Two Girls on Broadway (1940)

(On Cable TV, December 2020) If there’s a slightly familiar quality to Two Girls on Broadway, it’s not as much due to it being a loose remake of the Academy award-winning Broadway Melody of 1929 than being very similar to countless other Broadway musicals. At the time, much of the media attention on the film was on Lana Turner – she was fast rising as a sex symbol, and the film showcased her (largely unfulfilled) potential as a musical star. Little surprise, then, if the film is more remarkable for its musical numbers than its overall narrative – as a story of two sisters trying to succeed on Broadway while not meeting the wrong men, it’s slight, adequate and just enough to bring this film to feature-film length. Joan Blondell is featured as Turner’s sister, but much of the emphasis of the film is on big production numbers, even if they don’t quite leave much of an impression once the film wraps up. It’s definitely not one of the most striking musicals of the era – it pales even when compared to its more daring and less technically accomplished inspiration. Still, Two Girls on Broadway is amiable enough and fits squarely in the idea we have of circa-1940 Hollywood musicals riffing off Broadway’s mystique.