Moonlight and Pretzels

This is an enjoyable,unpretentious Pre-Code Musical,made on a limited budget,yet as fun and entertaining as some of the Warner Bros. movies it sought to imitate! Filmed in less than 3 weeks at the Astoria studios and Casino theatre,New York,it nevertheless had an earnest,determined Cast and Crew of some talent;plus good songs and dancing sequences. The latter,staged and choreographed by Bobby Connolly,were not over-choreographed,like those at Warner,and this comparative simplicity actually makes the routines much more endearing and believable! Real Showgirls performing like Real Stage Showgirls!! Roger Pryor,as the pressurized Songwriter turned Theatrical Producer,proves to be a versatile lead,with a pleasant singing voice too. He is little known now,but appeared in quite a number of 30's/40's films. His co-star and romantic interest here is Mary Brian,former Silent movie leading lady:She is okay in her "Ruby Keeler" type role. Lillian Miles,though,is the standout Female performer,with her peppy,energetic,no-nonsense approach as sexy Elsie Warren,proposed star of Roger Pryor's debut production.She really puts over her songs well,including "Ah,But is it Love?" and "Are You Making any Money?,both of which became popular successes. Leo Carrillo is fun in his pivotal role as Nick Pappacropolis,the Greek Gambler and new Citizen of the United States( United Steps in his amusing vocabulary!),who comes to the rescue of the new show,enamoured as he is with Elsie! Even Herbert Rawlinson,as the shady big-time gambler Sport Powell,acquainted with Nick,and interested in the show because he is keen on Mary Brian and wants to try and "further" her career: proves that he isn't quite such a bad egg after all. It all comes down to the flip of a coin! Others in the cast include Bobby Watson,as the harassed dance director,and William Frawley,who contribute ,in their different ways,to the general ambience of the movie. Several Radio and Stage performers of the time also feature,some more fleetingly than others.These include Alexander Gray(Good rendition of the optimistic "Dusty Shoes" number),Bernice Claire,John Hundley and Jack Denny and Orchestra,among others. The New York Chorus Girls perform well,especially in the catchy "I've Gotta Get Up and go to Work"number,including a saucy,pre-code Silhoutte sequence as they disrobe and change into their daywear! Although the Musical Film Author Richard Barrios wrote that "Moonlight and Pretzels" was 'Terribly Wonderful',I would describe it as 'Audaciously Wonderful". I have watched it many times,and can fully understand why it was such a popular movie on it's release.

This is a cheap, shabby rip-off of 'Gold diggers of 1933' which lacks the fun, the charm and the smiles of the original. It's very disappointing.

The predictable and lugubrious story limps along without any surprises or excitement, occasionally punctuated only by some terribly amateurish song and dance numbers. Those real Busby Berkeley numbers in the WB movies or even in the earlier Eddie Cantor films don't look that difficult to copy but this shows that they clearly were. Berkley would probably be considered a voyeur these days but like great artists throughout history, his spectacles were primarily his way of celebrating the sexiness of beautiful young women. The routines in this film completely lack any of that innocent eroticism, we just get cardboard cut-out showgirls doing their steps.

Besides the tiresome story, the lacklustre musical numbers, the instantly forgettable (dull) songs, the obviously small budget and the z-list actors (although Lillian Miles is actually pretty good) the main problem is the direction. Karl Freund did a fantastic job on The Mummy the year before but his slow, moody style just doesn't work at all with this. It's a very long 85 minutes.

MOONLIGHT AND PRETZELS was a somewhat tacky attempt by Universal Pictures to cash in on the Busby Berkeley craze that was making mountains of money for Warners in 1933. The backstage plot flagrantly imitates the Warners formula: songwriters and performers desperately want to put on their show but are having trouble raising the money; they hook up with an eccentric investor, go through dramatic ups and downs and eventually pull off the production with flying colors. Along the way we get lots of slangy wisecracks delivered by colorful characters. In this case, the musical numbers are dispersed through the narrative, whereas in the Warners musicals they tended to be stacked at the end. This film boasts an eminently hummable collection of pop songs, chief among which are, from EY Harburg and Jay Gorney, "Ah, But Is It Love" (performed by chorus girls dressed like bleached out clones of Ruby Keeler in "42nd Street" mode), the daffy but catchy "Moonlight and Pretzels" (think, "I Love Louisa" from Schwartz and Dietz in THE BANDWAGON); and "Dusty Shoes," a more optimistic variation on the team's earlier "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" crossed with "My Forgotten Man" from the Warners hit GOLDDIGGERS OF 1933). From Herman Hupfeld we get "Are You Makin' Any Money?" and "I've Gotta Get Up and Go to Work," two jaunty numbers which both suggest the Harry Warren sound. And a beautiful ballad by Harburg and Sammy Fain, "There's a Little Bit of You in Every Love Song." One interesting lost opportunity occurs about half way through the film when hero Roger Pryor (think, a slightly more rough-hewn Dick Powell) tells heroine Mary Brian (think, Ruby Keeler's almost-twin sister) that the prop moon hanging over their heads would be real if she truly loved him. The song that should have followed, "It's Only a Paper Moon," isn't even in this film. This EY Harburg-Harold Arlen song, in fact, ended up in the film version of the Broadway musical TAKE A CHANCE, released later the same year.

The cast is uniformly excellent, with Lillian Miles, a slender platinum blonde with a great set of pipes, as the "star of the show" particularly fetching. The supporting cast includes Leo Carrillo (very funny as a Greek gambler who finances the show and constantly mispronounces words); Bobby Watson as a catty gum-chewing production assistant; William Frawley in typical gruff form.

Karl Freund (cinematographer for Murnau's 1924 THE LAST LAUGH and the 1931 version of FRANKENSTEIN) directed this work and in the "Dusty Shoes" finale, which finds Lillian Miles warbling her heart out behind a phalanx of upstretched hands, one is reminded of a famous scene from Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS. Quite a striking image. One wonders if Freund was deliberately drawing on his German expressionist background or if it was just a coincidence.

Bobby Connolly, who went on to choreograph THE WIZARD OF OZ and other major films, seems off kilter here. The moves of the dancers in the "Ah, But Is It Love" number are noticeably halting and awkward.

Shot in just eighteen days at the old Astoria studio in New York, the title remains familiar today from Karl Freund's brief run of 30's directorial credits bookended by 'The Mummy' in 1932 and 'Mad Love' in 1935, and from Roger Pryor's entry in Halliwell and Katz. But the film itself remains absent from Maltin.

Fresh from Broadway, the perpetually smiling Pryor resembles a young, fresh-faced Milton Berle and slinky-eyed blonde Lillian Miles (who to perform "Are You Makin' Any Money?" wears one of those incredible early 30's spray-on wet-look black dresses they now seem incapable of authentically recreating even in films set during that era) resembles the worldlier Alice Faye in her early peroxide persona. (In smaller roles William Frawley looks not a day younger than when he and Freund were reunited twenty years later on the set of 'I Love Lucy'; while Bobby Watson is more recognisable here as the bespectacled diction coach in the "Moses Supposes" number in 'Singin' in the Rain' than from his intervening years spent playing Hitler.)

Dance director Bobby Connolly does wonders on an obviously tiny sound stage, while Freund still manages a few visual flourishes on his tight schedule and shoestring budget. The musical finale "Dusty Shoes" is a straight rip-off of "My Forgotten Man", but embellished with interesting (and no doubt cheap) actuality footage before arriving at a far more upbeat conclusion than its acclaimed predecessor.

The film did good business.

I've viewed Moonlight and Pretzels many times, It's a refreshing change from those Busby Berkley musicals from this era. We have a virile male lead, a sensational vocalist in Lilian Miles (far superior to Ruby Keeler) and a totally unique up tempo dance number without all those flowers opening and closing! The orchestra playing behind the dancers is loaded with outstanding musicians. Incidently two of the songs were very successful "Ah! But Is It Love? and Are You Making Any Money" A highly desirable record of these songs was released by Paul Whiteman. A real fun movie from the early thirties.