On with the Show! is a 1929 film directed by Alan Crosland.
It is one of the many musicals that flooded cinemas at the beginning of the talkie era. The plot revolves around a stage musical called The Phantom Sweetheart. Everybody in the show is hoping to make a big success on what is closing night of the off-Broadway production, so that the show will get picked up for a Broadway run, but there are problems. Bob Wallace, the slimy investor behind the show, has withdrawn funding. Consequently the producer, an affable sort named Jerry, can't pay his actors. Sam Bloom, who sold all the sets to Jerry, is demanding payment or he'll repossess the sets. Stars Nita French (Betty Compson) and Sarah Fogarty are continually sniping at each other. Harold, the male lead in the show, desperately needs money to send to his flat-broke mother, and is threatening to quit if he isn't paid. Meanwhile, there's sweet, innocent Kitty, who is working as a coat check girl with the production but would love to actually be in the show. Wallace the scumbag offers to invest in the play again, and make Kitty the star—but only if she has sex with him.
The show actually has a packed house, and Jerry is hoping that if he can somehow stall Sam Bloom, he can pay his actors with the gate receipts, and then maybe get the show on Broadway. But the gate receipts are stolen!
This film was originally shown in two-strip Technicolor, but only fragments of the Technicolor version survive. It's most commonly shown in a surviving black-and-white print. Ethel Waters, who was already a famous jazz and blues singer, has two numbers.
Tropes:
- As Himself: Ethel Waters appears as herself, and sings two numbers, including her song "Am I Blue?" which would become one of the biggest hits of the era.
- As You Know: Sam Bloom is introduced by Jerry greeting him with "How is that great big prop and scenery magnate?"
- Boy Meets Ghoul: In the show with the show, Harold's character, who is supposed to be getting married, has fallen in love with a ghost. Subverted at the end when it turns out that the "ghost" is actually real.
- Casting Couch: Wallace is not subtle about how he'll get Betty in the show if she has sex with him. Everyone thinks that's what happened with Wallace and Nita, his lover and the star of the show, but that example is subverted in the end when Nita reveals that she and Wallace are married.
- Chorus Girls: Scads of them, singing, dancing, and running around in revealing costumes.
- Deus ex Machina: It turns out that Nita isn't Wallace's Casting Couch girlfriend, she's his wife. Outraged when she finds out that he tried to have sex with Kitty, she literally beats him up, forcing him to not only sign over his share of the production to Jimmy and Kitty, but also to float Jerry a loan to get the show to Broadway.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: The thief of the gate money wasn't any of the more likely suspects, but "Dad", Kitty's meek, elderly father, who was working the ticket booth. Dad invested in the show, and stands to lose everything if the show closes, which apparently it will after Wallace pulled his money and Sam Bloom showed up to repossess the sets.
- Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Nita gets Wallace to save the show, and let Dad off the hook, by—beating the hell out of him. Sure he deserves it, what with being an adulterous scumbag and nearly raping Kitty, but still.
- Dramatic Drop: Kitty drops the congratulatory flowers she was just given, after she finds out her father has been arrested.
- Extremely Short Timespan: Close to Real Time, spanning a single performance of a stage musical.
- Leg Focus: There are lots of shots showing off Nita's legs. At one point Sarah comes into the dressing room, finds Nita waxing her legs, and says "Rack that thing up!"
- Lingerie Scene:
- A shot from the back of a wardrobe closet shows a series of half-naked chorus girls reaching into the closet for costumes.
- Nita spends pretty much the whole movie, off-stage and on, in lingerie. Towards the end she makes a crack about how she "took off her clothes, and went to work."
- The Musical Musical: A film about one night in the production of a stage musical, with, of course, lots of numbers.
- The Show Must Go On: Where the movie title comes from, as Jerry tells Kitty to go back out for the last scene of the show even though her father's just been arrested and she's dissolving in tears.
- Show Within a Show: The Phantom Sweetheart, a stage production set in the Deep South, about a guy who falls in love with a ghost.
- Single Malt Vision: A joke in The Phantom Sweetheart. A character who is supposed to be a drunkard sees the twins and thinks that he is seeing double.
- Speak in Unison: The Dorothy Twins, identical twins who are featured in the show, sometimes do this.
- Title Drop:
- In the show-within-a-show, Harold's character sings about his "phantom sweetheart."
- Near the end, when Kitty is hysterical after her father's been arrested, Jerry tells her that she has to go on for the ending anyway: "Always! On with the show!"
- Wedding Ring Removal: After Jimmy gets judgmental and pissy about catching Kitty in a storeroom with Wallace, Kitty, who after all was only trying to stop Jimmy from getting arrested, pulls off her engagement ring. She gets over it quickly, though.
