the leading man is my tpye

To me, this movie is perfection.

One of the best films i have seen

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

No color movie. Boo and hiss. Jeanette lovely voice. No Nelson Eddy. 1939 movies included Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind. Here is Frank Morgan from WOZ also in this movie. Color could have been used here, like WOZ and GWTW. I guess MGM put the money into color for those movies, but not this little gem. (MGM distributed the GWTW Selznick vehicle). Jeanette becomes a star in this movie. I love those old performer gets famous films. This movie is reminding me of Red Shoes and A Star is Born. Man gets less attention than the leading lady. Nice to see Mary Gordon from The Little Minister. I liked Jeanette's costumes. I liked her performance hairstyles. I did not like the lederhosen male stereotypes. War was afoot in Europe. Hitler bombed Poland in 1939. This was way too creepy. The scene may have been Switzerland, but German themes were all too obvious. 8/10

From 1939, Broadway Serenade is an odd movie, containing all kinds of music. Lew Ayres is a composer/pianist who apparently wrote or ripped off None but the Lonely Heart, I couldn't decide; the Macdonald-less Jeanette is his lovely singer wife. During his audition of a new song for a big Broadway producer (Frank Morgan) and his investor (Ian Hunter), it's Jeanette who gets the job and Hunter's heart. She has to go on the road with the show; she comes back a star, and her husband, hearing rumors of a romance with Hunter and not doing too well himself, rejects her, though the rumors aren't true. He becomes drunk and disorderly while her star ascends.I guess the big, lirico-spinto/dramatic soprano arias were the popular ones, because in movies where she sang opera, Jeanette MacDonald was always doing something like Tosca or Madama Butterfly, which she does here - so totally out of her vocal type, which was way too light for that sort of music. Her repertoire was operetta and roles like those in the French repertoire: Delibes, Gounod, or Bellini and Donizetti. She had a nice middle voice and beautiful, lyrical pianissimos, but her very high notes had a whitish, straight sound - basically that's how female singers were taught back then. I always loved her acting. She and Ayres are both good although an unlikely couple, he being boyish and she being diva-ish.Some bizarre musical numbers, such as the one at the end. A mixed bag. There are better musicals - an understatement.

Through no fault of the players, this must be one of the worst major studio films of a great year for cinema--1939. Jeanette is charming as always, although I'd like to see her try Butterfly on stage without amplification. I'm afraid the orchestra would win that round! That said, she warbles beautifully and is great fun to watch.Lew Ayres plays a nearly saintly husband (albeit with a temper) and the supporting cast is just fine. The problems: a hackneyed script, and an incredibly tasteless and vulgar Busby Berkeley number to end the affair. Of course we expect BB's numbers to be over the top, we just don't expect them to be so poorly designed. Without this final extravaganza, I'd have given this a 5 at least, but after seeing that debacle, I'm giving it a 3.

Strange musical stew with a puppyish Lew Ayres and a soft-focus Jeanette MacDonald making an unlikely romantic pair. The score is, shall we say, oddly eclectic, ranging from Victor Herbert (surprise!) to Ella Fitzgerald. Worth catching, though, for the final reel, which features possibly the screwiest musical number ever to appear in a "golden-age" MGM film (via Busby Berkeley). This one's beyond description -- not even Harlow singing or Crawford dancing comes close.