Excellent but underrated film

The acting in this movie is really good.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Howard Hawks and RKO combine to make a MGM musical but fails as this musical lacks pow wow even though Busby Berkeley did some choreography.Janet Leigh plays Nancy Peterson who leaves her small home town of Pelican Falls to go to New York and make it big on Broadway. She bumps into three out of work showgirls who were on tour with a flop show and now try to get back to New York and they want to give their agent a piece of their mind for leaving them stranded.The sleazy agent is Lew (Eddie Bracken) who always ducking and diving. He promises a lot and delivers little. He wants to keep hold of his number one talent Dan Carter (Tony Martin) from quitting show business by promising him that he will get him a spot on a television show with musician Bob Crosby but it is more lies. Carter meets Peterson over a suitcase mix up and he teaches her not be taken in by shysters but he himself gets roped in by his agent's outlandish schemes.The film drags despite a few bright song and dance numbers from the showgirls. A lot of the songs are a dull and the deli store owners and their shtick is interminable.

After years of first reading of this movie in a Laurel & Hardy filmography book (They were supposed to appear in this but Stan's illness after Atoll K prevented it. They were replaced by Smith & Dale who I had never seen before.), I finally watched this on a DVD I checked out from the local library weeks ago. In summary, it was quite enjoyable on its own merits though it seemed a bit long during the last 30 minutes when a bit too many numbers were being performed. Still, I liked Tony Martin's singing, at least when he went for more pop tunes though I was amused when he performed "There's No Tomorrow" which would later become Elvis Presley's "It's Now or Never"! Also pretty entertained by Janet Leigh's singing and dancing. Interesting fact: One of Ms. Leigh's early films was a straight part in Words and Music which was supposed to be a bio of Rodgers & Hart where Mickey Rooney performed "Manhatten". Here it's performed by her and Martin with some added lyrics mentioning "South Pacific" which was a current musical by Rodgers & HAMMERSTEIN! She's not bad doing either singing or dancing which was choreographed by the legendary Busby Berkeley. The best dancing is by Ann Miller, of course, every time she spins and taps up a storm! Eddie Bracken and Gloria DeHaven are the comic couple and they're quite funny throughout. I also liked a funny number concerning Bob Crosby and his famous brother who appears as a mannequin but then comes to life at the end though we don't see if that actually was Bing by that point though it certainly looked like him from behind! As for Smith & Dale, well, I thought they were funny enough though part of me can understand why they didn't make too many movies during their lifetime. In summary, I mostly enjoyed Two Tickets to Broadway. P.S. That Indian number at the end is definitely not politically correct today!

This is not a bad musical. It's also not a good one. Tony Martin has a solid - yet unexciting - singing voice, and Janet Leigh - of course - cannot sing OR dance. So she was the perfect choice for a musical? It all drifts along without offending or titillating (now and then touched by a nice bit from Eddie Bracken, or the "Jewish" banter of the restaurant owners), and one can watch it or not. And then Martin appears as "Big Chief Hole-In-The-Ground" in a musical number that should be profoundly repulsive to modern audiences. Its caricature of reservation Indians as being somehow rich, due to oil being found on the land, is quite offensive when one realizes that many, many times entire tribes were moved off their land simply because it suddenly became valuable. So this bit is no longer amusing in the least. It wouldn't be any great problem (given that such casual racism pops up in a lot of older films), except that the film is so near to being empty of interest, that this concern - at least for this viewer - is downright horrifying. All the film's other problems (Janet's non-musicality, a general lack of wowser tunes, the presence of that "Dancing Loutess" Ann Miller, and a drifting filmic sensibility) fade to nothing beside this large hole in the "entertainment."

Old-fashioned without being embarrassing, "Broadway" features Janet Leigh as a sparkling small town lass who moves to the Big Apple to work in theater, falling in league with other young hopefuls and staging their own revue. Not too far-fetched(Carol Burnett did the same thing in real-life)and Janet bounces happily throughout. Not really remarkable, but a nice time-filler. Bob Crosby pokes fun at older brother Bing in the film's most self-conscious moment. **1/2 from ****