Applause (1929 film)

In 2006, Applause was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".^[1]

Plot

The first scene has a marching band playing Theodore Mentz's "

The film tells of Kitty Darling (Helen Morgan), a burlesque star. Upon the recommendation of burlesque clown and suitor, Joe King (Jack Cameron), Kitty sends her young daughter to a convent to get her from the sleazy burlesque environment she is involved.

Many years later, Kitty is not doing so well, and her best days are behind her. She is now an alcoholic who lives in the past. She lives with a burlesque comic named Hitch (Fuller Mellish Jr.). Hitch cheats on her and only cares about spending what little money she has. When he finds out that she has been paying for her daughter's convent education for over a decade, he pushes her to bring April home.

Her grown, but naive daughter April (Joan Peers) returns. Kitty is embarrassed by her condition and marries Hitch so that April will not be ashamed of her.

When April arrives, she is disgusted with her mother and her sad life. Hitch tries to force her into show business and repeatedly gropes her, at one point forcing a kiss on her.

April roams the city and meets a lonely young sailor named Tony (Henry Wadsworth). They fall in love, agree to marry, and plan for April to his home in Wisconsin. When April goes to tell her mother about their plans, she overhears Hitch belittling Kitty, calling her a "has-been."

April is upset and calls off her wedding. She decides to join the chorus line of a burlesque show. She says a reluctant goodbye to Tony at the subway. Meanwhile, Kitty takes an overdose of sleeping pills. The bottle clearly says "For insomnia one tablet only". he goes downstairs to the show and collapses on a couch.

Knowing that Kitty cannot perform in the show, the producer berates her, mistaking her reaction to the overdose for delirium tremens. April, not realizing what is happening, says she will take Kitty's place despite Kitty's objections. She tells Kitty she will take care of her now, like Kitty always did for April. As April goes on stage, Kitty passes away, her head hanging over the edge of the couch.

April is disgusted at herself and cannot complete the show. As she runs off the stage, Tony is there to greet her. He says he had a feeling she did not mean what she was saying. She hugs him close and says she wants to go far away. Not realizing Kitty is dead, she says they will need to take care of her mother too, and Tony agrees.

The final shot is a close-up of the Kitty Darling poster on the wall behind Tony and April.

Cast

Censors

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The censor boards approved of the message and production values of the film, but were concerned about a scene in which Kitty told April that two of the chorus girls in the show were Catholic, "as good Catholics as anybody even if they do shake for a living". The line was changed to "Christians".

Censors in Ohio, British Columbia, and Worcester, Massachusetts banned the film outright. Many cuts were made for showings in cities such as Chicago; Providence, Rhode Island; and St. Louis, Missouri.

Critical reception

The film opened to mixed reviews from film critics.

Critic Mordaunt Hall, writing for The New York Times, liked the acting but was troubled by some of Rouben Mamoulian's direction. He wrote "The opening chapters are none too interesting and subsequently one anticipates pretty much what's going to happen...however, Mr. Mamoulian commits the unpardonable sin of being far too extravagant. He becomes tedious in his scenes of the convent and there is nothing but viciousness in his stage passages."^[4]

Photoplay described the film as "a curious one", but recommended for the performances by Morgan and Joan Peers. The anonymous reviewer thought the two leads, "and some nice camera work, help save a confusing job".^[5]

The Library of Congress states:

Many have compared Mamoulian's debut to that of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane because of his flamboyant use of cinematic innovation to test technical boundaries. The tear-jerking plot boasts top performances from Morgan as the fading burlesque queen, Fuller Mellish Jr. as her slimy paramour and Joan Peers as her cultured daughter. However, the film is remembered today chiefly for Mamoulian's audacious style. While most films of the era were static and stage-bound, Mamoulian's camera reinvigorated the melodramatic plot by prowling relentlessly through sordid backstage life.^[1]

A review by Manuel Cintra Ferreira highlights the innovative direction and influence on the productions to come:

It is well-known that the arrival of sound brought a revolution in film-making. But...the early times were marked by disorientation on how to master the new technique. The cinematographic idiom, having reached a splendorous high by those years, was made to regress almost to its early stages by the demands of the complicated sound machinery, still cameras restricted to the recording of long dialogue declamations in tedious closeups, such that some commentators did not anticipate a sustained future for the "talkies". Mamoulian's role in inverting the slippage was profound, eventually making sound and talk an essential element of the narrative in cinema. Applause, his first work in Hollywood, is from the outset an inescapable witness of this process of change, exploring voice off and sound overlay, which, at the time, technicians considered impossible...Applause became...the true "first great sound picture in the world".^{[citation needed]}

Premiere and boxoffice reception

The film opened strongly on October 7, 1929, at New York City's

• In 1939, Henry Hathaway nearly remade the film with Marlene Dietrich. Applause was rediscovered in the early 1960s, and there was talk of a stage musical with Judy Garland as Kitty and Liza Minnelli as April. (The musical Applause, based on the 1950 movie All About Eve, has no relation to the 1929 film.)^[6]
• The film was restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive with the original Technicolor sequences.^[7]
• The film was released on DVD in 2003 through
  Universal Studios). Special features included comments Rouben Mamoulian made for the 1986 50th anniversary of the Directors Guild of America, censorship notes, a 1929 interview with Mamoulian, rare photos and promotional materials, 1933 newsreel footage of Helen Morgan and her second husband, a clip of Morgan singing "What Wouldn't I Do for That Man?" in the 1929 musical Glorifying the American Girl
  , excerpts from the Beth Brown novel, and essays on Morgan and the film, written by Christopher S. Connelly.

• List of American films of 1929
• List of early sound feature films (1926–1929)

References