Flirtation Walk (1934)

Toronto Film Society presented Flirtation Walk (1934) on Monday, July 15, 1985 in a double bill with Follow the Fleet as part of the Season 38 Summer Series, Programme 2.

Production Company: Warner Brothers.  Producer: Frank Borzage.  Director: Frank Borzage.  Screenplay: Delmer Daves, story by Delmer Daves and Lou Edelman.  Dances directed by: Bobby Connolly.  Photography: Sol Polito and George Barnes.  Editor: William Holmes.  Art Director: Jack Okey.  Technical Directors: Col. Timothy J. Lonergan and Lt. F. Eckles.  Songs by: Allie Wrubel and Mort Dixon: “Flirtation Walk,” “Mr. and Mrs. is the Name,” “No Horse, No Wife, No Mustached,” “I See Two Lovers,” “Smoking in the Dark,” “When Do We Eat?”

Cast:  Dick Powell (Dick “Canary” Dorcy), Ruby Keeler (Kit Fitts), Pat O’Brien (Sergeant Scrapper Thornhill), Ross Alexander (Oskie), Glen Boles (Eight Ball), John Eldredge (Lt. Biddle), Henry O’Neill (General Fitts), Guinn Williams (Sleepy), Frederick Burton (General Landacre), John Darrow (Chase), John Arledge (Spike).

Generally, when one thinks of movie musicals the thought invokes films from two studios and two time periods–Warner Brothers in the 1930s, and MGM in the postwar era.  This is perhaps an over-simplification, but nevertheless both studios produced some of the true classics of the genre–Warners’ output including 42nd Street and Footlight Parade, and MGM releasing Anchors Aweigh and Singin’ in the Rain, to name a few.

It was rather paradoxical that Warners dominated the musical field in the early ’30s, for the Burbank studio had been close to bankruptcy a few years earlier, and musicals, with their huge casts, sets, and elaborate production numbers, are notoriously costly.  However, the brothers Warner were nothing if not daring, and time and again during their long careers took tremendous risks.

Synonymous with the Warners musicals, of course, were Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, the starts of Flirtation Walk.  The year previous they had appeared together in the memorable 42nd Street.

Dick Powell (no relation to William or Eleanor) was born and raissed in Arkansas, attending Little Rock College.  He was proficient with most musical instruments, and toured with several bands as both an instrumentalists and vocalists.  While working in Pittsburgh (oddly enough, William Powell’s birthplace), he was spotted by a Warner Brothers scout.  He received a small part in Blessed Event (1932), and was signed to a long-term contract.  His big break came in 42nd Street, the archetypal backstage romance.  For the rest of the decade Powell held sway as one of Hollywood’s topo performers.  By the early ’40s he was gradually easing out of musicals–which he had soon tired of–and into more dramatic roles.  In 1944 audiences were startled to see a new Dick Powell, light years removed from the lightweight crooner–rumpled, unshaven, hard-bitten, and toting a gun, in Murder, My Sweet.  Similar roles followed, where Powell was able to use his tough, assertive, self-confident personality.

By the early 1950s Powell had quit acting, and firmly establishing himself as a motion picture and TV producer and director.  In his third career, as an executive, Powell proved himself extremely capable, and only death cut short his success in 1963.

Ruby Keeler was another Canadian contribution to the movies, born in Halifax in 1909.  Her family moved to New York City, where in her teens she began appearing in the chorus lines of Broadway shows.  Producer Florenz Ziegfeld then starred her in Show Girl.  In 1928 she married Al Jolson, and three years later was signed to a contract at Warners.  It was in 42nd Street, in which she played a chorus girl, that Warner Baxter spoke to her a line that has become one of the best remembered pieces of dialogue in the movies. “You’re going out a youngster, but you’re going to come back a star!”

Flirtation Walk is set at the West Point Military Academy, with background footage shot there.  Films portraying life at military institutions have been perennial favourites with producers over the years.

Director Frank Borzage is best remembered for his softly romantic and sentimental films, such as A Man’s Castle (1933), with Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young, and Three Comrades (1938) with Margaret Sullavan.

Among other Powell-Keeler pairings were Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade, Dames, Shipmates Forever, and Colleen.  In 1941, after divorcing Jolson, Keeler remarried, retired from the screen, and began raising a family.

Films like Flirtation Walk were a comfort to millions of people caught in the grim reality of the Depression in the early 1930s.  For a few hours they could forget their troubles by entering this fantasy world.

Notes by John Thompson