Broadway Bill

Broadway Bill (1934)

The Comedy Successor to 'It Happened One Night'

Tycoon J.L. Higgins controls his whole family, but one of his sons-in-law, Dan Brooks, and his daughter Alice are fed up with that. Brooks quits his job as manager of J.L.'s paper box factory and devotes his life to his racing horse Broadway Bill, but his bankroll is thin and the luck is against him. He is arrested because of $150 he owes somebody for horse food, but suddenly a planned fraud by somebody else seems to offer him a chance...

Date of release
1934-11-30
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (22)
Runtime
1h 44m
Genres
Comedy, Drama
Director
Frank Capra

Casting

Interesting facts

Broadway Bill is a 1934 American comedy-drama film directed by Frank Capra and starring Warner Baxter and Myrna Loy. Screenplay by Robert Riskin and based on the short story "Strictly Confidential" by Mark Hellinger, the film is about a man's love for his thoroughbred race horse and the woman who helps him achieve his dreams. Capra disliked the final product, and in an effort to make it more to his liking, he remade the film in 1950 as Riding High. In later years, the distributor of Riding High, Paramount Pictures, acquired the rights to Broadway Bill. The film was released in the United Kingdom as Strictly Confidential.

Production

The screenplay for Broadway Bill was written by Robert Riskin, based on the unpublished short story "Strictly Confidential" by New York Daily Mirror columnist Mark Hellinger. Riskin had written previous screenplays for Capra for The Miracle Woman (1931), Platinum Blonde (1931), American Madness (1933), Lady for a Day (1933), and It Happened One Night (1934)—receiving an Academy Award for the latter film.

While filming at Tanforan Race Track, Capra became dissatisfied with the happy ending of the original script, wanting instead a more bittersweet and ambivalent ending comment on the American success ethic. With Riskin on vacation in Europe and unavailable, Capra invited former Paramount screenwriter Sidney Buchman to Palo Alto to discuss changes to the end of the film.

According to cinematographer Joseph Walker and sound engineer Edward Bernds, Capra wanted Clark Gable for the leading role, but the actor was unavailable. Capra settled for Warner Baxter, whose fear of horses restricted Capra's ability to film close-up scenes with the actor and the horse. Disappointed in the few close-up scenes he managed to film, he vowed to remake the film with an actor who loved horses.

Broadway Bill was filmed from June 18 to August 16, 1934 at Columbia Studios in Hollywood, and on location at Tanforan Race Track in San Bruno, California, Warner Bros. Ranch, and the Pacific Coast Steel Mills. After an initial preview on October 24, Capra re-edited some scenes based upon audience reaction.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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