Neil Doyle Overlooking the slight and highly improbable storyline, LULLABY OF Broadway is a minor showcase for Doris Day during her early years at Warner Brothers.She acts, sings and dances with consummate ease, does some good routines with co-star Gene Nelson, and makes it easy to see why she was such a natural in front of the Technicolor cameras. Songs are sprinkled throughout to overcome the uninspired plot which has her searching for her long lost mother (Gladys George), unaware that her mother is on the skids singing in cheap bars for a living.A reunion of mother and daughter sponsored by friend Billy DeWolfe paves the way toward a happy show biz ending, highlighted by Day and Nelson doing a nifty tap-dancing routine up and down a staircase with dozens of extras while rendering the title tune in bright fashion.Nelson's zesty rendering of "Zing Went The Strings of My Heart" shows off his ability to sing and dance with the best of them. Too bad his career at Warners never reached full potential.S.Z. Sakall and Florence Bates are on hand for comedy relief, making this a pleasant diversion for Doris Day fans who relish her kind of sunny disposition in musicals.

Jay Raskin I was only familiar with Doris Day from her later romantic comedies of the late 50's and 60's, many with Rock Hudson. I also was a fan of her T.V. Show and her great Hitchcock movie with Jimmy Stewart, "The Man Who Knew Too Much." This was the first of her early movies that I have seen, and she is simply sunshine in a bottle. She seems to be enjoying every minute of every scene. Her joy is infectious. It is hard to watch the film and not respond to her by cheering up, no matter how your day may be going. Her supporting cast are also delightful and seem to be enjoying themselves. It was great to see Gladys George repeating her "Shantytown" song which she sang to James Cagney in "Twentieth Century" 13 years before. Billy De Wolfe is total gay delight as butler. He explains that he is really an actor, but took the butler job because of a "crazy, mad desire to keep from starving." Anne Triola compliments him perfectly as his maid/fiancé and they do an hilarious duet together. S.Z. Sakill steals the show as the flirtatious Broadway angel who is using his wife's money behind her back to invest in shows so he can oogle the actresses. Finally, there's Gene Nelson as Doris Day's song and dance partner. I have never seen him before, but he is quite a good dancer. At the beginning a fan tells him that he's the best dancer in the world. "It's you and me against Fred Astaire," he says. He does dance in Fred Astaire's style and is about as close to Astaire as anybody is likely to get. Typically, the male leads in musicals are the biggest problems, unless,they're Fred Astaire, Gene Kelley, or James Cagney, they're usually good dancers who can't act or good actors who can't really dance. Here, we seem to have somebody who can do both. The double plot has a) Doris Day coming back to New York to see her mother who she thinks is a big star, but is only an alcoholic cabaret singer, and b)some Broadway entertainers trying to entice S.Z. Sakill to invest his wife's money in a Broadway show. Not too original, but great one liners keep it moving cheerfully along between about a dozen small scale musical numbers. The director wisely understood that with Doris Day singing, you don't need Busby Berkeley super-sets or super choruses. This is a must for Doris Day fans and a wide toothy smile for everybody else.

Nick Zegarac (movieman-200) At a scant 92 minutes, 'The Lullaby of Broadway' (1951) manages to get its job done without overstaying its welcome. The film is really a throwback musical. Based upon the 1930s extravaganzas a la Busby Berkeley, Warner Bros. trundles out a dated flick in glorious Technicolor, with an atypical backstage yarn. The film stars Doris Day – then a relatively new protégée – as Melinda Howard. Coming to America to visit her mother, whom she believes is a great star, Melinda is treated to the truth in short order. Not that that stops her from becoming a Broadway sensation, donning the top half of tux like the great Eleanor Powell, and exploding onto the screen with Cole Porter's 'Just One Of Those Things'.Yet there's a total lack of romantic chemistry between Melinda and her dancing partner, Tom Farnham (Gene Nelson). Not that any of this stops director, David Butler from force feeding his audience the prospect of a grand amour that never genuinely materializes on screen. What saves the film from becoming a colossal gag is its score. Jam packed with a cornucopia of production numbers, including 'You're Getting to Be A Habit With Me' and Gene Nelson's tour de force, 'Zing Went the Strings of My Heart', and coupled with a supporting cast of contract players that include S.Z Sakall and Florence Bates, "The Lullaby Of Broadway" manages to keep its artistic merit above the water line of mediocrity.Warner's DVD is a mixed blessing. As with many of its other vintage Technicolor features, there are problems with mis-registration of the three strip process that occasionally create disturbing halos and blur the image. For the most part, there is a frothy, rich look to the film that is in keeping with the magical quality of Technicolor. Rich blacks and clean white and a decided lack of film grain make the presentation quite pleasing on the eyes. The audio is mono but nicely rendered. A gallery of theatrical trailers from this and other Doris Day films is all we get for extras.

willrams Another of my most enjoyable movie musicals with my favorite star, Doris Day, singing and dancing with Gene Nelson. I'll never forget the tap dance they did together going up a staircase-fantastic! An excellent cast includes Gladys George, and two of the funniest men around in the 50s: cute S.Z. Sakall and that buggy-eyed looney Billy DeWolfe who will tickle your funnybone. Sakall played in most of Doris' musicals and he is a character to remember! Whatever happened to Gene Nelson? He was surely a fine dancer!