Broadway Danny Rose

by Nick Lohr

1984 was a busy year at the box office. Broad comedies with massive success like Beverly Hills Cop, Revenge of the Nerds, a second-run of Ghostbusters, Police Academy, and Gremlins were matched with blockbusters like Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, The Terminator, the genre-defining Nightmare on Elm Street, and Karate Kid. Most of these films spawned a series of sequels, cartoons, and toy lines and live on in daily cable-TV re-runs. Amidst these colossal Hollywood hits, is Broadway Danny Rose. It’s Woody Allen, off on his own metaphorical and quite literal island of Manhattan, putting out another film, without much fanfare, that’s just as charming, funny, introspective, and remarkable as his greatest films to this point. 1984 also saw the release of This Is Spinal Tap, another watershed moment in comedy. The mock rock documentary comes a year after Zelig, Woody’s masterful use of the fake film format and its influence is palpable. In Woody’s career, Broadway Danny Rose comes “right in the middle of that amazing run,” writes Andrew Pulver for The Guardian. “The one that started, approximately, in 1979 with Manhattan… and ended, sort of, in 1992, with Husbands and Wives (the last film he completed before what I call The Trouble— his career-disorienting breakup with Mia Farrow).” It’s his third film working with Mia Farrow and another in a long string of successful collaborations with cinematographer Gordon Willis. As a result, Woody’s storytelling, acting, and direction feel mature, confident. The film exudes an air of assuredness, partly due to Woody’s first-hand experience with the show business types portrayed in the film.

Danny Rose is a personal manager to the lowliest two-bit acts that ever worked the Borscht Belt. Whether he’s singing the praises of his blind xylophone player or hammering out a deal for his one-legged tap-dancer, Danny genuinely believes in the talents of his misfit entertainers. One night, a group of road-weary comedians are trading show-biz tall tales when they settle into what’s known as “the greatest Danny Rose story of all time” and that’s where the film begins. Danny is representing Lou Canova, a has-been lounge singer with a shot at a comeback. Lou had a hit in the ‘50s but has since found his career and love-life to be, much like his burgeoning drinking problem, on the rocks. Riding a nostalgia craze, Danny manages to book Lou a gig at the Waldorf, a showcase for Milton Berle who is putting together a TV special filled with the stars of yesteryear. It’s just the break they need. Always willing to do anything for a client, Danny agrees to chaperone Lou’s mistress, Tina Vitale, so she can attend, along with Lou’s wife. Tina is an abrasive, street-wise woman with ties to Mafia thugs including a deceased husband and a lovelorn son of a Mob family. When Danny is mistaken for Tina’s lover, the mobsters put a hit on Danny and he, along with Tina, spend the better part of the film outrunning their would-be killers. It’s one of the most plot-centric films of Allen’s since Play It Again, Sam but is raised above some of Woody’s other comedies thanks to impeccable acting and an unshakable sense of authenticity.

Woody stood on the shoulders of giants like Bob Hope and created an archetype unto himself. Always the self-doubting nebbish dweeb, the typical neurotic character portrayed by Allen has since imitated by many actors. Even in Woody Allen films where the director is not the lead, actors have done their version of the character. Will Ferrel did it in Melinda & Melinda, Jason Biggs did it in Anything Else, Scarlett Johannson did it in Scoop. In Broadway Danny Rose, however, we see a different kind of portrayal from Woody. Danny Rose is sleazy but not in a distasteful or untrustworthy way. He’s the kind of guy who can’t help being “on”. He’s always performing, always looking for an angle. His life is so consumed by show business that even interactions with casual acquaintances become pitches for stardom. When Danny and Tina take refuge in his apartment and she talks of her desire to be an interior decorator, Danny jumps into manager mode, imagining her decorating resorts, hotels, and palaces. From his cheesy clothes to his sweaty charm, Danny Rose is a lovable character, despite being a tap-dancing, pedantic loser. “Allen makes Danny Rose into a caricature, and then, working from that base, turns him back into a human being: By the end of the film, we see the person beneath the mannerisms,” writes Roger Ebert. This is due, largely because his belief in others is sincere and his loyalty is genuine. Despite the fast-talking, wise-cracking facade he’s constructs, there’s a tender side to Danny Rose. His clients leave him at the first sign of success and he carries that betrayal in his heart. Likewise, near the end of the film when Danny is surrounded on Thanksgiving Day with his gaggle of clients, dishing out frozen turkey dinners, it’s difficult not to be struck by the sad charade of it all. There are glimpses that, deep down, Danny knows it’s lousy too. Starring opposite Woody is the unknown Nick Apollo Forte, a real-life version of Lou Canova discovered by Allen’s long-time casting agent.

“I looked at a million singers,” says Woody Allen. “We were getting desperate. Then Juliet Taylor went to a record store and bought as many records as she could. And she saw this picture of Nick Apollo Forte on one of the records. He was in Connecticut someplace, in a small town, singing in a little joint. And he came to New York, and I tested him. Then I looked at all my tests of everybody, and he was the best one.” Despite his lack of experience, Forte gives an equally loving portrayal of the Italian underdog. “There were certain times when I had to do fifty takes with him because he just couldn’t get it. But he was basically very nice,” says Woody. Forte “plays the has-been crooner with a soft touch: he’s childish, he’s a bear, he’s loyal, he has a monstrous ego,” muses Ebert. Unlike Danny, Lou does not possess a slavish devotion to friends and family. He sleeps around, has talks with other talent agents, yet one can’t help rooting for the guy due in large part to Forte’s depiction of the lovable louse. The biggest surprise of the film, however, comes from Mia Farrow and her role as Tina Vitale.

Based on the owner of an Italian restaurant frequented by Woody and Mia at the time, Tina Vitale is unlike any character from Farrow at this point. It is a sharp, biting portrayal. Tina has a hot-temper and cold sense of morality. “I never feel guilty,” she tells Danny. She lives by the code of “You do what you gotta do.” In the 2012 film, Woody Allen: A Documentary, former Allen co-star Mariel Hemingway discusses Mia and her role as Woody’s muse. “The more you understand the person then you can bring out these different qualities in them,” says Hemingway. “Who would have ever though that Mia could be this actress in some of these films? Broadway Danny Rose, I mean, who would’ve thought that she could’ve played these different characters with those accents?” Yet, there’s a vulnerable side to Tina that saves her from being wholly unlikeable. After the betrayal against Danny she orchestrates with Lou, finding him better representation, guilt gnaws at her, ultimately poisoning her relationship with Canova. F.X. Feeney, an American writer and film critic, discusses Mia’s relationship acting alongside Woody for a decade:

“Mia Farrow became his muse and he began to show us a range in Mia Farrow that had been denied us, say, by Rosemary’s Baby or Hurricane. Just sides of her that we were not able to see and Woody Allen was able to bring her out in all her rainbow of colors. And through her, he explored, a number of wonderful modes of filmmaking. And, in a way, by so doing he’s also testing his own range, he’s fulfilling every key on the piano-board he’s got. He’s just running the scales in his own talent through the ‘80s with Mia Farrow as his partner.”

Any analysis of Broadway Danny Rose would be remiss if it did not mention just how funny it is. That’s a hard thing to quantify or even clarify what makes the comedy work. Neil Sinyard writes, “The humor of Danny Rose is not black: more a sort of melancholy monochrome.” Like some of Allen’s most-beloved films such as Annie Hall or Manhattan, Broadway Danny Rose straddles the line between being a comedy but also having something serious to say. “Less intense than Stardust Memories,” writes Sinyard. “Broadway Danny Rose is still a similarly thoughtful inquiry into the alienation rather than fulfillment of the American Dream, and what the pursuit and achievement of success can do to human relationships.” Critic Andrew Pulver posits the hero Danny Rose speaks to a unique aspect of the Jewish experience. “It’s ultimately impossible to fully understand Broadway Danny Rose without coming to grips with its innate Jewishness,” he writes. “Danny Rose is useless in a fight, can barely run up a hill without being sick, is a loser in business, is deserted by all except those even more troubled than him. But he is unquestionably a beacon of hope in a moral wasteland – because of, not despite, his refusal to take other people on. Rose’s Jewishness is a defiantly non-religious identity.” Jim Gillman at the Jewish Film Guide adds that, “the film manages to highlight a widely held Jewish attitude concerning the importance of guilt as a mechanism that keeps people from doing even more horrible things to another than are already being done.” Certainly these things are at work in the film but the master-stroke of Allen’s best work is to place these elements on a subterranean level while the big laughs bubble up to the surface.

What keeps Broadway Danny Rose so endearing after the years is, despite the goofy characterization of the titular character, the film oozes a sense of authenticity. From the comedians sitting around the table at Carnegie’s Deli dishing Danny Rose stories to the titular character himself, there’s an inescapable feeling that Woody has been around these kinds of people throughout his career. It gives a glimpse into show business that feels real, not glamorized. It’s a working-man’s view of show business. If life is lonely at the top, it’s even lonelier at the bottom.