Zeus

"You've got to let the audience know you love him from here until breakfast": Fanny Brice sued 20th Century Fox over this movie.

Posted by DEWEY on Feb 11th 2024

There are so many overtones of Fanny Brice's ill-fated romance with shady con-man Nick Arnstein in "Rose Of Washington Square" (1939) that Fanny sued 20th Century Fox for defamation of character/invasion of privacy! Brice reportedly quipped to the screenwriter, "You write it pretty fancy, kid, but at least you got some of it right."
The film's biggest crime is that there is too much Al Jolson and not enough Alice Faye. Believe me, a shameless, hammy Al Jolson singing "Rockabye Your Baby With A Dixie Melody", "Mammy" and "California, Here I Come", all in blackface, strains tolerance.
We never really know or see why Alice Faye's Rose Sargent becomes a Ziegfeld star-- she just does. And boy, has she got it bad for super sexy bad boy Bart Clinton (Tyrone Power), who just can't stay on the right side of the law. Jolson hates Bart, but ridiculously tells Rose, "You've got to let the audience know you love him from here until breakfast. "
Twenty nine years later, the official Fanny Brice film biopic "Funny Girl" (1968) had the star power of Barbra Streisand and used "My Man" better for its finale. "Rose Of Washington Square" does have the overwhelming sex appeal of Tyrone Power going for it. But even Power's potent, powerful sex appeal isn't enough to sustain what is obviously, even in 1939, an old-fashioned "toxic romance."