BROADWAY DANNY ROSE

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In this delightful 1984 comedy Woody Allen plays the title character, a small-time theatrical agent, who is extremely loyal and dedicated to his clients, no matter how hopeless they are.

Sadly that loyalty is rarely reciprocated on the rare occasions when one of his clients hits the big time, and the plot concerns one such client, Lou Canova, a singer who once was big and who is now attempting a comeback.

The other main character is Lou's mistress, Tina Vitale, played by Mia Farrow.  Lou wants her to be present at a big concert he has coming up, with Danny pretending to be her boyfriend. As a result of Tina having an ex-boyfriend who still loves her, and who happens to be a gangster, complications ensue in which the gangster wants Danny killed.

It's a light and entertaining story in which Farrow shines, partly down to the simple fact that she is playing very much against type as the brassy, fast-talking Tina.

Allen extracts the humour you would expect from his roster of unpromising clients, such as a stuttering ventriloquist, a one-legged tap dancer and a blind xylophone player.  But he also succeeds in making Danny a likeable person who we end up rooting for so that Lou's betrayal of him at the end of the film hits home.

Tina also betrays him by marrying Lou now that he is successful again, but there is a touching final couple of scenes between Danny and Tina in which it seems they might become an item, Tina having left Lou.

The fact that the whole story is narrated in flashback as an anecdote shared amongst a group of comedians over lunch at New York's Carnegie Deli, and that the cast includes several comedians playing themselves, adds to the overall charm of this picture.


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