The Kid from Brooklyn (1946) - film review

Burleigh Sullivan is a shy but ambitious milkman from the Brooklyn district of New York.  When his horse goes into labour on the public highway, he turns to nightclub singer Polly Pringle for help in calling an ambulance.  Polly is Burleigh’s kind of girl, but how can he, a mere penniless milkman, win such a wonderful woman?  Fate gives him a helping hand when, one evening, he manages to clock a prize fighter named Speed McFarlane who had been harassing his sister.  When the story gets into all of the newspapers,  Speed’s manager, decides to turn Burleigh into a boxing champion.  Burleigh can hardly believe his good fortune as he wins a series of matches in a row.  What he doesn’t know is that the fights have all been rigged and that he is heading for an almighty fall...

After their successful pairing in Wonder Man (1945), Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo are reunited for another exuberant musical comedy, the third of six highly successful films that Kaye made for independent film producer Samuel Goldwyn.   Grossing four million dollars, The Kid from Brooklyn was one of Goldwyn’s most profitable films and helped to secure the reputation of Danny Kaye as one of Hollywood’s most bankable performers.

A remake of the 1936 Harold Lloyd film The Milky Way, The Kid from Brooklyn suffers somewhat from its transition to a musical.  Most of the numbers appear to have been crowbarred in with great difficulty and have little, if anything, to do with the plot.  Some of comedy routines are sloppy and over-laboured, occasionally looking like hand-me-downs from a cheap vaudeville act.  Despite its obvious imperfections, the film is a lively and enjoyable romp, thanks to the star quality that Kaye and Mayo bring to it.

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