Summary
A sun-scorched dream of neon hoofbeats, Broadway Arizona grafts the phosphorescent marquees of Times Square onto the violet mesas of the Sonoran desert. Cattle baron John Keyes, equal parts rawhide and Rockefeller, prowls the velvet aisles of a Winter Garden revue and locks eyes with Fritzi Carlyle, a Jazz-Age comet whose laughter ricochets like syncopated castanets. One hasty proposal and a tabloid crucifixion later, the rancher retreats to his spurred empire, dragging behind him a heart heavier than a gold-leaf piano. Fritzi, stranded beneath the footlights, shatters like celluloid in a projector fire. When the headlines scream of her collapse, Keyes gallops back, absconds with the delirious star across continent and conscience, and installs her beneath sapphire skies where ocotillo blooms bleed crimson applause. The desert air, thick with sage and possibility, re-inflates her lungs; her mind re-orchestrates itself into a score of brassy optimism. Yet the city’s emissaries—flat-footed dicks with handcuffs gleaming like nickel spotlights—descend upon the ranch to indict the abduction. At the penultimate beat, Fritzi pirouettes the narrative: the “kidnapping” was merely a colossal PR fantasia, a headline-sculpting hoax worthy of Barnum’s ghost. She caps the ruse by declaring, beneath a canopy of constellations and flash-powder bulbs, that she will indeed wed her lariat-swinging producer of happiness.
Synopsis
While on vacation in New York, millionaire cattle rancher John Keyes falls in love with musical comedy star Fritzi Carlyle. Recognizing the opportunity for a great story, Fritzi's press agent encourages her to accept the Westerner's proposal of marriage, only to deny it the next day in a wave of newspaper publicity. Disheartened, Keyes returns to Arizona and Fritzi continues performing until she suffers a nervous breakdown. Reading of Fritzi's misfortune, Keyes returns East, kidnaps Fritzi and takes her to Arizona. There, the change of climate performs wonders and she recovers quickly. Meanwhile, her stage manager sends detectives after her, and when they arrive in Arizona ready to arrest Keyes for kidnapping, Fritzi explains that the whole adventure was an elaborate publicity stunt and announces that she and her Arizona cowboy are going to be married.
Review Excerpt
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Lynn Reynolds’ Broadway Arizona—once thought vaporized in a 1930s nitrate bonfire—glides back into contemporary consciousness like a ghost locomotive, headlights blazing tangerine across our OLED plains. Viewed today, the picture feels less a quaint curio than a prophetic hologram: it anticipates both TMZ scandal-mongering and the influencer ritual of “getting away” to detox in red-rock silence. Olive Thomas, her eyes limpid pools of kohl and mischief, operates as both marquee idol and proto-m..."
