Helen Broderick delivers a cutting remark as though it scarcely needs saying. Her deadpan friends and chaperones are a pleasure, especially in Top Hat, where Madge Hardwick treats suspected infidelity as a minor inconvenience.
Fi1m perspective
In Top Hat (1935), Madge Hardwick hears that her husband is apparently pursuing her friend and declines to be much impressed. Helen Broderick treats the news as too ordinary to deserve a scene. We laughed at her calm because the plot makes such a determined fuss about the misunderstanding. Against Edward Everett Horton's double takes, her level delivery gives the farce a second, drier way to be funny. She need not compete with his agitation.
Her early screen work followed stage revues and musical comedy, with Fifty Million Frenchmen (1931) adapting a show in which she had already succeeded. The parts that became her speciality were the heroine's friend or chaperone, dispensing acidic remarks with a straight face. By Top Hat and Swing Time (1936), that manner was serving Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In the latter she plays Mabel Anderson, another supporting part in a film whose chief pleasure is the dancing. We rate both films highly, without pretending that either belongs to her.
Mark Sandrich's Top Hat gives clear evidence of how useful she is. Dwight Taylor and Allan Scott's script keeps a simple mistake unresolved for an entire farce; Broderick helps make the delay enjoyable. She lets us find the situation ridiculous without making Madge tiresome company. There are limits to what such support can repair: Swing Time has a thin romance between numbers, while Top Hat ends with an oversized finale. Neither shortcoming makes her scenes any less welcome.
There was work beyond this familiar company, including six films with Victor Moore and a rare lead as Hildegarde Withers in Murder on a Bridle Path (1936). Those credits matter because the two Astaire–Rogers pictures can too easily become the whole account of her acting. Her screen career continued until Because of Him (1946). For the clearest reason to seek her out, start with Top Hat and watch the woman who refuses to get excited.
Biography
Helen Broderick (11 August 1891 – 25 September 1959) was an American actress known for her comic character roles in stage productions and films. She began her career as a chorus girl in the first Ziegfeld Follies in 1907 and went on to appear in vaudeville with her husband, Lester Crawford, before achieving success on Broadway in revues and musicals including Fifty Million Frenchmen (1929), The Band Wagon (1931) and As Thousands Cheer (1933).
She moved to Hollywood in the early 1930s and became a familiar presence in supporting roles, notably as Madge Hardwick in Top Hat (1935) and Mabel Anderson in Swing Time (1936), both starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Other film credits include The Rage of Paris (1938), No, No, Nanette (1940) and Stage Door Canteen (1943). She retired from the screen in 1946. Broderick was the mother of actor Broderick Crawford.
