Critic Reviews

Bathtubs Over Broadway is pure pleasure, both in its exploration of a hidden and uniquely American corner of show business and its portrait of the charmingly nerdy Young and his singular path toward rescuing this sub-sub-sub-genre while many of its executors are still alive to tell their stories.

Bathtubs Over Broadway offers plenty of evidence that these shows contained material from songwriting greats.

With its balance of exuberant humor and rigorous insight, Bathtubs Over Broadway provides as stellar an education for the uninformed as Siegel’s “The Bathrooms Are Coming!”

Young and Whisenant hatch a finale that is corny and wonderful — a rare chance to watch someone's dream come true, and an exhortation for others to follow their own weird enthusiasms wherever they might lead.

The overarching and underlying question that the film poses is nothing less than: What is art? And, for that matter, is the conventional definition of good art too narrow to account for the merits of such works as these?

You’re definitely going to laugh and laugh out loud. Young has several hilarious moments with his subjects, and the absurdity of these musicals and songs create an endless stream of silly giggles.

Dava Whisenant’s documentary, Bathtubs Over Broadway, offers a glimpse into a world few are aware of: industrial musicals — Broadway-style productions similar to Broadway shows except that they promote products like bathtub fixtures, surgical supplies, and John Deere tractors. They were performed exclusively for company members, sometimes recorded or filmed, then forgotten.

Bathtubs Over Broadway rediscovers the forgotten world of industrial musicals through rare recordings and film clips, and it is as smoothly entertaining as showbiz set piece, and at times flat-out funny.

The elegiac air that surfaces here and there in Bathtubs blends nicely with Young’s own final days on Late Show, reading his separation papers and wondering how to look for a job in his 50s.

There is a guileless quality to the enterprise as Young interviews stars such as Chita Rivera, Florence Henderson and Martin Short who worked in industrials, as well as the lesser known performers and songwriters who became his heroes.