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The Broadway musical, as we know, is ephemeral; once the final curtain falls and they send the set off to the place where all good sets go, you're simply not going to see that production no more. A revival, maybe; but the original show, with the original star, is gone. And let's not talk about Carol or Yul or Joel Grey coming back 25 or 30 years later. Not the same thing.

Technology has caught up with Broadway to some extent; original cast albums record the way the show sounded, of course, and in the past decades we've had filmed versions and taped versions and video versions and the like, allowing us to get an idea just what such and such looked like. But this is recent. Where are the stars of yesteryear? How were they on the stage? Performances of the '40s are remembered by the relatively few that saw them; the earlier you get, the less memories remain. I have a friend who conscientiously started going to musicals as a lad in 1924, so he remembers pretty much something about everything. But he is in his late 90s. There are not many who can tell you about the early Gershwin and Rodgers musicals, or the late Kern or Ziegfeld musicals. Or about the Astaire shows, and the Jolson shows, and the fabled Marilyn Miller.

At any rate, Miller attained stardom in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1918, holding her own against Eddie Cantor, W.C. Fields and Will Rogers. She starred in two big Jerome Kern musicals, Sally (1920) and Sunny (1926); Gershwin's Rosalie (1928); Youmans' Smile (1930), co-starring Adele and Fred Astaire; and Berlin's As Thousands Cheer (1933). She died, under mysterious circumstances, in 1936 at the age of 37. The biggest Broadway star of her time, perhaps, and — due to the ephemeral nature of things — all but forgotten. She made three movies, in the early days of talkies: filmed reductions of "Sally" (made in 1929) and "Sunny" (1930), plus a somewhat baffling 1931 affair called "Her Majesty Love" — which, given a sudden glut of musicals, was made with most of the songs deleted. (Miller did bring along her Ziegfeld co-stars Fields and Leon Errol, as well as the above-mentioned Lyon as romantic interest.)

"Her Majesty Love" has been seen over the years, infrequently (though frequently enough), but this unfunny drawing-room comedy doesn't present much of an idea of Marilyn. The "Sally" and "Sunny" films quickly disappeared and were long thought lost. "Sally" was reassembled in 1990 or so, and has just now been made available from warnerarchive.com. That's the video-on-demand site stocking hundreds of rarely seen items that are not otherwise available on DVD. So here is the great Marilyn Miller, adored by so many but out of view 70-odd years, on the screen for our delectation.

"Sally" is not a great film, certainly, and it is but a vague version of the stage musical. (Only two of the original songs remain, "Look for the Silver Lining" and "Wild Rose." The rest of the score is non-Kern Hollywood fodder; they even cut Kern's title song for a new one from Joe Burke and Al Dubin.) But what we get is Marilyn Miller, dancing and singing and clowning. I expected her to be a fine dancer (by 1920s standards), an adequate singer and pretty much charming. This assessment is reasonably correct; I did not expect, though, for her to be funny. And low-down, if you will. Miller started in vaudeville, and we see her clowning around somewhat raucously. Along with her ballet-oriented style, there is plenty of good old-fashioned show dancing, and eccentric dancing, and places where she might swing a leg and knock over her unsuspecting dance partner. So what we get is Marilyn Miller brought to life, in a way that we never expected to see. One could, I suppose, compare her to Gwen Verdon or — more precisely — Sandy Duncan. Miller's style is very different, needless to say; but there is that same ready-for-anything glint in the eye, along with a sense that she knows she is there to make fun of herself and share the joke with us. An even better comparison might be to Fred Astaire; there is that high level of talent, immense likability, unassuming comic sense, and an unexceptional singing voice that gets by nicely.

What makes "Sally" even more astounding comes along about an hour into the film. Marilyn is performing "Wild Rose," a lively production number in which she dances with 24 boys. (During one part of the refrain she seems to be locked, arm-in-arm, with eight at a time, a step which I've never seen anything like. Larry Ceballos is the credited choreographer for the film, along with Albertina Rasch for the ballets; my guess is that this dance might be carried over from the stage version — which could, indeed, have been the uncredited work of Ceballos.) At any rate, midway through the "Wild Rose" number the print slips into full, vibrant (if primitive) color. Turns out that "Sally" was filmed in Technicolor; it is said to be the third all-color talking picture ever made. The color version is long vanished, leaving only a black and white copy; but this small section of color footage — just over three minutes, with a few spots where damaged film has been replaced by sepia-toned black & white — has been rescued, restored, and inserted into the print.

So just when we've figured, "ah, here finally is Marilyn Miller, this is what she must have been like," along she comes — after an hour — in full color. And we get a jolt; this is the real Marilyn Miller! Imagine; the big Broadway hit of the 1920-21 season, and we get — for three minutes, at least — to see, and understand, her magic.

Miller is supported by comedian Joe E. Brown, who is still reasonably funny; leading man Alexander Gray, who is pretty old-fashioned for my taste; and soubrette Pert Kelton, who 30 years later played Marian the Librarian's mother in The Music Man on stage and screen. Kelton was also the original Alice Kramden of "The Honeymooners," hastily replaced due to the blacklist.

Warnerarchive brings us, along with "Sally," a separate release of "Sunny." This was the happy stage reunion of Miller and Kern, this time with book and lyrics by the new team of Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II. A similarly major success, the show — as best we can tell — was somewhat inferior. This is borne out in the film, although the weaknesses of the latter stem not just from the script but from poor filmmaking. The charm and magic of Miller in "Sally" is missing from "Sunny"; the movie musical form, after three years of talkies, was already in a temporary decline and things look pretty sloppy. Marilyn gets to sing her hit from the show, "Who?" She also performs the big "Hunt Dance," galloping around in a circle with a riding crop; this is presumably copied from the stage version, and pretty strange. Other stage songs are used as background music; Kern and H&H wrote one new song for the occasion, "I Was Alone," which does not have the distinction of the other songs Kern was writing at the time.

If Warner had only rescued and restored "Sunny," we might say — well, at least we finally get to see something of Marilyn Miller. Thanks to "Sally," though, we get a good sense of what made this biggest Broadway star of the '20s shine. What a happy surprise!