Irene Delroy on AllMovie

One of Broadway's brightest, brunette Irene Delroy was completely wasted by the new audible motion picture industry in 1930. The star of the 1927 edition of the Ziegfeld Follies, Delroy headlined Warner Bros.' Oh! Sailor Behave (1930) as a social climber falling in love with a newspaperman in romantic Venice. Unfortunately, leading man Charles King (of Broadway Melody fame), had outstayed his welcome by 1930 and Delroy herself suffered in comparison with her Broadway counterpart in the role, Claudette Colbert. As a result, Oh! Sailor Behave proved Warner Bros.' least popular musical of the season. The Life of the Party (1930), which teamed her with another Broadway refugee, singer/songwriter Jack Whiting, was slightly better but belonged wholeheartedly to the irrepressible Winnie Lightner, with Delroy merely functioning as window dressing. Warners, however, refused to give up, ushering Delroy and Whiting into Men of the Sky (1931), an unlikely musical concoction set in World War I. Along the way, unfortunately, most of Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach's score was scuttled and Men of the Sky proved Delroy's third disappointment in a row. It was to prove her final screen appearance.