Broadway Melody

Rating

Director

Harry Beaumont

Screenplay

Edmund Goulding, Norman Houston, James Gleason

Length

110 min.

Starring

Charles King, Anita Page, Bessie Love, Jed Prouty, Kenneth Thomson, Edward Dillon, Mary Doran, Eddie Kane, J. Emmett Beck, Marshall Ruth, Drew Demorest

MPAA Rating

Passed (National Board of Review)

Review

Within two years of the legendary The Jazz Singer‘s breakthrough in sound recording, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences switched form honoring the past and began awarding for the future. The Broadway Melody was not only MGM’s first Best Picture winner it was also its first all-sound motion picture.

Much has changed since the 1920s with sound being almost more important than storytelling to many audiences. Thus it’s no surprise that a musical reminiscent of Broadway featuring plenty of talking, screaming, crying and singing would take home the world’s most coveted entertainment award. Unfortunately, The Broadway Melody ushered in an era of films of debatable quality triumphing at the Academy Awards because of sheer spectacle.

Bessie Love, whose career began more than ten years prior in the silent era, made a good transition to the “talkies”. Love’s performance as one half of The Mahoney Sisters stage act, while not the tour de force of a Bette Davis or Janet Gaynor, was nonetheless impressive given the material. The story is an old one. It’s about the successes and failures many find when following their dreams to the Great White Way. Hank (Love) and her sister Queenie (Anita Page) have come seeking stardom under Hank’s love Eddie Kearns (Charles King).

After a jealous “Dolly” girl sabotages their audition before stage impresario Francis Zanfield (Eddie Kane), they find that adoration is fickle and the expected fighting begins. There are many dynamic, if overused,plot devices in Broadway Melody but with Love giving a decent performance and Kearns at least passable as the adequately talented stage singer, Broadway Melody isn’t an outright failure.

The screenplay by Edmund Goulding does what it can to capture the heartbreak and frustration many performers feel heading to Broadway. However, it is ties to the famed New York theater scene that create the most problems. Just compare the fictional Francis Zanfield to real life Florenz Ziegfeld. The names are uncannily similar as is the name of the dancers, the Zanfield Dolly Girls (the real life counterpart was the Ziegfeld Folly Girls).One can’t help but feel that the producers are trying too hard to mimic the success of the famed Broadway producer.

The nomenclature is, sadly, where the likeness ends. Broadway Melody, which spawned a series of film sequels, bears a lot of awkward production values. Whereas the Ziegfeld Follies were filled with well choreographed numbers, Melody features a slate of poorly conceived and ill-directed sequences. Harry Beaumont, director of the motion picture, brings too much of his silent feature techniques to the all-talking picture. He never gets the dancers to move in synch and, especially during one long scene where Love cries(and briefly laughs) her heart out, the camera rarely moves.

Over the years, as sound became less complicated to match up with film, the industry’s overall production values slowly increased. Broadway Melody was a tremendous success because it wasn’t at all what the filmgoing public expected. Not only was it the first musical to win an Oscar for Best Picture it also ushered in the era of the MGM musical. And while The Broadway Melody has never been one of the best film musicals ever made, one can hardly deny its place in film history.

Review Written

September 28, 2006