Oscars Retrospective: The Broadway Melody (2nd Academy Awards Review)
In case you missed it:
1st Academy Awards (1927/28): Wings/Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans: Part 1, Part 2
On April 3rd, 1930, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences convened to host the 2nd Academy Awards. Numerous changes had been made from the previous year: there was now only one best picture category (being called the Academy Award for Outstanding Picture), the eligibility period was a 12-month time frame from August 1st, 1928 to July 31st, 1929, numerous awards were dropped or combined and talking pictures were now allowed on the awards circuit (yeah, turns out that whole “stop the flow of talkies” thing didn’t work out too well).
In addition, this was the first ceremony to turn the Oscars into a public event, being broadcast over radio and the winners not being announced until the night of the actual ceremony (at the 1st Academy Awards, the winners already knew that they had won). At the end of the night, the 2nd Winner for Outstanding Picture emerged in The Broadway Melody, also known as The Broadway Melody of 1929. As you can guess from that second title, it came out in 1929, making 1928 the only year in the history of the Academy Awards to not have a Best Picture winner (you may now direct your Nelson Muntz-style laughter at the year of 1928).
The Broadway Melody was the first ever movie musical. While I previously mentioned The Jazz Singer being a possibility for the title, this is the first movie to have both talking and singing segments, placing it more squarely into the genre of “musical”. Though this may sound impressive; and, to be fair, it kinda is; after The Jazz Singer opened the floodgates of talking pictures, there were a lot of firsts in the following years: first full-length talkie (Lights of New York (1928)), first movie to have dialogue outdoors (In Old Arizona (1929)), first movie to have multiple soundtracks (The Love Parade (1929)), you get the idea.
The Broadway Melody centers around the Mahoney Sisters: Queenie (Anita Page) and Hank (Bessie Love). They’re a sister act who come to New York City to try to make it on Broadway and are given an in via Hank’s fiancé, Eddie Kearns (Charles King). There are two problems with their plan, however. One, New York isn’t nearly as inviting as they think it’d be (big shock, I know) and, two, almost every man they meet is a horn dog that wants to sleep with Queenie, including Eddie.
I have to admit that I was surprised by how much I found myself getting into this movie at first and most of that (in fact, all of that) has to do with the Mahoney Sisters, both of whom are very likable. While their characters are stock in that Hank (the older sister) is much more bossy and Queenie (the younger sister) is more naïve; they are given depth, have great chemistry and come off as real sisters. They fight, they tease, they can get downright nasty, but you also get the feeling that they’ll do anything for each other. Hell, half the problems that exist in the plot come from them caring too much about each other, causing the other sister to snap back.
I also like how amidst all the clichéd melodrama that encompasses this film, they managed to avoid one of the worst tropes by not making Hank jealous of her sister. It’s established pretty early on that not only is Queenie hotter than Hank but she’s also much more talented. Throw in the fact that Hank’s fiancé is hitting on her behind Hank’s back, it would seem logical to make Hank hate her sister but, no, instead, she’s concerned about all the attention going to Queenie’s head. At the same time, however, you also understand why the attention is going to Queenie’s head in the first place.
Nothing else about the story immediately stands out except for Eddie (who we’ll talk about later) so, instead, let’s discuss the music since that’s what it’s most famous for and why it won the Oscar. First, while this is the first feature musical, calling this a musical as you understand would be a bit disingenuous. I mean, it was the first backstage musical, which were very common back in the day, but not a traditional musical... Here, let me try to explain the difference.
If tomorrow you were to watch, say, Cats (2019) (probably after ingesting copious amounts of some sort of mind-altering substance), you would notice that the songs are done to advance the story, introduce a character or tell us the emotions that a character is feeling. (You might also notice that you felt like a character in a stop-motion movie, but that would only be after the synthetic weed starts kicking in.) This is largely what draws people to musicals in the first place, seeing a character reveal their innermost feelings through the power of song.
Backstage musicals like The Broadway Melody, on the other hand, have song and dance numbers because the characters work jobs that require them to sing and dance. They’re just fun scenes to add relief from the drama. In The Broadway Melody’s case, this is especially ambitious, since I don’t think movies were yet capable of having soundtracks and dialogue at the time.
“What, how the Hell can a movie not have a soundtrack? Silent movies had music in them all the time!”
Well, hold your horses there, Generic Strawman Archetype, that’s actually an interesting myth that we can dispel pretty quickly. See, if you watch a silent movie today, what you’re actually watching is a version that’s been restored by the Library of Congress or some other similar film restoration studio who layer it over with what they think would've been most appropriate or best serves the movie. Way back in the day, most movies actually just shipped out the negatives on video and any music that was put in was left to the mercy of the movie theaters (usually with an in-house orchestra and/or pianist). So, if you saw The General (1926) in New York City and your buddy saw it in Philadelphia, it’s possible that the two of you could’ve heard two entirely different soundtracks depending on which theater you saw it at.
This is actually what Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) revolutionized as it was the first movie to have a permanently laid-in soundtrack so it would be the same music and sound effects no matter where it was screened. As the talking era dawned, this new technology was still in place which meant that movies could only have one soundtrack at a time, making a musical very difficult to do. If you’re still not following this (and I don’t blame you as most descriptions of sound technology in filmmaking are as jargon-filled as possible), let me put it to you this way: soundtrack doesn’t necessarily just refer to music.
When you edit a movie, whether digitally or on film, there are several different tracks in the machine. These are divided into two categories: video and audio. You can have several different audio and video tracks, each of which can have a different purpose (for example, most of your movie’s video will be on Track 1 and the special effects will be on Track 2).
Following me so far? With audio, usually you’ll put the dialogue all on one audio track and the music on a different one. Unfortunately, back then, the sound-on-disc system and editing decks were only capable of a single audio track so you were stuck with either dialogue or music during a scene, not both.
“Then how the Hell could they make a musical if they couldn’t have music?!”
I’m glad you asked, Generic Strawman Archetype! They simply would record and mix the full music track elsewhere, off-set, and then splice the audio track in a.k.a. dubbing. Almost all of the songs were dubbed in. While this also happens today, the process has gotten far more refined; back then, they just recorded the musical a few times and then spliced it in and called it a day. The only exception is the opening song when Eddie sings a song in a recording studio where it sounds like they actually did record the music live. You can tell because you can barely hear his voice over the cacophony of instruments; this demonstrates why you don’t record music by playing all the vocals and instruments into one microphone.
The dance numbers also provided their own batch of problems with the transition to sound. That’s the thing about these early sound films and a big reason why they ruined so many careers: the old movie cameras used to run on motors and these motors were LOUD! So loud in fact that it would be picked up by any audio you recorded. When they were making silent pictures, this was a non-issue but with the advent of talkies, these motors were going to pose a serious problem. Thus, filmmakers would have to encase the cameras in giant cabinets so as to muffle the noise. This made the cameras bigger, bulkier, more unwieldy and harder to move meaning that they would have to stay in one place longer meaning that films didn’t move around as much as they used to. (You can actually notice this problem in films from the dawn of the silent era if you’re paying attention. You’ll often hear a low crackling all throughout the movie if you listen for it; this is the muffled motor running.)
As a result, excessive movement was dialed down, action was replaced by dialogue and long takes reigned supreme. If you watch a movie that came out before The Jazz Singer, you’ll notice that they move around and are more action-oriented than ones that came out after. This is another reason why many actors tried to rebel against the rise of sound: they felt it was a far more limiting style of filmmaking. After all, they can change camera angles only so many times before they start losing time and money on the shoot.
I give you this brief history of production because it’s important to understand how much changed, and not necessarily for the better. The earliest sound films run into the problem of being in an awkward transition period from not talking to talking and will often have characters just standing in position for minutes a time without the camera cutting to another angle.
The Broadway Melody, having come out at the tail end of the eligibility period (and over a year after The Jazz Singer graced the screens), tries several different methods to try to mask these problems but almost none of them work. For example, one of the big song and dance numbers of the movie is The Wedding of the Painted Doll, about halfway through the movie. It’s a big, elaborate dance number with over a dozen dancers which is meant to distract you from the fact that the camera almost never moves or cuts. In instances like this, it’s somewhat serviceable.
It gets really outdated, however, whenever they are doing solo acts with few characters. Remember, the camera can’t really move, so it’s locked in place, which means that the camera is sitting still for a while (i.e. no tracking shots or cuts). For example, there's song sequence where they sing the Broadway Melody (that I unfortunately cannot find because it is really unintentionally hilarious). In most musicals, whenever they have a song named after the title, it’s usually one of the highlights. Here, it’s the three main characters spinning around in place, waving their arms and Bessie Love playing a ukulele that is not even remotely in sync with the music you’re hearing. The camera doesn’t cut once.
Aside from the Mahoney Sisters and the interesting piece of history it presents, I actually hate almost everything about The Broadway Melody. The pacing is outdated, the comic relief provides neither comedy or relief and I really, really hate the ending of this movie, so much so that it ruins the whole thing for me.
There are two types of movie viewers in this world: those that think a bad ending can ruin a great movie or those that think that a great movie is the sum of its parts and a bad ending doesn’t necessarily retroactively ruin everything that came beforehand. I normally fall into the latter camp. I think that a bad ending is just a flaw in a film so, if the movie is otherwise enjoyable, it’s still enjoyable, it just comes with the caveat of being prepared to be disappointed when recommending it (e.g. The Mark of Zorro (1940), The Woman in the Window (1944), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Fatal Attraction (1987), Rat Race (2001), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) etc.)
The Broadway Melody, however, is one of the very few movies I have seen where the ending totally ruins the picture for me. Please bear in mind that I’m going to be spoiling an over 90-year-old movie right now so if you have any desire to actually watch this film, skip ahead to the last paragraph for my closing thoughts. Ye have been warned.
SPOILERS AHOY
Remember Eddie? That cocky scumbag who’s trying to bang his fiancé’s baby sister? Well, it’s not just a passing attraction or he flirts a little bit, no, he’s dead serious. As soon as Hank leaves the room, he hits on Queenie like it’s the end of the world and in the creepiest ways you can possibly imagine. And, at first, I thought he was a good character. Not in the sense that I approve of him acting like the Golden State Killer but because I thought that he was a good villain. I was looking forward to seeing the Mahoney Sisters give him what he deserved at the end of the movie. Here’s where the problems pop up though: he’s not supposed to be the villain.
When it comes time for the climax, the film sets it up in a way that we’re supposed to be rooting for him. Not in a way where he learns from his mistakes (his many, awful mistakes) but we’re supposed to forgive and sympathize with them and root for him and have a big, “Yeah, you go get ‘em,” moment. I know this because he gets those exact words from Hank who, upon realizing that Eddie is attracted to her baby sister, supports him. Instead of doing what any sane woman would do and throwing his head through a wall.
Not only does this not feel earned but it also cheapens the set-up of the film and makes us sympathize with a pretty disgusting character. Now, you could say that this was just a sign of the times; maybe what’s considered sexual harassment today wouldn’t have been considered an issue back in the 20s. You could say that, but, again, I feel like Eddie's behavior is disgusting even by those standards. Also, if true, then the film and the values of the time really seem to contradict each other.
The major subplot of the film is that a theater executive named Jacques (Kenneth Thomson) is also trying to date Queenie and Hank and Eddie try to talk her out of it which is what drives one of the major wedges between the group. As you can predict, Jacques is a creep in his own right and the film is definitely trying to portray him in that way as, in one scene, he tries to lure her away from a party when she doesn’t want to go. Definitely skeevy but compare that with Eddie who one-ups Jacques by pinning Queenie against a wall and trying to force himself upon her.
So, at the end of the movie, when Eddie confronts Jacques, it doesn’t feel like the dreamer standing up to the soulless mogul of Broadway: it just feels like two different scumbags treating a woman like a piece of meat to be won and she decides that one of them is right. How much more rewarding would it have been if she instead told them both to go to Hell?
It’s a shame too because I actually found myself really getting into this movie at first. I thought that it was going to end on a unique note where it’s these two sisters against the world but they still have each other. Which, granted, that kinda is what happens but not like this. This ending is so awful and downright disgusting with its treatment of women. Yeah, remember our talk in the last chapter about having to be careful with calling sexism and racism in old films because of how much things have changed? This one you can feel pretty comfortable in calling straight-up sexist.
And that’s about it on The Broadway Melody. It’s an interesting watch if you’re into studying film history but, aside from that, there’s almost nothing worth going back to it for. But could it be called the best movie of the year? Well, that’s what the next section is for, isn’t it?
In case you missed it:
1st Academy Awards (1927/28): Wings/Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans: Part 1, Part 2
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