THE BROADWAY MELODY: THE SECOND BEST PICTURE WINNER

The second Academy Awards were held on April 3, 1930 at the Cocoanut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. It was the first time the winners weren’t revealed until the night of the ceremony, which led to a bit of drama with Mary Pickford winning Best Actress for Coquette (another particularly bad film). At the time, there were no official nominees, or at least, the nominees weren’t made aware that they were being considered for any awards. Both, who was considered and who won, was decided by a Board of Judges made up of people from the Academy. And since Mary Pickford was one of the founding members of the Academy, she knew she was in consideration and lobbied the judges for her win, having them over for tea.

A sort-of For Your Consideration Chamomile.

It’s largely considered one of the worst performances to ever win an Academy Award (and I would have to agree with that sentiment) and after the controversy surrounding her win the awards changed to a “one member, one vote policy.”

This also marks the first “talking picture” and first musical to win Best Picture with The Broadway Melody.

WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS FILM!?

Feels silly to say, but spoilers.

The Broadway Melody tells the story of Eddie Kearns and the Mahoney sisters, Hank and Queenie. Eddie is a Broadway songwriter and performer and he’s asked Hank and Queenie to leave the road and bring their act to a new show he’s doing.

Hank and Eddie have a little thing going on, I guess they’re not technically fiances, but they’re both talking about marriage from the moment we see them together. That is until Eddie sees Queenie and he’s such a creep that he immediately starts kissing her on the mouth.

This creep Eddie is so aggressive about getting with his fiance's sister that the sister runs off to this other rich creep, Jock Warner, who gives her a lot of expensive stuff and then tries to force himself on her. Once Hank realizes that Eddie and Queenie are in love she has a Harry and the Hendersons moment and Eddie and Queenie end up together! And Hank goes off, back on tour with a new blonde woman.

I think it’s supposed to be a happy ending? And maybe it was in 1929, but to my contemporary point of view, it feels very dark and very depressing. Queenie has given up on performing and ended up with this abusive man, and yes he is abusive, he gets so angry and controlling when Queenie starts seeing Jock. And then Hank is going back on the road, the thing she was trying to get away from at the start of the film.

Okay, aside from all that, because I’m willing to look past some of the flawed storytelling of the past, if there are other aspects of the film that are still worthwhile; the cinematography, the songs, the performances…there aren’t.

THE DIFFICULTIES OF TRANSITIONING TO SOUND

And a lot of this might have to do with the transition to sound because the cinematography in The Broadway Melody is so damn boring. Especially having come out of watching the first two films to win Best Picture; Wings and Sunrise, which both felt so contemporary and dynamic in their camera work.

Maybe the technical limitations of trying to record sound along with the images at the time didn’t allow for any kind of fancy…or any…camera movement, but that is no excuse for the pacing. And maybe I need to stay off tiktok, but it felt like you could have fit entire movies in the spaces in between dialogue.

There are some moments that try for patter, for screwball even with some “rapid” backstage dialogue and I appreciate the effort even if they can’t quite nail it. But every other moment in this film feels like it’s slowly plodding along. There’s one especially egregious scene early on where the sisters uncle comes to their hotel room and from the moment he knocks until the moment they open the door there is a full twenty-six seconds of essentially silence, as if they’re on stage and feel the need to wait for Hank to walk from the bathroom to the door. That is what this entire film feels like and it is painful.

OLD MOVIES ARE GOOD ACTUALLY

I find that people, generally, have a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to older films and it’s because of movies like this. When people think of watching old movies, the experience of watching this film is what they’re thinking of and it’s a shame because then they miss out on really great ones.

In an attempt to find some sort of silver lining, I will say I do enjoy the songs in the film. We hear The Broadway Melody four hundred and eighty-five times, but it’s catchy, so I don’t mind so much. You Were Meant for Me is a nice ballad…the rest of the songs…exist. Yes, they are  pretty forgettable, but forgettable in the way a meal at McDonald’s is forgettable, it’s not going to fill you, but you have a fine time while you’re eating it.

Or maybe you don’t, maybe you just sit there and cry while your shoving fries into your face. I don’t know you.

But speaking of the songs, the film did contribute one very important thing to the movie musical and that was filming to a pre-recorded soundtrack. Irving Thalberg, the producer on the film, wanted reshoots done on the “Wedding of the Painted Doll” number. Sound technician Douglas Shearer, knowing it would be very expensive, suggested that they take the existing recording and have the actors pantomime. This is a technique that is still used today for film musicals although there have been quite a few films that have utilized live vocals over the years, including Peter Bogdanovich’s At Long Last Love and more recently 2012’s Les Miserables.

Up next is 1930’s All Quiet on the Western Front