It is typical of the unfathomable decisions sometimes made by MGM in its early musicals that it cast Victoria Spivey (1906-76) in a non-singing role in Hallelujah!. In her day job Spivey was a notable blues singer and songwriter who went on to work with artists ranging from John Lee Hooker to Bob Dylan, and whose personality bore no resemblance to Missy Rose. Hallelujah! was her only acting credit.
Very little is known about Harry Gray. It is probable he was born in the 1840s and lived the first decades of his life as an enslaved person. He was apparently working as a porter when he was cast as the patriarch in Hallelujah, joining a number of other non-professional actors. Gray has two subsequent credits, but remains something of a mystery.
Hallelujah was the last of the handful of films made by William Fountaine (1897-1945), starting with the lead in Oscar Micheaux’s Uncle Jasper’s Will (1922). He was forthright about his refusal, along with other performers, to speak the racist language originally included in Hallelujah!‘s screenplay.
Nina Mae McKinney (1913-67) was one of the many Black performers–talented and beautiful–whose careers were stifled by Hollywood racism.
After relocating from South Carolina to New York, McKinney was only 15 when she was cast in the all-Black Broadway musical revue Blackbirds of 1928. Her performance was noted by King Vidor, who subsequently cast her as the female lead in Hallelujah. She replaced his original choice, who was rejected by Irving Thalberg as lacking sex appeal.
McKinney received glowing reviews for her performance as Chick and it secured her a five-year contract with MGM, but no further roles of substance. She made an uncredited appearance as a singer in They Learned About Women, and eventually walked out on MGM. Richard Watts of The New York Herald Tribune wrote at the time that her “exile from the cinema is the result entirely of narrow and intolerant racial matters.”
She made only a few films thereafter, perhaps most notably as Paul Robeson’s queen in Sanders of the River (1935) and as Rozelia in Pinky (1949).
Daniel M Haynes (1894-1954) was a successful stage actor working as Jules Bledsoe’s understudy in Show Boat when he was offered the lead role of Zeke in Hallelujah. The part had been intended for Paul Robeson, but he was unavailable.
Inevitably, given the times, Haynes’s powerful performance did not open the door to a film career. King Vidor used him again in So Red the Rose, but further down the cast list. Other than that, Haynes’s film work was mostly uncredited bits, and he eventually gave up acting to become a Baptist minister.
Cast
| Daniel L. Haynes | Zeke |
| Nina Mae McKinney | Chick |
| William Fountaine | Hot Shot |
| Harry Gray | Parson |
| Fanny Belle DeKnight | Mammy |
| Everett McGarrity | Spunk |
| Victoria Spivey | Missy Rose |
| Milton Dickerson | Johnson Kid |
| Robert Couch | Johnson Kid |
| Walter Tait | Johnson Kid |
| Dixie Jubilee Singers | Vocal Ensemble |
| Matthew ‘Stymie’ Beard | Child (uncredited) |
| Evelyn Pope Burwell | Singer (uncredited) |
| Eddie Conners | Singer (uncredited) |
| William Allen Garrison | Heavy (uncredited) |
| Eva Jessye | Singer (uncredited) |
| Sam McDaniel | Adam (uncredited) |
| Clarence Muse | Church Member (uncredited) |
| Arvert Pott | Black Child (uncredited) |
| Madame Sul-Te-Wan | Church Member (uncredited) |
| Blue Washington | Church Member (uncredited) |
| Georgia Woodruff | Singer (uncredited) |
Synopsis
[Old Folks at Home]. Zeke Johnson, his brother Spunk and the rest of their family pick cotton on a big plantation. The two brothers are about to go into town to sell their family’s share of the latest crop. A late supper [Dance 1] is interrupted by Adam, Eve and their 12 children. Adam and Eve ask Mr Johnson to marry them.
While the ceremony is taking place, Zeke forces himself on his adopted sister Missy Rose and kisses her. He immediately apologizes, claiming the devil was in him. [Dance 2].
The next day, Zeke and Spunk sell the cotton [Waiting at the End of the Road]. Zeke collects $100 and resists the temptation to join a dice game. But he sees a young woman named Chick dancing [Dance 3]. Chick is not interested in him, until she sees his money. Spunk waits for his brother, but he does not return.
Chick takes Zeke to a night spot where she performs [Swanee Shuffle]. Chick introduces Zeke to Hot Shot, a gambler for whom she shills. Hot Shop plays dice with Zeke. Spunk, meanwhile, is searching for his brother. Zeke quickly loses all the money. Zeke accuses Hot Shot of cheating. Spunk enters while they are fighting and is shot and killed.
Zeke arrives home the next morning with Spunk’s body in the wagon. After the funeral, Zeke repents of his sins and leads the people in prayer [Swing Low, Sweet Chariot].
Some time later, Zeke has become the prophet Zekiel, a travelling preacher. He arrives in a new town and Chick and Hot Shot are in the crowd. They heckle Zeke, but he confronts and cows them. Zeke preaches to the crowd [(Gimme Dat) Old Time Religion], and Chick begins heckling again, but is eventually moved by Zeke’s preaching [Waiting at the End of the Road]. Later, Mrs Johnson and Missy Rose are shocked when Chick volunteers for baptism in the river. Zeke is tempted by Chick’s presence, but his mother intercedes.
That evening, Zeke asks Missy Rose to marry him. Elsewhere, Hot Shot tries to stop Chick going to the service, telling her she will always be a sinner, but she beats him with a poker and gets away. At the service, Missy Rose sees that Zeke is still drawn to Chick, and she to him. In an apparent religious ecstasy, Chick seduces Zeke and takes him away with her.
Months later, Zeke is working in a log mill and living with Chick. But Hot Shot has tracked down Chick and wants her to go with him [St Louis Blues]. Zeke is suspicious, but he still cannot resist her. When Zeke falls asleep, Chick packs a bag and leaves with Hot Shot in his buggy. Zeke chases them, and catches up when the buggy loses a wheel. Chick is thrown from the buggy and seriously injured. She begs Zeke’s forgiveness and dies in his arms. Zeke pursues Hot Shot through a swamp and kills him.
Zeke spends time in prison doing hard labour. He is released on probation, and returns to his family [Goin’ Home]. They all welcome him back.
John Arnold (1889-1964) had been photographing films at Metro since 1916 when he was assigned to The Broadway Melody. He followed this up with The Hollywood Revue of 1929, and was soon after kicked upstairs to become head of the studio’s Camera Department.
Arnold was a co-founder and governor of the American Society of Cinematographers, with a particular interest in technical innovation. This bore dividends on The Broadway Melody when he was able to devise the “coffin on wheels,” a soundproof but mobile camera booth that enabled the film to transcend the existing limitations of sound cinema.
Later in his career Arnold won Oscars for two of his inventions: in 1938, for a semi-automatic follow focus device; and in 1940 for a mobile camera crane.
Arnold was also important to the campaign that secured the inclusion of cinematographers in Hollywood credits.
Many things make The Broadway Melody (1929) a noteworthy film in cinema history. It was the first feature-length musical: although Warners were filming The Desert Song (1929) at the same time, they held back its release and so missed a further opportunity to make history.
The Broadway Melody was also the first musical from the studio that became synonymous with that genre. It was the first musical to win the Academy Award for Best Picture and also the first talking picture to do so, the only previous winner, Wings (1927) having had only a synchronized score and sound effects.
The Broadway Melody also saw the invention (or perhaps more accurately the discovery) of the playback system, whereby performers in musicals lip-synced to songs they had recorded earlier. The Wedding of the Painted Doll was the film’s biggest production number and Irving Thalberg was so dissatisfied with the original footage that he ordered it shot again. According to Bosley Crowther in The Lion’s Share (1957), it was sound engineer Douglas Shearer who suggested that money could be saved by reusing the live music previously recorded. Pre-recording musical performances went on to become standard operating procedure throughout the classical period.
The Broadway Melody was the first backstage musical, putting in place many of the tropes that became genre clichés. This includes the convention that the show being staged is almost always a revue rather than a drama; and the recurring dichotomy between highbrow and lowbrow music.
It also includes the first musical number integrated into a film’s narrative. Eddie sings You Were Meant for Me not on stage but in Queenie’s apartment, to a non-diegetic musical accompaniment, sealing his declaration of love and moving forward the narrative.
Conversely, The Wedding of the Painted Doll is a template for the extraneous production number, filmed on a large scale and without the participation of the film’s principal players. It is also the first musical number filmed in (two-strip) Technicolor.
Arthur Freed, who would become MGM’s most important musical producer, made his first contribution to the genre with the seven songs he provided with his partner, Nacio Herb Brown. It is fitting that the trailblazing The Broadway Melody should have used original compositions rather than standards. Freed and Brown provided numbers that complemented the action. The lyrics of the title song, for example
Broadway, you magic street
River of humanity
I have trudged my weary feet
Down your Gay White Way
Dreaming a million dreams of fame
Yearning for you to know my name
reflect the story and experience of Hank, the character at the heart of the picture.
The Broadway Melody is unsophisticated to contemporary eyes, even in comparison to musicals made just a few years later. It is also a rare musical that also exists in a silent version, and even the talkie includes intertitles. And it is undeniable that the clod-hopping chorus line would not have made it into a Busby Berkeley number.
But it is important to remember that, in 1929, Photoplay’s review described it as the film in which talking pictures found new speed and freedom. Harry Beaumont and cinematographer John Arnold devised a “coffin on wheels”: a soundproof camera booth that was also compact enough to move around the set, enabling a sense of space. In a sense, The Broadway Melody was an experimental film: sound technology improved during the shooting period and it has been noted that the quality of sound recording is much better in the later scenes filmed. Irving Thalberg actually drew attention to the studio’s concern that audiences might be confused by a character bursting into song, accompanied by an unseen orchestra–bewilderingly, a stumbling-block to enjoyment of musicals that continues to this day.
