The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Tag: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

  • The Broadway Melody (1929)

    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. 

    Opening title of the very first MGM musical

    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.

    Queenie (Anita Page) is guilty about listening to a love song from Eddie (Charles King), her sister Hank’s beau

     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.

    Eddie performs the title song

    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.  

  • Norman Houston

    Norman Houston (1887-1958) was a sometime actor and director who spent most of his career as a screenwriter, making his mark as one of the principal writers on the extended Hopalong Cassidy series. His limited involvement in MGM’s musicals involved contributing dialogue to The Broadway Melody and directing, without credit, some of the skits in The Hollywood Revue of 1929.

  • Sarah Y Mason

    Sarah Y Mason (1896-1980) is one of the forgotten women of early Hollywood, having made a significant contribution, and leaving little information behind. I am grateful to the Women Film Pioneers Project for summarizing what information there is. 

    Dr Roseanne Welch has credited Mason with being the person to name and develop the role of ‘continuity girl’ (now script supervisor): the person on set with responsibility for ensuring continuity from shot to shot and scene to scene. This was in 1918, when she began working for Douglas Fairbanks. 

    Mason later moved into script-writing, often in partnership with her husband, Victor Heerman. It was she who fleshed out Edmund Goulding’s story for The Broadway Melody into a continuity script, with dialogue added later by James Gleason and Norman Houston.

    Mason went on to script They Learned About Women and to adapt Love in the Rough from its stage original. She also worked uncredited on Meet Me in St Louis. She and Heerman won the Best Adaptation Oscar for Little Women (1933). 

  • Edmund Goulding

    Edmund Goulding (1891-1959) is best remembered as athe director of films including Grand Hotel (1932) and Nightmare Alley (1947). But his biographer, Matthew Kelly, has drawn attention to Goulding’s wide-ranging contributions at MGM, which included not only writing and producing but also consultation on music, makeup and costume. His singular contribution to film musicals was to extemporize the plot of The Broadway Melody for Irving Thalberg and Lawrence Weingarten. According to the latter, Thalberg’s secretary took notes because they were aware of Goulding’s ability to “tell a story in the morning and forget everything about it by the afternoon”.

    Goulding subsequently made an uncredited contribution to the screenplays of Hollywood Party (on which he was also an uncredited co-director) and, understandably, Two Girls on Broadway, the remake of The Broadway Melody. He directed some scenes in A Night at the Opera without credit.

    Goulding was never a credited director on a Metro musical, though some sources erroneously claim Blondie of the Follies (1932) to be a musical. The film has a show business background and features one musical number in long shot, but it is actually a romantic comedy with an excellent performance by Marion Davies.

  • Lawrence Weingarten

    Lawrence Weingarten (1897-1975) was working as assistant to  Irving Thalberg, his brother-in-law, when he was assigned to work on the supervision of what became Metro’s first musical, The Broadway Melody. Weingarten’s description of working on the picture is included in Samuel Marx’s Mayer and Thalberg: The Make-Believe Saints (1975).

    Weingarten had a lengthy career as a producer at MGM, but little subsequent involvement with its musicals.  He was an uncredited supervisor on Free and Easy and A Day at the Races, but his only producer credit on a musical was Balalaika.  

  • Harry Beaumont

    Harry Beaumont (1888-1966) is not a well-known name, despite having directed the first feature-length musical and a winner of the best picture Academy Award. Originally an actor, he turned to film directing in 1916.

    In 1923 Beaumont directed The Gold Diggers, a play which was also the source of Warners’ Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933). Perhaps his most notable achievement outside musicals was Metro’s Our Dancing Daughters (1928), which had a synchronized score.

    Irving Thalberg must have considered Beaumont a safe pair of hands when assigning him to The Broadway Melody, an ambitious and not inexpensive project. His reputation today is as a journeyman director grinding out assignments, but Richard Barrios points out, in A Song in the Dark (1995), that Beaumont was present at every script conference. Studio records indicate that his contribution to the picture’s dialogue was greater than that of the credited James Gleason.

    In 1930 Beaumont directed three further musicals for MGM, Lord Byron of Broadway (brought in to beef up William Nigh’s work), Children of Pleasure and The Florodora Girl, before moving on to other things. Never more than a journeyman director, Beaumont carved himself a small, if often overlooked, niche in cinema history with The Broadway Melody,  

  • The Broadway Melody (1929)

    The Synopsis
    The Cast
    The Crew
    The Numbers
    Some Thoughts

  • The Broadway Melody

    Synopsis

    At the Gleason Music Publishing Company, Eddie Keans performs his latest song [The Broadway Melody]. The number has been written for the Mahoney sisters, one of whom Eddie plans to marry.

    Queenie and Hank Mahoney arrive at their New York hotel. Queenie is nervous about their move to the big time, but Hank tells her that, with Queenie’s looks and Hank’s talent, they will be fine. Uncle Jed, their agent, arrives and warns them that it is difficult for a new sister act to be a success in New York. Jed leaves and Eddie arrives. He plans to marry Hank, but he is struck by the beauty of Queenie, whom he has not seen since she was a little girl. Hank says she will marry Eddie once their act is successful. Eddie tells them his new song has been acquired for a new Zanfield show and he is arranging for them to perform it [The Broadway Melody].

    Hank (Bessie Love) and Queenie (Anita Page)

    Zanfield agrees to look at the Mahoneys’ act. Flo, one of the chorus girls, jokes about the Mahoneys and sabotages their performance [Harmony Babies]. Zanfield is unimpressed. He says he can use Queenie in the chorus, but not Hank. A fight breaks out between Hank and Flo. Queenie asks Zanfield to hire her sister as well, at a two-for-one price. Zanfield agrees and also agrees not to tell Hank about the arrangement. Eddie is impressed by Queenie’s protection of her sister, and kisses her. Queenie tells Eddie he should not kiss her and that she would never do anything to hurt Hank.

    On the day of the dress rehearsal, Queenie is very nervous. [The Broadway Melody]. Zanfield decides the number is too slow and cuts the Mahoneys. Queenie is forced to stand in for a scantily-clad chorine who has fallen from an onstage pedestal [Love Boat]. Queenie is a big hit, but Hank is upset because they have always got by on talent rather than showing their legs.

    Jaques Warriner, one of the show’s wealthy backers, pursues Queenie and she finally agrees to go out with him, against the wishes of both Hank and Eddie. When Hank gets back to their hotel, she finds that Queenie did not go to the party.

    Two weeks later, Warriner is still chasing Queenie, to Eddie’s annoyance. Uncle Jed tries to persuade Hank to go on tour with another girl, because her role in the show is so small, but she wants to keep an eye on Queenie. Then he suggests she give Eddie a break and marry him. Eddie tells Queenie he cannot sleep for thinking about her [You Were Meant for Me]. Hank walks in as Eddie is trying to kiss Queenie, but Queenie pretends they are arguing about Warriner. Later that day, Hank arranges a surprise birthday party for Queenie, but she goes to another party arranged for her by Warriner.

    At the party, Queenie is still doing her best to resist Warriner’s advances [Truthful Parson Brown]. They dance, and Warriner gives her a diamond bracelet. He suggests setting her up in a Park Avenue apartment, but Queenie says she will have to think about it. Queenie arrives home drunk in the middle of the night. She shows Hank the bracelet and tells her about all the other things Warriner has promised her.

    [The Wedding of the Painted Doll; The Boy Friend].

    Hank quarrels with Queenie about presents she is receiving from Warriner, and Queenie almost reveals that she is only seeing Warriner to avoid Eddie. Eddie tells Queenie that he loves her. She replies that she loves him too, and that is why she must go with Warriner.

    Hank and Eddie try unsuccessfully to stop Queenie leaving with Warriner. Eddie is so angry that Hank suddenly realises the truth. Hank tells Eddie he must go after Queenie because he loves her. She says that she never loved him and was only using him to help her career. After Hank has chased Eddie from the room, she collapses in tears, and then calls Uncle Jed, agreeing to go on tour with another blonde.

    There is a party at Queenie’s new apartment. She is grateful to Warriner, but clearly still unhappy. Eddie arrives as she is trying to break away from Warriner’s embrace. Warriner knocks Eddie to the ground and Queenie turns on him, throwing all his gifts back in his face.

    Later, Hank and Uncle Jed welcome Queenie and Eddie back from their honeymoon. Queenie is giving up the stage, but Hank declines an invitation to live with her and Eddie. Hank’s new partner arrives: it is Flo [Harmony Babies]. Hank and Flo leave to catch their train and Eddie tells a weeping Queenie that Hank could never have given up the stage because she is a born trouper. In the taxi, Hank promises Flo she will have them back on Broadway in six months.     



  • Introduction

    (site under construction)

    If the MGM musical has any cultural cachet today, it is usually attached to a handful of Hollywood stars–Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly–or a similarly small number of iconic films: Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and An American in Paris (1951), perhaps Meet Me in St Louis (1944).

    But ‘the MGM musical’ actually encompasses 215 individual pictures, mostly produced at MGM’s Culver City studio between 1929 and 1972. Many of these films are now forgotten, even by committed film buffs. 

    Montana Moon (1930) is no Meet Me in St Louis and Malcolm St Clair was certainly no Vincente Minnelli, yet it is an important film for at least two reasons. Its location footage challenges the misconception that On the Town (1949) was the first musical to include footage shot outside the studio. And, like all the other films discussed here, it contributed to the evolution of MGM’s unique style of musical; Singin’ in the Rain did not spring unheralded from Gene Kelly’s muscular loins.

    Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer entered the world of feature-length musicals first and to great effect: The Broadway Melody (1929) pushed across the edges of what was believed achievable with the new talking pictures and won the Oscar for best picture for its trouble.

    All Talking! All Singing! All Dancing!
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