Best Picture Winner #2
Release Date: June 26, 1929
Rating: Passed
Runtime: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Director: Henry Beaumont
Quick Impressions:
My daughter and I expected a let down after the soaring excellence of Wings, but we still pressed on to watch The Broadway Melody (1929). I had never seen this one, either, though I’m almost sure I’ve seen a later incarnation of The Broadway Melody at some hazy point in my childhood. And I definitely know most of the songs from the film. You’ll recognize them, too, if you’ve seen Singin’ in the Rain.
“I love old movies,” my daughter noted, “because they show you an entirely different world.” She’s right. This film won Best Picture nearly a century ago. The peek into the past is so exciting, like having a time machine. (How I wish we had movies from even earlier eras!)
Even though both she and I rate Wings the superior film, we still enjoyed this one. If for no other reason, you should watch for all the snappy slang. The Broadway Melody is like a time-capsule of kooky period expressions.
After the movie’s over, you’ll find yourself wanting to say things like, “It’s cream in the can, baby,” or “You didn’t get that complexion from the Greeks.” “What’s the name of that record you’re playing?” I’m personally planning to go around saying, “It’s cream in the can, baby,” about daunting tasks just to bolster my own self-confidence. If anyone dares doubt me, I’ll jeer, “You’re just a crepe hanger!” Darn crepe hangers, always trying to tear me down!
The Plot:
The story of The Broadway Melody is pretty simple. First we meet Eddie Kearns (Charles King) a crooner who has come up with a great song, so good that if you’re anything like me, you can already sing along with it even though you haven’t seen this movie before. He’s out to impress successful theater producer Francis Zanfield, the almost comically thinly veiled fictional alter ego of Florenz Ziegfeld. (I kept thinking of Mr. Burns hiring Señor Speilbergo to direct his life story.)
Eddie wants to perform the song on stage with Broadway newcomers the Mahoney sisters. They’re a touring sister act from Reading, Pennsylvania that nobody in New York has heard of—yet. Eddie’s dating the older sister, Hank. Things get complicated fast when Eddie unexpectedly falls madly in love with Hank’s younger sister Queenie (who looks so eerily similar to Queenie from Fantastic Beasts that if the movie ever begins to bore you, you can easily daydream that “the real Queenie” used magic to charm her way into a Hollywood movie).
The first musical to win Best Picture, The Broadway Melody is built around the production of stage shows. But the real story is the love triangle involving Eddie, Hank, and Queenie, which is unusually complicated because Hank doesn’t even know it is a triangle until Queenie goes off on a wild tangent and forces events to a crisis. (At the last minute, I thought, “Can I work in a joke about her going off with a tan gent?” But she actually goes off with a very pale fellow who has a French first name, an affected English accent, and the striking looks of Ted Cruz.)
The Good:
Early on, I was charmed by this film, but not particularly impressed. Then I changed my mind. I’m not too familiar with any of the actors in this Broadway Melody (although I did notice when James Gleason suddenly appeared in the opening scene. I yelled, “Hey! It’s the guy from Arsenic and Old Lace!” among other things.)
Whether I know anything about her or not, Bessie Love, however, gives an absolutely fantastic, Oscar worthy performance. She’s good in every scene, plays a variety of emotions convincingly, handles comedy well, can hold her own in a fight, and has an absolutely riveting, Oscar-caliber breakdown near the end. Plus she can dance. As far as I can tell, her Hank is the one dancer in the act. Her younger sister is mainly good at being beautiful and standing on boats. (And that’s not to say Queenie brings nothing to the act. She is excellent at being the object of men’s desire and knowing how to turn this to her advantage. Her older sister lacks this skill set.)
After the movie, I discovered that Love was nominated for Best Actress for her work here, deservedly so.
Anita Page (Queenie) also gives a good performance, but most of it consists of being striking to behold. She has a wonderful, expressive face. Initially, her character is incredibly sympathetic, but as the movie went on, I felt distance between Page’s acting techniques and my ability to understand them. Her character’s manner confused me slightly. I had a hard time pinning down exactly what emotions she was trying to convey, and I really think that’s because of the vast gap in time between her acting and my watching her. I could never decide how naïve she actually was. Was she wise, pretending to be naïve? Was she just drunk a lot because she was in a tough situation? I found her never less than riveting to watch, but sometimes quite puzzling to understand. Also, how old is Queenie?
Charles King is good as Eddie, but from this distance, Eddie looks like quite a jerk. (I’ll talk about that more in “the negatives” section.) King certainly has charisma, but here in 2020 it’s pretty hard to root for this 1920s leading man (and I mean, I’m pretty lenient).
Even though I am not a fan of the romance in the film (“the forced love story” as my daughter describes it), I did come away thinking, “What a beautiful film about sisterhood!” Well, anyway, it’s a film about sisterhood. The ending isn’t exactly beautiful, but neither is sisterhood sometimes. It is touching to see how much these two women care for each other, misguidedly sacrifice for one another, look out for each other, mean to each other. (Honestly, the ending would be more satisfying if they ended up ruling Arendelle together, and Eddie got pushed off a boat.) (That’s probably a little harsh. Eddie can go off and sing to a reindeer.)
As far as musicals go, the musical numbers in this film are relatively few and better presented in Singin’ in the Rain. “The Broadway Melody” and “You Were Meant For Me” are fantastic songs. Even my son (who is about to turn five) enjoyed some of the more outlandish staging of the other numbers.
The film also contains a character who stutters, Uncle Jed. I found him quite interesting. (I kept wanting to make jokes about the ce-ment pond, but I kept reminding myself that my daughter wouldn’t get them.) I found his stutter so fascinating because he would often give up and choose a different word, a tactic I recently read about in an article that mentioned Joe Biden’s stutter.
Best Scene/Most Oscar Worthy Moment Bessie Love:
Bessie Love deserves an Oscar for that roller coaster of emotion Hank experiences in her dressing room near the end of the film. Most of this movie made me think, “How curious,” “That’s interesting,” “fascinating,” but this scene could appear in a movie today, and Love would get Oscar attention for it. She’s very good here. She’s better than the movie.
Best Scene Visually:
Most of the musical numbers are so outlandishly staged. It’s pretty hard not to find Anita Page extremely striking up there on the ship. Then the ship shows up again on her obscenely enormous birthday cake! I’m not sure which I spent longer looking at, the real ship, or the cake. (No, it was the cake for sure. We kept ineptly rewinding it so my son could get a good look at the cake, but then accidentally going too far.)
Best Musical Number:
I remember “The Wedding of the Painted Doll” from Singin’ in the Rain, but I’ve never seen the entire number before. It’s somewhat surreal in Singin’ in the Rain, but definitely weird and wonderful here.
Best Action Sequence:
This is really just a moment, I love it when the other “naked” woman falls off the ship. It seems so symbolic and full of ominous foreshadowing.
Best Song I Hadn’t Heard Before:
“Truthful Parson Brown” was new to me, and I loved it. (Maybe I have heard it. There’s something weirdly familiar about it. That could be because it’s performed right before we see that amazing boat cake, and we kept accidentally rewinding too far and watching it again!) It’s actually my favorite song in the film.
The Negatives:
I suppose it seems harsh to say, “What are the negatives? Hmm…the entire plot?” Here’s the thing. Almost everything I consider a true weakness of the film is actually a positive in a way. Most of the points of criticism I have are about the way the romance unfolds. But I think a lot of that has to do with viewing a movie over ninety years later. I’m not exactly the intended audience for this film.
I love how much time the movie gives to these two women, letting us see their anguish worrying over each other, their love for one another. After watching a movie about fighter pilots, it’s nice to get a peek at the world of dancers. And I adore Love’s whole performance and also like a lot of what Page does.
But I think the false dilemma driving the plot becomes a bit absurd. Why is the choice to steal your sister’s boyfriend or to abandon your virtue and become the jewel-adorned mistress of some professional dallier? Couldn’t Queenie just…not do anything? Couldn’t she just do the show and then make some female friends or perhaps date some random young man? Get some extra sleep? Visit the public library? Get a pen pal? Or could she perhaps tell her sister, “When you leave the room, your boyfriend keeps hitting on me?” If I were in this situation, I would tell my sister what was happening.
I can’t quite work out how old Queenie is. I know she’s the younger sister. People keep saying that she’s grown up a lot. But she doesn’t look like a teenager. She can’t be that young if she and her streetwise sister grew up poor and clawed their way up through hard work and true grit. I can’t tell if she feels endangered by Eddie (as in, he just won’t let up, so she has to get out of that situation as fast as she can, any way that she can) or if she just doesn’t want to hurt her sister (which is more the way it seems). But if it’s the latter, why must she hurt her sister another way by turning into the most notorious woman on Broadway? Her free time would be well spent taking dance lessons. Maybe with her naked boat money, she could hire an instructor. And I mean, there’s always the public library if she’s desperate to give her sister some time alone. Apparently that opened in 1911. Another question, obviously, is what’s so wrong with being someone’s kept mistress? But it’s easy to understand how a small town girl in the 1920s would find that objectionable. I’m sure her sister is thinking, “Standing naked on boats is probably not a lifetime career, and I won’t be able to take care of you forever. Don’t throw away your chance at finding a decent husband.”
Will Eddie be a decent husband? From this distance, he’s hard to embrace. He’s right that we can’t help who we love, but this handy aphorism is hardly an excuse to pursue your girlfriend’s younger sister every time the girlfriend leaves the room, then continue a relationship with the girlfriend while acting like the younger sister is a crazy child. Yes, I’ve heard of love at first sight, but there’s also such a thing as basic human decency. If you truly think you have fallen in love with a woman the very moment you lay eyes on her, then perhaps you should break up with her sister. I can’t decide if this situation would have frustrated viewers in the 1920s just as much, or if this kind of male behavior simply didn’t age well. For most of the movie, these two sisters are practically keening like the Trojan Women, driving themselves to despair, one wearing out her knees in prayer, the other losing herself to soul-devouring sin (the way the movie frames it). Meanwhile, the guy is like, “Oh well! I felt a feeling! What can I do? Don’t worry, darling! Your sister is happier being miserable!”
But I’m not 100 percent sure that the movie expects us to view Eddie sympathetically. I think it at least allows us to see things from a different point of view. As Hank, Bessie Love has the best part and makes the most of it. If you only watch one scene from this film, make sure it’s her big star moment near the end. Honestly, she’s fantastic.
Overall:
As musicals about Broadway go, The Broadway Melody (1929) is a little light on musical numbers, but it features delightful period slang, eye-catching costumes, thought-provoking romance, and an eventually riveting performance by Bessie Love. It’s worth a look.