Best Pictures #23: 1928-29 Academy Awards, My Pick for Outstanding Picture

by A.J.

Best Pictures #23: 1928-29 Academy Awards
My Pick for Outstanding Picture

No film won more than one award at the 2^nd Academy Awards for films released between August 1^st 1928 and July 31^st 1929. The ceremony was held on April 3^rd, 1930. It was broadcast over the radio and every Academy Awards ceremony to follow would be broadcast on either radio or television. Like the rest of the film industry, it seems that the Academy didn’t quite know what to do about talking pictures. According to 85 Years of Oscar by Robert Osborne by Robert Osborne, the official history of the Academy Awards, there was serious debate about having separate categories for sound and silent movies. Ultimately there would not be separate categories and no nominations were publicly announced. The films and persons listed as nominees for the 2^nd Academy Awards have been determined by historians using in house records.

It is clear that the Academy still acknowledged the quality work being done in silent films but they overwhelmingly favored the talkies with nominations and wins. Many theaters at this time were still only equipped to show silent films, so there was still a demand for silent movies. Many films at this time, The Broadway Melody included, had a silent version made simultaneously as the sound version.  Movie posters advertised “100% ALL TALKING” and “HEAR WHAT YOU SEE!” to distinguish them from silent movies with some bits of sound added in like The Patriot and the previous year’s Unique and Artistic Picture winner, Sunrise. That demand however would drastically wane and by the time of the 3^rd Academy Awards silent movies would be a thing of the past.

The language of cinema would now contain an audio element, but this new tool would take time to master. The technical sophistication achieved by cinema thus far would be set back dramatically. Noisy cameras had to be housed in giant immobile metal boxes so their sound wouldn’t be recorded by the microphones. Those microphones had to be hidden in the set and actors could not be too far away from that area of the set. Cinema would bounce back and continue to grow and mature thematically and technically but not for a few years. It would be many years before the camera once again had the freedom of movement as it did during the silent era. Just a year before the 2^nd Academy Awards there was no such thing as the “silent era,” there was only “the movies.” Now, a distinct new era of cinema had begun.

My Pick for Outstanding Picture 1928-29: The Broadway Melody

For the 2nd Academy Awards there was only one Best Picture category, still called Outstanding Picture. The selection board of judges, still made up of only 5 people, chose the MGM musical The Broadway Melody for Outstanding Picture, and I once again agree with the Academy. The musical is a type of movie that could not exist before the advent of sound. Though the musical had by this time achieved a maturity on stage, it would take years to mature on screen. The Broadway Melody is a good start for the genre. I can’t give a full and complete judgement of the nominees since The Patriot is sadly lost, but of the films I was able to see the most entertaining and enjoyable was The Broadway Melody, though it is an uneven film.

The Broadway Melody is not without its share of flaws, including a less than likable leading male character, flimsy character motivations, and a mostly stationary camera. It feels a bit unfair to criticize the immobile camera of early sound films given the technical limitations of sound recording, but it is difficult not to compare the cinematography of these early sound movies to the limitless movement of camera in the silent movies from the previous year. That is still only a minor complaint for me. I’d rather watch a still camera shot with entertaining content than visually interesting but meaningless camerawork. This movie moved along at a steady pace since scenes did not drag on just for the sake of hearing the actors speak as they did with In Old Arizona. The Broadway Melody is filled with great songs, written by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed, that have since become classics. However, my favorite thing about The Broadway Melody is that with Hank, played wonderfully well by Bessie Love, it has the most competent, interesting, and quasi-independent female character I’ve seen in any early Best Picture nominee thus far.

While watching The Broadway Melody, you are aware that you are watching the root of the movie musical. It has a simple story, but this movie is really about the musical numbers. If its plot and set pieces seem clichéd now, it is only because they have been repeated, reworked, and improved in musical after musical. I would recommend ignoring the unfairly low score on RottenTomatoes.com and seeking this film out, especially if you are a fan of musicals.

Best Pictures #22: 1928-29 (2nd) Academy Awards Outstanding Picture Winner, The Broadway Melody (1929)

by A.J.

Best Pictures #22: 1928-29 (2^nd) Academy Awards Outstanding Picture Winner

The Broadway Melody (1929)

In the first scene of The Broadway Melody, also known as The Broadway Melody of 1929 (there would be two sequels), there is a bevy of sounds for the ears: musicians tuning up various instruments, singers practicing, chatter here and there. We are in a music publishing office in New York City and eventually the din dies down so a young songwriter can sing his new song, “The Broadway Melody.” This isn’t just a talkie, it is a musical, and there will be a lot of the audience to hear. The Broadway Melody was the first musical and first sound picture to win Best Picture (then called Outstanding Picture). It is also the first movie to win only Best Picture. Reviews at the time were generally favorable, but reviews by modern critics and online reviewers are not as positive. As of 2016, The Broadway Melody is the lowest rated Best Picture winner on the website RottenTomatoes.com with an average score of 35%. I think that rating is a bit unfair since modern viewers can’t help but measure this movie by the decades of musicals that have been made since. While The Broadway Melody is undeniably dated, it is still not without some entertainment value.

The story is pretty basic for a backstage musical—a musical about making a musical—and will no doubt seem familiar to fans of the genre. Eddie Kearns (Charles King) has written a song, “The Broadway Melody,” for big shot producer Francis Zanfield’s new review and he wants to get the Mahoney sisters cast in the production. He’s dating one sister, Hank, but is in love with the other, Queenie, who is dating rival producer Jock Warriner (a play on the name of the Warner Bros. boss Jack Warner, just as Francis Zenfield is a reference to real life producer Florenz Ziegfeld). As you might imagine, the backstage lives of Eddie, Hank, and Queenie become complicated. Queenie, played by Anita Page, is chosen to be the star of the show, but her dancing consists of little more than just slightly moving her body around while standing in place on stage. Despite this, everyone thinks Queenie is great and it seems that the movie wants us to feel the same.

The story is thin but there is enough of it to fill out the film’s runtime so no one scene feels too stretched. Bessie Love plays Hank, the older and more business minded sister, and gives what is easily the best acting performance of the movie. Love was under consideration for the Best Actress award that year. The other acting performances were not especially noteworthy but are good enough to keep the movie entertaining. The characters themselves feel basic and thin. Queenie’s main character trait is being beautiful and desirable. Her other trait is that she doesn’t want to be thought of as a child anymore by her sister. Eddie, like every other man in the movie, seems to be in love with Queenie just because of her looks and, overall, does not come across as a likable character. The girls’ Uncle Joe is a stock comic relief character with a stutter like Porky Pig. Hank is by far The Broadway Melody’s most interesting character since her motivations give Bessie Love more to work with allowing her to give Hank some sense of personality and depth.

The Broadway Melody has many scenes and plot points that would become tropes and clichés in backstage musicals to follow. There are several scenes rehearsal scenes, most of which are comedic. The Mahoney sisters perform their number for Zanfeild on their first day on stage and, through no fault of their own, many, many things go comically wrong. We see chorus girls exchange quips with the choreographer. A stagehand literally throws the spotlight at an actor who asks for more light. The sister act reaches a breaking point, and Mr. Warriner’s intentions toward Queenie become more and more lascivious. What dates the film more than its checklist of musical plot points, is its normal for the time but now out dated values. The female characters in this movie all face the same dilemma: career or marriage, not both.

The show being produced in The Broadway Melody is a revue so there are several different themed songs, sets, and costumes. At times his movie feels like a play since most of the action takes place in a series of rooms with people entering and exiting. The camera moves very little, a problem with all early sound pictures, but the costumes and songs keep the static shots from being dull. There are enough peculiarities in The Broadway Melody to make it a curio for musical fans and film buffs in general. The song “Broadway Melody” is sung four times. The song “You Were Meant for Me” is sung by Eddie to Queenie. He says he wrote it for her, his girlfriend’s sister, making that song’s film debut unfortunately creepy. Most curious of all is the use of title cards in place of exterior establishing shots. This is no doubt a holdover from silent movies. This was MGM’s first musical, and for a studio that would become synonymous with the genre, it was a good start. If you decided to check out The Broadway Melody, I recommend watching the DVD, readily available, which includes in the special features Dogway Melody, a loose remake short of The Broadway Melody but with dogs. It is quite entertaining to say the least.

Nominee: MGM

Producer: Irving Thalberg, Lawrence Weingarten, Harry Rapf

Director: Harry Beaumont

Screenplay: Story by Edmund Goulding, Dialogue by Norman Houston and James Gleason, Continuity by Sarah Y. Mason

Cast: Charles King, Anita Page, Bessie Love

Release Date: February 1^st, 1929

Total Nominations: 3, including Outstanding Picture

Win(s): Outstanding Picture

Other Nominations: Actress-Bessie Love, Director-Harry Beaumont

Best Pictures #20: 1928-29 Academy Awards Outstanding Picture Nominee, The Hollywood Revue (1929)

by A.J.

Best Pictures #20: 1928-29 Academy Awards Outstanding Picture Nominee

The Hollywood Revue (1929)

I’m not sure how one goes about reviewing a revue… The numbers are entertaining and with Jack Benny as one of the masters of ceremonies, Conrad Nagel being the other, it is hard to go wrong. The Hollywood Revue was put together by MGM to showcase its major stars making their talkie debut with this collection of comedy skits and musical numbers. The cast includes, Jack Benny, Conrad Nagel, Charles King, Anita Page, Bessie Love, Joan Crawford, Marion Davies, William Haines, Lionel Barrymore, Norma Shearer, John Gilbert, Marie Dressler, Laurel & Hardy ,and more. However, MGM’s biggest star, Greta Garbo, is noticeably absent from the star studded cast because she decided that Anna Christie would be her speaking debut.

The stars of MGM’s other big musical from 1929, The Broadway Melody, all make an appearance in The Hollywood Revue. Charles King sings and banters with Conrad Nagel, who then serenades Anita Page, King’s love interest in The Broadway Melody, with “You Were Meant for Me,” a droll reference to a scene from that musical. Bessie Love, the other co-star of The Broadway Melody, takes part in a special effects bit with Jack Benny. She appears in miniature size and sets up punchlines for Jack Benny who holds her in the palm of his hand. When he sets her down on stage she grows to normal size and performs a delightful number called “I Never Knew I Could Do a Thing Like That.” Bessie Love is also quite delightful herself in her banter with Benny and musical performance. She sings but doesn’t dance so much as she is literally tossed around by the male chorus line. It’s fun to watch, especially when they flip her completely over from one chorus line to the next, but I can’t imagine how disorienting that all must have felt for her.

The Hollywood Revue is the film debut of Jack Benny who, as you might imagine, is very entertaining and funny as the master of ceremonies. There’s a running gag of him being slapped by women he thinks he "recognizes." One of the several humorous interludes he has is with actor William Haines in which Haines tears a piece of Benny’s suit for every city where he has seen Benny on the stage. The next time we see Benny he is wearing a suit of armor. This is one of a few skits in which stage and screen actors take playful jibes at each other and have fun with the rivalry between stage and screen actors. What an actor could do on stage versus on screen had a clear and distinct delineation during the silent era but with the advent of sound that line was gone. Jack Benny’s one-liners and violin could now be heard on film the same way they could only previously have been experienced by attending a stage performance.

The screen could now be filled with elaborate musical numbers like “Tommy Atkins on Parade” performed by Marion Davies. A full marching band and dancers take up the entire screen. Davies does a tap number and dances with a line of men dressed like palace guards. Many people today, myself included, think of Marion Davies primarily as the mistress of publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst, the inspiration for Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane. This was the first time I had seen any of Davies’ work and I’m glad to put a real face and voice to her name. Laurel and Hardy showcase their comedy in a skit in which they play inept magicians. Buster Keaton has a comical dance number, but he does not sing or speak. In the final musical number in which every cast member gathers on stage to sing “Singin’ in the Rain,” Buster Keaton is the only one not singing.

The Hollywood Revue might be most known, by those that know it at all, for the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene with John Gilbert and Norma Shearer. This sequence is thought by some to be the catalyst for the decline of Gilbert’s career after audiences heard his high pitched voice. Further rumors say that this sequence was the inspiration for the plot of the 1952 Gene Kelly musical, Singin’ in the Rain. It is thought that audiences felt Gilbert's voice did not match the onscreen persona he had cultivated in the silent era. There are other likelihoods for the decline of Gilbert’s career that have nothing to do with his voice, but this is the narrative that has persisted. The sequence itself is one of the more enjoyable ones in The Hollywood Revue. Gilbert and Shearer play themselves playing Romeo and Juliet and are being directed by Lionel Barrymore, also playing himself. Barrymore tells them he received studio notes to make the dialogue snappier and modern. Their performance of the updated balcony scene loaded with peppy slang of the era is pretty amusing. As for Gilbert’s voice, though he is certainly not a baritone, the phrase “high pitched” does not accurately describe his voice either. I think he sounds very contemporary and casual, and maybe that is not the tone of voice you would expect to hear from someone in a period costume. This scene is one of two that was shot in technicolor which I’m sure impressed audiences of the day, however, on the DVD, available through Warner Archive, it is the only scene in technicolor.

The Hollywood Revue is certainly a curio of the early sound era. It does a good job of giving the viewer the feeling that they are an audience member for a stage show. The camera is mostly stationary. There are some close ups and medium shots and an occasional pan, but the static shots of the actors and performances actually works for this particular movie. The camera is your POV from your seat in the theater watching this impressive all-star revue. The Hollywood Revue is pretty entertaining though it runs a bit long for a film of its era, nearly a full two hours. There isn’t much to The Hollywood Revue, but that is not necessarily something negative for this particular musical movie. It is certainly an interesting viewing experience for a modern moviegoer.

Nominee: MGM

Producer: Irving Thalberg, Harry Rapf

Director: Charles Reisner

Screenplay: Al Boasberg and Robert E. Hopkins

Cast: Conrad Nagel, Jack Benny

Release Date: June 20^th, 1929

Total Nominations: 1, including Outstanding Picture
Win(s): N/A