The second film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture was a film called The Broadway Melody. It holds the distinction of being the first sound film to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Not bad for being MGM’s first feature-length film to have sound. It’s also the first all-talking musical feature. I guess at that time, it was easy to be a first.
It was a bit tedious at parts, and the acting wasn’t always great, but it was impressive to see how the sound stayed matched with the visual – even during the elaborate dance numbers.
A Broadway Melody is the story of Harriet and Queenie Mahoney, a vaudeville act, who come to Broadway, where their friend Eddie Kerns needs them for his number in one of Francis Zanfield’s shows. Eddie was in love with Harriet, but when he meets Queenie, he falls in love with her, but she is courted by Jock Warriner (yes, MGM meant for his name to sound like rival studio head Jack Warner), a member of the New Yorker high society. It takes a while for Queenie to recognize that she is nothing more than a toy for Jock, and it takes equally as long for Harriet to recognize that Eddie is in love with Queenie.
The movie ends pretty much how you would expect it to. Eddie and Queenie marry, while Harriet pursues her dream of performing on Broadway.
My friend Marci and I were not all that capitvated by the film (it was mildly more fun once we realized we weren’t hearing things and that Jock’s name was supposed to sound like Jack Warner’s), but in light of what the film accomplished for the time period, we respect it.
Would I recommend this film? Not really. But it is definitely a part of film history and if you want plan on doing the same project that I’m doing, it’s worth the viewing. Besides, it’s easy to rent from Blockbuster.com.
Tomorrow, we watch All Quiet on the Western Front. We’ll see how that goes, as none of us read (or liked, for those who did read it) the book.
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