#The Broadway Melody

[silentagecinema]

oh to cry is to feel

[citizenscreen]

Harry Beaumont’s THE BROADWAY MELODY premiered in Los Angeles 95 years ago today (1929). This was MGM's first all-talking picture, and the first sound film to win the Best Picture Oscar. #OnThisDay

Stars: Charles King, Anita Page, Bessie Love

[thebestestwinner]

The top two vote-getters will move on to the next round!

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[crowdvscritic]

crowd vs. critic single take // THE LOST WEEKEND (1945)

Photo Credits: IMDb.com

What’s one weekend away? For an alcoholic, torture.

Struggling writer Don (Ray Milland) is dreading a trip with his brother Wick (Phillip Terry), who monitors what he imbibes. He keeps a covert stash in the crannies of their New York City apartment, but it won’t be easy to sneak it out of town alongside his brother and his girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman). Part belligerence and part willful ignorance convinces him perhaps it’s best not to go at all. A weekend spent only with himself—and a few fellow bar patrons—would be better.

CROWD // One of the reasons I love movies is they’re the closest to time travel we’ll ever get. Like Harry Potter dunking his head into the Pensieve, a screen always reveals more than the filmmakers intended because it's a literal portal into the past. The Lost Weekend’s portrayal of alcoholism feels melodramatic today, borderline heavy-handed, but in 1945, The New York Daily News called it "the most daring film that ever came out of Hollywood.” Turner Classic Movies notes it had a special relevance in a year when soldiers were returning from a traumatizing war, and it was “the first to treat drinking seriously and not play it for laughs. Gone were the inebriated Nick and Nora Charles of The Thin Man movies.” Just a few years later in 1949, Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell died when she was was hit by a drunk driver. When Malcolm Gladwell explored it on his podcast Revisionist History, he observed, “The fact that his drinking might have been the reason he was speeding somehow didn't seem to occur to many people... but in the mentality of the time, the driver was irrelevant. He was as unlucky as the victim." All that to say, how we feel about alcoholism has changed in the last eight decades. 

Though the context feels foreign today, the characters do not. If you’ve ever known someone struggling with crippling mental health issues, watching Helen and Wick waffle between support for Don and total exasperation will feel too familiar. You’ll also recognize the truth in Don’s statement that there are two versions of himself—the one who would love to be a writer, and the one who believes he’s a failure. One version wants to be the man Helen deserves and a responsible brother who pays the rent, but the other cons and manipulates them, even swiping the maid’s paycheck for his habit. (Writer/director Billy Wilder would create another unstable, manipulative character in Sunset Blvd., but Norma Desmond would add a sinister edge.) Even if The Lost Weekend doesn’t feel congruent with modern depictions of substance abuse, it’s still moving because its heart is empathetic to those struggling as well as their friends and family. 

POPCORN POTENTIAL: 7/10

CRITIC // That success is largely thanks to the cast. In another film, Don could have been a villain or comic relief—here is treated with as much care as Milland took in preparing for the role. His commitment is an early example of the strategy many Best Actor hopefuls still take today, volunteering a physical transformation to become this character. In addition to changing his diet to lose weight, he took the initiative to stay in Bellevue Hospital for a time (where some of the film was shot, though Bellevue later regretted it) to experience their treatment of alcoholics. Though he was unsuccessful at achieving drunkenness, he was successfully mistaken as public day drinker by acquaintances who were gracious enough to mention it to the press. Without Milland, Matthew McConaughey might have still lost weight for Dallas Buyers Club, Brendan Fraser might still have gained weight for The Whale, and Leonardo DiCaprio might still have gone through the tortures of The Revenant, but perhaps Milland's win is the source code for actors going to extremes to show commitment to their craft. 

In addition to nominations for editing and cinematography, Billy Wilder won his first Oscars for writing and directing The Lost Weekend. (He’d already lost five times, including for Ninotchka and Double Indemnity, and he’d win four more for Sunset Blvd. and The Apartment. Yeesh, what a career!) A Best Score nod brought to the tally to 7 total nominations, though that’s less impressive when you know the Academy recognized 47 nominees in 3 different music categories for the year of 1945. (The following year each category was narrowed down to the traditional five.) 

One more indicator of the Ghost of Oscars Yet to Come: The Lost Weekend is the first social issues drama to win Best Picture. Previous winners danced around what is now a staple during Awards Season, but Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Grand Hotel were really slice-of-life character dramas, The Broadway Melody and Going My Way were really musicals, and It Happened One Night and You Can't Take It With You were really comedies, although all six of those titles were conscious of money, class, marriage, and religion. The Lost Weekend is the first winner about everyday people facing a present day challenge not set during war or a historical period. For the first time, the Academy affirmed the value of a "small" story with its highest honor, giving dignity to people and concerns that could be mistaken as unimportant.

ARTISTIC TASTE: 9/10

[ensalada-de-lengua-de-pajaritos]

[oscarupsets]

The match-up for the 2nd Academy Awards was between The Broadway Melody, a romantic musical, and In Old Arizona, a western.

We've transitioned out of the silent film era, and these first few talking films don't hold up as well to the test of time, sadly.

The Broadway Melody was praised for being the "first talking musical comedy" with a perfect mix of visual effects and emotions. It also brought in a significant amount of money for MGM with a relatively small budget. However, Pare Lorentz of Judge warned viewers that it lacked a unique story.

I could not find budget info for In Old Arizona, but Fox was known for producing low to mid-range budget films at the time, including 1st Academy Award winner Sunrise. It received great praise from Photoplay and Variety, especially for its sound. Variety briefly mentions that the dialog interferes with the action, but clearly that did not stop people from coming out in droves to see it.

Current reception for these two films is, well, poor. Both films were groundbreaking for the time - The Broadway Melody for including singing and dancing, and In Old Arizona for its outdoor filming - but that's about it. Critics and the general audience describe The Broadway Melody's plot as a poor attempt at pulling together the musical numbers. Similarly, they find it difficult to get through In Old Arizona's poor plot and stereotyping.

There were 7 categories awarded in the 2nd Oscars ceremony, still with no official nominees. In the end, 7 films all received one Oscar each, the only time that has occurred. So far, the two upsets have received nominations for both Directing and Writing (screenplay), while the winners have not. These two are often used as current predictors. Both upsets have also beat the winner in total overall nominations.

I found The Broadway Melody difficult to get through, even at only 100 minutes long. The actual story line was muddled, and it relied too heavily on musical numbers. But hey, it was the first movie to do so!

In Old Arizona was also quite basic. It lasted 95 minutes but the entire plot was easily summed up by IMDb into one line. The dialog was also incredibly difficult to hear due to poor sound mixing and not speaking TOWARDS the camera! Oh well.

Not surprisingly, neither film took home the Photoplay Award at the time. Only In Old Arizona remains in the Academy Film Archive.

[hellothereimaloser]

Cherry, Marcia and Beverly!!! The iconic trio 💞

More musical fanart cause it deserves the best 😭💞

[sparklingcid3r]

the outsiders cast needs to have a buzzfeed interview with puppies, idc how but it needs to happen

[clarulitas]

FRED ASTAIRE Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940) dir. Norman Taurog

[golden-rolling-hills]

here’s a chaotic list of random notes i took last night on the way home from the show

- brody makes A LOT of eye contact

- he pointed at me and smiled and giggled a bit when i was mouthing the words to him while he was sitting next to me

- victor loves his middle finger, he was flipping everyone off for most of the time he was on stage in tulsa 67

- brent is so funny to watch on the side of ggah

- he kept making snarky little remarks to himself

- he specifically said “sodas gotta watch his mouth” really loudly after sodas verse

- he fixed dans necklace at one point for him 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

- dan was soooo touchy with brent and brody tonight

- the way brent threw himself into dans arms after titt made me sob

- also the way dan was holding brody on the ground after johnnys death

- i actually couldn’t breathe

- tilly screamed “get off of me” sooooo loudly at the start of the rumble

- brody kept adjusting his wig during act 2

- at the end of the rumble when it was blackout, dan stuck his hand off the stage and fist bumped one of the girls in the group next to me

- i thought rj was going to kick me in the face during the rumble, he came very very close a few times

- josh boone was robbed of that tony

- i was actually shaking and hyperventilating during little brother

- i kept looking at brody during scenes where he was just observing on the jungle gym and wasn’t actually apart of and he could definitely feel me watching him because he made DIRECT eye contact with me a few times 😳

- josh boone is SO funny during the drive in scene

- no one ate any of the food last night

- brody and emma were dancing during bows again 🥺🥺🥺

- melody and barton really are in their own little world during the drive in

- they whisper in each others ears a lot, bev and brill are soooo toxicly codependent couple coded

- brent confirmed at the stage door that he’s 6’3

- i had a conversation at the sd with victor about us being from the same state (one of my friends is from the same town as him and he went to college with my brothers girlfriend)

- i gave dan and melody the magnets i made

- dan is the absolute nicest person ive ever met in my life i swear he’s such a sweetheart.

- melody actually screamed when i gave her the magnets because she remembered the dan gary edit from when she reposted it to her story months ago and said it’s her favorite dan berry magnet yet 😭🤪😳

- brent was crying for like all of act 2 last night

[brodygrantdaily]

That’s Brody 👉 That’s Sky 👈

🎥 : Melody Rose

[citizenscreen]

Harry Beaumont’s THE BROADWAY MELODY hit theaters #Onthisday in 1929. This was MGM's first all-talking picture, and the first sound film to win the Best Picture Oscar.

[greaserdreams]

thank u jordan🙂‍↕️

[thereallattehottay]

guys melody shouldn’t have to post about this. RESPECT PEOPLES BOUNDRIES!!! i hate making these posts but melody is one of the sweetest humans in this world and she does not deserve this! please stop asking personal questions on lives otherwise we might not get them anymore.

melody rose you deserve the world! thank you for sharing the love that you do! <3

[offbrandhandymanny]

Is this Sky’s official Cherry debut?