The First Hollywood Musicals: A Critical Filmography of 171 Features, 1927 through 1932

by Edwin M. Bradley

As Hollywood entered the sound era, it was rightly determined that the same public fascinated by the novelty of the talkie would be dazzled by the spectacle of a song and dance film. In 1929 and 1930, film musicals became the industry's most lucrative genre--until the greedy studios almost killed the genre by glutting the market with too many films that looked and sounded like clones of each other. From the classy movies such as Sunnyside Up and Hallelujah! to failures such as The Lottery Bride and Howdy Broadway, this filmography details 171 early Hollywood musicals. Arranged by subgenre (backstagers, operettas, college films, and stage-derived musical comedies), the entries include studio, release date, cast and credits, running time, a complete song list, any recordings spawned by the film, Academy Award nominations and winners, and availability on video or laserdisc. These data are followed by a plot synopsis, including analysis of the film's place in the genre's history. Includes over 90 photographs.

400 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1996

Reviews

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though my copy is only about 10 years old it is like a
bible to me - I refer to it so often, it is now held together
with a couple of big elastic bands. An extraordinary 171 musicals
were made between 1927 and 1932 - Edwin Bradley has researched
every one, given detailed cast lists, a song list with who sang
what and who wrote which and then a critical analysis and
proved he had tracked down even the most obscure. Like "Howdy
Broadway" (1929) at 48 minutes and distributed by Ray-art, it was made
to promote Tommy Christian and his Collegians. Cheaply made and
with 5 or 6 songs, only the last 10 minutes took place in New
York - it was essentially a college movie but unfortunately
Christian proved an amateur actor!! "Spring is Here" (1930) had
Bradley mystified. With a score by Rogers and Hart and bright
young hopefuls like Bernice Claire, Alexander Grey and Inez
Courtney, it seemed to disappear and didn't even have a New York
opening. When he finally tracked it down the answer was clear, it
was very lightweight about the idle rich and their giddy offspring
- still it does feature the standard "With a Song in My Heart".
No plot was too contrived for an old musical - a circus girl who
marries her sweetheart's best buddy so she won't be deported (that's
Marilyn Miller in "Sunny" (1930), still she does get to sing "Who"!!)
Two buddies who impersonate big city financiers while escaping
the law for catching under sized fish!! ("Top Speed" (1930) and a
college professor's mousey daughter (Joan Bennett no less) vamps up and manages to engage herself to an entire football team - all in an effort to save her dad's school from closing ("Maybe It's Love" (1930).
From the excellent - "The Dance of Life" (1929)- Barbara Stanwyck's
non appearance gave Paramount contract player Nancy Carroll a
chance to shine and she became a star, "Whoopee"(1930) - Eddie Cantor
refused to sign unless they imported the stage choreographer
Busby Berkeley to weave his magic on the movie as well, "Sunnyside
Up" (1929) - Janet Gaynor sang "Sunnyside Up" and "I'm a Dreamer"
in such a little girl voiced but somehow made she makes you believe in her. To the embarrassing - "Golden Dawn" (1930). Bradley thinks it was
films like this that helped kill off the early musical cycle. "Golden
Dawn" was about a native woman idolized for her golden hair - it
was even mocked and jeered on it's release!! The two leads (Vivienne
Segal and Walter Woolf King) were finished in movies. Segal, who
went on to be "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" by Broadway's
"Pal Joey", just had the misfortune to peak when the first musical
cycle was dying. King brought a breach of contract suit against
Warners that was apparently settled before he was asked to sing in
court (to prove his voice was not as bad as Warners has hinted).
Bradley has divided the book into chapters such as "No Business
Like Show Business" showing backstage musicals like "Pointed
Heels"(1929) which proved Helen Kane was better as a support player.
"Glorifying the American Girl"(1929) - Ziegfeld wanted to show Hollywood how to make a first class musical but was left with egg on his face. "Hail to the Victors" about the birth of the college musical - "Sweetie" (1929) the best, "Sunny Skies" (1930) the worst. To say nothing of the All Star revues - every studio put one out starting with MGM and it's "Hollywood Revue of 1929" - over two hours of stars being dragged out to sing and dance in skits that looked as
though they had had to choreograph them themselves (ie Joan Crawford).
By the next year when "Paramount on Parade" and "King of Jazz"
showed how stylish and entertaining they could be the public were
staying away.
You start to realise what really killed off the early musicals (aside
from a glut on the market (171 in 4 years!!), it was trite plots,
people singing at the drop of a hat and, of course, weak forgettable
songs. When studios brought the rights to Broadway shows it was often
cheaper to junk the scores and bring in their house composers to
write standardized forgettable ditties of the "moon, june, spoon"
variety. "Fifty Million Frenchmen" was one of the successes of the
1929 season with a scintillating Cole Porter score (including
"Let's Do It") - the studio filmed it as a comedy, junking all the
songs and it flopped.
A film I liked very much, "Kiss Me Again" (1930) showed an operetta
could work. All the songs were retained with Bernice Claire glowing
as "Mademoiselle Fifi", singing the beautiful title song and the
stirring "Mascot of the Troops" and the sensuous dancing of the
Sisters G in the "Tropicana" ballet and it was only 70 minutes long.
But by the time it was released (it had been made in March 1930)
in early 1931, the writing was on the wall, people were staying away
from any film vaguely resembling a musical and Claire, whose voice
equalled Jeanette Macdonald's, was already back on the stage.