Ethan Mordden - When Broadway went to Hollywood

Ethan Mordden

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Ethan Mordden 2016

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mordden, Ethan Title: When Broadway went to Hollywood / Ethan Mordden.

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016012583| ISBN 9780199395408 (alk. paper) | ISBN 9780199395422 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Motion picture musicUnited StatesHistory and criticism. | Musical filmsUnited StatesHistory and criticism.

Classification: LCC ML2075 .M652 2016 | DDC 791.43/6dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016012583

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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

To John Cronwell

To my friendly neighborhood agents Joe Spieler and Kent Wolf; to Ron Mandelbaum at Photofest; to Clint Bocock; to Ken Mandelbaum; to Matthew Kennedy; and to my fine editor at Oxford, Norman Hirschy.

When Broadway Went to Hollywood

Rose-Marie without Indian Love Call. This (now lost) first of three films drawn from the famous stage operetta of 1924 was a silent (1928). An operetta without its vocals is like France without champagne. But The Jazz Singer, released four months earlier, had only just introduced singing to Hollywood. Within a year, the studios would be producing plenty of all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing musicals, the utmost in sound films, many written fresh for the screen by Broadway masters. Above, left to right, Mountie Sgt. House Peters, heroine Joan Crawford, and innocent murder suspect James Murray.

Above, another lost film: Guinn Williams and the real-life Funny Girl, Fanny Brice, in a part-talkie, My Man (1928). A silent containing song spots for the star, in the Jazz Singer manner, this film was a traditional weepie with a very untraditional heroine, a New York favorite but too special for the national taste. It is as if Broadway and Hollywood were two different countries, with divisive sets of language, currency, mores. At times, they engage in trade. More often, however, they get into disputes, especially over how special the stars and songs of a musical can be. A smash comic and singerthe Parisian Mistinguett introduced the song My Man, but Brice made it her ownBrice never caught on in film. Ironically, after her death, Hollywood was finally ready for her as played by Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl.

Above, The Wedding of the Painted Doll, in the first full-scale movie musical, The Broadway Melody. Note that, from the start, Hollywood needed New York as an authenticity enabler in its backstagersits the Broadway melody, because, obviously, there wasnt any Hollywood melody to speak of yet. Further, in another usage of the stage, the chorus above is all-female, even Buster Brown (at far left) and the bridegroom and preacher (at center). Women in drag had been a routine feature of the stage musical since the days of early burlesque, in the 1870s. Nevertheless, MGM commissioned The Broadway Melodys songs from Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed, not New Yorkers but California residents.

Two adaptations from Broadway: above, The Cocoanuts (note Zeppo and Groucho Marx and, at far right, Margaret Dumont). Below, Top Speed, with Laura Lee and Joe E. Brown.

Both The Cocoanuts and Top Speed came out in 1930, when a musical-weary public began a boycott of the form. To survive, The Cocoanuts dropped almost all of its score and Top Speed used just a few songsnew ones, by California writers. Then, in 1933, it was Everybody onstage for the garlands number! as 42nd Street, above, brought the musical back into favoragain, with a score by a neighborhood team, Harry Warren and Al Dubin. Look for Dick Powell (at far left), director Warner Baxter (at center, back to us), and star Bebe Daniels (at right). Sharp eyes will pick out Ginger Rogers (seventh from left, sitting with the man in the dark sweater) as pretentious Anytime Annie, complete with monocle.

Each studio had a first-rate home songwriting team, like Brown and Freed or Dubin and Warren. Yet Hollywood couldnt get along without the big Broadway names, and by the mid-1930s they were dominant, as here with Irving Berlins Follow the Fleet (1936), starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Above, the Second Couple, Harriet Hilliard and Randolph Scott. Hilliard was a band singer (and, later, the better half of televisions The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet). Scott, however, neither sang nor danced. He just hunked. Hollywood created this breakaway from the Broadway model, wherein the romantic leading man sang as a rule. In the movie musical, however, not only Scott but Tyrone Power, William Holden, and many others could play a sweetheart without sharing in the music.

Cole Porters best original Hollywood score was for