(100 mins.) Released 1929-02-01
Director: Harry Beaumont
Stars: Bessie Love, Anita Page, Charles King, The Angeles Twins
drama, musical, romance
originally posted 18 Sep 2017 14:31
Awful. Won the Academy Award for best picture (only the second year of the awards). Although IMDb says there were no official nominees announced, of the 5 movies they post as nominees, I've seen 3, and all of them earned a "P-U" rating. Is it significant the Louis Mayer founded the Academy?
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All the sound is synced here. I don't own any movies that would transition from 1927 to here (hear!).
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The 3 billed "stars" are not known to me for subsequent outings. This was Charles King's second film, and he was done in 1932. Anita Page has 30 credits from 1925 to 1936, but I don't know her from any of them. Bessie Love has 115 credits from 1915 to 1983, with lots of time off in the 30's and 40's. Again, I know nothing about her work. I'm unimpressed with all of them here. They really reinforce my observation that the "stars" of early talkies rarely had longevity at the top of the bill.
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The plot is typically weak, and the musical numbers are ALL skip-able. While the sisters (Anita and Bessie) struggle to sustain work, Anita tries desperately to keep Bessie away from the attentions of a stage-door Johnie who provides plenty of jewelry to lure her to his clutches. Meanwhile, singer/songwriter Charles falls for Bessie despite being the long-time boyfriend of Anita, which helps to drive Bessie into Johnie's arms. But the bottom line is that I don't care about any of them.
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We have an effeminate costume designer (hey kids, we're puttin' on a show - on Broadway), a toe-dancer who taps on point, and an agent who stutters more than Porky Pig. The tableau is a nice mimic of Ziegfeld, but plenty of other movies do it better.
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This was filmed with color sequences, but this studio release is only b/w.
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The Freed/Brown songs are nice, but done better, of course, in Singin' in the Rain (1952).
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The best part of the disc is the extra feature The Dogway Melody (1930), a live-action short satirizing this movie with dogs in costume on 2 legs hopping out the plot in 17 minutes - and it's still too long.
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MGM, dir. Beaumont; 5
