Here are my ratings by studio for the 170 musicals watched, released 1927-37:
(3) 566 Columbia
(4) 6669 Universal
(6) 666677 Goldwyn
(7) 5566667 Gaumont
(8) 55566667 Republic
(13) 555666777789A RKO
(22) 4555666666666667777778 Fox
(24) 455566666666777777788888 MGM
(25) 5556666666666667777778888 Warner
(35) 55566666666666666666666667777777789 Paramount
(23) 44445555566666666777788 Indie/Other
ratings 8-10 by studio:
- Universal: 9 Show Boat (Paul Robeson, Irene Dunne)
- RKO: 8, 9, 10 Fred & Ginger (Carefree, Swing Time, Top Hat)
- Fox: 8 Bill Robinson with Shirley Temple
- MGM 8's: 2 Marx Brothers, 2 Jeanette MacDonald, 1 visual spectacle (The Great Ziegfeld)
- Warner 8's: 4 early Busby Berkeley ('33 & '34)
- Paramount: 9=Duck Soup (Marx Brothers), 8=Love Me Tonight (Mamoulian, Chevalier, MacDonald)
- Indie/Other 8's: Jericho (Robeson, British), Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (Jolson)
See the aforementioned analysis by Ratings for more details on titles, and for URLs to the posts discussing each title.
Why does Paramount have so many more titles than Warner, the pioneer of the talkies? Part of it is their dvd marketing: Paramount released a lot of collection packages. With Warner, almost all are individual title purchases, although they did issue a Busby Berkeley box set.
Some of it is the big stable of stars Paramount signed who all sing or play instruments: Bing Crosby, Mae West, Jeanette MacDonald (later she signed with MGM), director Ernst Lubitsch, the Marx Brothers (also transferred to MGM), Ethel Merman, Jack Benny, Maurice Chevalier.
Warner musicals almost all star Al Jolson, Dick Powell and/or Ruby Keeler, and many have Busby Berkeley either dance directing or overall directing.
MGM meanders from a dreadful beginning, until they secure Eleanor Powell as their dance anchor, and Jeanette MacDonald as their singing anchor. Marx Brothers live here now, but their forthcoming films will not rise to the level of the 2 in this list.
RKO's 13 films are dominated by 7 Astaire & Rogers musicals. I don't see a pattern in the remaining films.
Gaumont's entries here are all Jessie Matthews musicals, and I think I was drawn to her because she had done an antecedent to Victor/Victoria ('82).
Fox has 2 stars dominating my collection: Shirley Temple and Alice Faye. I purchased ST because of her frequent pairings with Bill Robinson, and those were cheaper (or only available) in box sets. Alice Faye I deliberately collected, even pursuing bootleg titles because so few had been officially released 7-10 years ago. I don't remember what first attracted me to her films; my Amazon order history tells me I bought some individual titles before the box sets. My 2 earliest ratings of her films were recorded on a single day, 2 Jan 06, when I rated 150 films; that smacks of transferring ratings from elsewhere, perhaps a first wave of Netflix titles. Both of them also starred Tyrone Power.
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Also of interest: the small number of IMDb users who have rated these films.
It's common wisdom that IMDb users are primarily young males, so not a lot of interest in this genre/timeframe. Here are the numbers:
- 123 of 170 titles have fewer than 1000 votes.
- 35 have fewer than 100.
- Only 6 films have more than 10,000 votes, and 5 of those are Marx Brothers; the 6th is Top Hat ('35) with 14,500+.
- Eliminating the 34 films with more than 1500 votes (just so the scale makes the tiny counts visible), here's how the # votes look by release date (each bar is a title):
