The Hollywood Musical - Part 2: "The Broadway Melody"

An elaborate and innovative 1929 musical film which included one of the few sequences in two strip Technicolor (red and green to obtain fleshtones). It set off a rash of musical films, almost fifty of them in 1929 alone. The progenitor of the backstage plot line, it won the Oscar for the year and was reused in 1940 for Metro's "Two Girls on Broadway," only the setting was a glitzy nightclub instead of the vaudville stage.

"On With the Show" was released in May, 1929 and was a talkie entirely shot in two strip Technicolor, followed by "The Hollywood Revue of 1929,"
"Gold Diggers of Broadway," "Sunny Side Up" (with Janet Gaynor), "Rio Rita" (with a brief appearance of Abbott & Costello!), "Monte Carlo" (which paired Jeanette MacDonald with the English actor Jack Buchanan who 23 years later appeared in "The Bandwagon" as the kooky producer), and wrapped up 1932-33 with "The Big Broadcast" (Bing Crosby, George Burns and Gracie Allen) and "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum" (a Rodgers and Hart musical, yet!) Al Jolson was again on screen in "Hallelujah" with Frank Morgan (the Wizard of Oz), and the two song writers themselves. The plot dealt with social issues of the Great Depression, the plight of homless men forced to live in New York's Central Park. Ironically, these scenes were shot at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades. "You Are Too Beautiful" was one of the standards that survived.