Broadway Melody of 1938 is a 1937 musical film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and directed by Roy Del Ruth. The film is essentially a backstage musical revue, featuring high-budget sets and cinematography in the MGM musical tradition. The film stars Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor and features Buddy Ebsen, George Murphy, Judy Garland, Sophie Tucker, Raymond Walburn, Robert Benchley and Binnie Barnes.
The film is most notable for young Garland's performance of "You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want to Do It)", a tribute to Clark Gable which turned the teenage singer, who had been toiling in obscurity for a couple of years, into an overnight sensation, leading eventually to her being cast in The Wizard of Oz as Dorothy.
Young horse trainer Sally (Eleanor Powell) befriends Sonny (George Murphy) and Peter (Buddy Ebsen), who have been hired to look after a horse her family once owned. Concerned for the horse's well-being, she sneaks aboard a train taking the horse and its caretakers to New York City. En route she meets talent agent Steve Raleigh (Robert Taylor) who, impressed with her dancing and singing, sets her on the road to stardom and romance blossoms between the two. A subplot involves a boarding house for performers run by Sophie Tucker, who is trying to find a big break for young Judy Garland.
The Broadway Melody, also known as The Broadway Melody of 1929, is an American pre-Code musical film and the first sound film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. It was one of the first musicals to feature a Technicolor sequence, which sparked the trend of color being used in a flurry of musicals that would hit the screens in 1929–1930. Today the Technicolor sequence is presumed lost and only a black and white copy survives in the complete film. The film was the first musical released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and was Hollywood's first all-talking musical.
The Broadway Melody was written by Norman Houston and James Gleason from a story by Edmund Goulding, and directed by Harry Beaumont. Original music was written by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown, including the popular hit "You Were Meant For Me". The George M. Cohan classic "Give My Regards To Broadway" is used under the opening establishing shots of New York City, its film debut. Bessie Love was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.
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E last great march past. newsman stands limp as a whimper as audience and event are locked as one. bing crosby coos "you don't have to feel pain to sing the blues, you don't have to holla -
Don't feel a thing in your dollar collar." martin luther king cries "everybody sing!" and rings the grand old liberty bell. leary, weary of his prison cell, walks on heaven, talks
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Ill and clutches his lucky dollar bill.
Echoes of the broadway everglades,
With her mythical madonnas still walking in their shades:
Lenny bruce, declares a truce and plays his other hand.
Marshall mcluhan, casual viewin', head buried in the sand.
Sirens on the rooftops wailing, but there's no ship sailing.
Groucho, with his movies trailing, stands alone with his punchline
Failing.
Klu klux klan serve hot soul food and the band plays 'in the mood'
The cheerleader waves her cyanide wand, there's a smell of
Peach blossom and bitter almonde.
Caryl chessman sniffs the air and leads the parade, he knows
In a scent, you can bottle all you made.
There's howard hughes in blue suede shoes, smiling at the
Majorettes smoking winston cigarettes.
And as the song and dance begins, the children play at home
With needles; needles and pins.
Then the blackout.