Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 50 and 51: Making a Song and Dance Of It

As I'm trying desperately to get through the 1930s as I realise I'm way behind schedule I'm starting to group films together, the first four films are all musicals or related to musicals in a certain way.

First up another one starring frequent Maurice Chevalier contributor Jeanette MacDonald, who would later get her big break in San Francisco, here she plays the heroine but not exactly the title role in Naughty Marietta. MacDonald's character is in fact Princess Maria who, to escape a marriage to elderly statesman, swaps places with her uncle's servant Marietta and boards a boat bound for New Orleans. The boat is in fact full of women who are about to be wives to the men of New Orleans but en route the boat is captured by pirates before the pirates are challenged and defeated by a group of vigilantes lead by Nelson Eddy's Captain Warrington. To avoid being married off Maria/Marietta pretends to be a courtesan and is exiled and moved into a house looked over by Warrington. Soon Warrington and Marietta fall in love but things are complicated when her true identity is revealed. She is then taken back to her own palace and the wedding is to go ahead once again however Warrington dupes the nobility and is able to steal away with Maria. Naughty Marietta is an amiable enough film even though it does feel a bit dated in its portrayal of the sexes. Sure Maria is a pretty strong heroine in that she is able to fool most of the male characters, but at the same time she is defined by her relationships. Essentially the film is part screwball comedy part musical and the songs are always well performed if a little overly-theatrical at times, especially those involving the sailors and the pirates. Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald make a very believable couple, and have better chemistry than MacDonald ever had with Chevalier. But like with a lot of the musical entries this seems like an odd choice to be an Oscar contender, although it did win an award for its sound direction, it lost out on Best Picture to the far superior Mutiny on The Bounty.

One musical that didn't lose out on Best Picture was The Broadway Melody, which was in fact only the second film in history to win that accolade and the first sound film to do so. The story concerns The Mahoney Sisters Queenie and Harriet the latter of whom goes by Hank for most of the film. Hank also is accompanied by Eddie her romantic interest who soon falls for younger sister Queenie. Both sisters audition together but it is Queenie who the director is interested but she convinces him to take both of them. The rest of the film sees Eddie torn between his commitment to Hank and his burgeoning feelings for Queenie. Queenie meanwhile is courted by the well-off Jock who treats Queenie as just a plaything to pick up and use when he feels like it. Meanwhile during the show Hank feels that Queenie is holding her back and is jealous of the attention she is getting. Eventually Queenie and Eddie realise that they are in love and get married while Hank takes on one of the other dancers and tours The Mahoney Sisters act. For one of the very first talking pictures this was very interesting and was ultimately a combination of involving drama and traditional musical theatre. Some of the combinations feel a little jarring the transposition between some of the sisters more dramatic moments and the comedy lisping uncle doesn't really seem to make sense. But the Best Picture award certainly does with competition like The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and the patchy In Old Arizona, the all talking, all singing, all dancing Broadway Melody shed a light on the harsher elements of show-business.

As did one of the nominees for the Best Picture prize in 1934, that being 42nd Street. This film sees several different plot strands colliding. The first one involves Dorothy Brock, a star whose Sugar Daddy is financing a production of the show Pretty Lady, however Brock's real love is her old vaudeville partner Pat. The second story follows Julian Marsh, an extremely talented but harsh director whose manner has meant he has no friends, he is also dying and has lost a lot of money in the Wall Street Crash. The third and final strand looks at the fortunes of Peggy Sawyer a newcomer to Broadway who is cast in the show and after being teased initially by the other chorus girls soon becomes one of them. As the plot goes on Brock's Sugar Daddy learns of her infidelity and goes to confront her and she ends up spraining her ankle. Peggy eventually steps into the breach and one of the film's best sequences sees Peggy being trained by Marsh and later comforted by Dorothy. The last twenty minutes or so of the film is completely song and dance as three Busby Berkley numbers are played back to back among them the film's title track as well as Shuffle onto Buffalo and I'm Young and Healthy. The final scene sees Marsh leave the theatre with a smile on his face and slump outside on the pavement presumably to die. I have to say it took me a while to get into 42nd Street because of the many characters that we had to follow and some of the quick-talking banter, but once I did get into the action I really enjoyed it. This was mainly due to Warner Baxter's performance as Marsh, he really matured as an actor since his Oscar winning performance in In Old Arizona. Although here he, along with the rest of the cast, failed to get a single nomination and as well as Best Picture the film only received one other nomination, in Sound Recording, which is a big shame. I would certainly class 42nd Street as the Best Musical that I have watched to date. And I have to say as well there was a nice little supporting performance from Ginger Rogers which is different from anything I've seen her do with Fred Astaire.

Although to round things off we do have a film featuring Fred and Ginger although the topic matter is a little more racy in 1935 nominee The Gay Divorcee. In the film Fred bizarrely plays an American dancer who journeys to England with a friend where he briefly meets Ginger's character. She has come with her auntie to arrange a divorce from her boring husband. Her aunt brings her to see a sleazy lawyer who just happens to be Fred's friend. They arrange for Ginger to meet up with an Italian gigolo so it seems like she is having an affair and she will be able to get the divorce. However Ginger mistakes Fred for the Italian and ends up going up to her room with him. When the other characters realise the mistake they decide to keep Fred and Ginger locked in the room together and as always they fall in love and dance a bit. As with all their films, Fred and Ginger do have a special kind of chemistry. While this film might not be as famous as Top Hat it still has one iconic sequence which sees the couple dancing to Night and Day on a balcony. This film also has more elements of screwball comedy in it, although some of the comedy does fall flat. The film actually did do pretty well at that year's Oscar ceremony picking up an award for Original Song as well as several other nominations for its sound and score. However the coupling of Fred and Ginger in this particular film didn't match up to the coupling of Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in that year's winning effort It Happened One Night.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 42: One Disaster after Another

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 30: One More from Maurice

A third Maurice Chevalier film and the earliest one to feature in the Best Picture category. It also saw Chevalier pick up a Best Actor nomination. Chevalier is directed by long-time collaborator Ernst Lubitch, who also picked up a Best Director Oscar nomination, as well as Jeanette MacDonald his leading lady in One Hour With You. The plot, if there really is one, sees Cheavlier's Parisian count being exiled to a fictional country and start a relationship with MacDonald's Queen Louise. For some reason Maruice Cheavlier is irresistible to any woman and they are soon married, but hilariously Chevalier then has to be an obedient husband, he soon realises that as prince consort he has no power and it is the Queen who makes all the decisions. This gender role reversal is the main basis of the second half of the film as Maurice becomes more and more disenchanted with the whole marriage as he feels it belittles his masculinity to have to run everything past his wife. However, Maurice is cleverer than he seems and his able to sort out all of Louise's financial woes and come up with a whole budget for the country, which is odd seeing as most of the time he is singing he doesn't seem to have a lot of time to do any maths. The end of the film sees Louise come around and let Maurice do whatever he wants which seems to be a lot more singing.

I think when sound first came into cinema people were impressed by just about everything but by today's standards these Maurice Chevalier films seem incredibly dated. Saying that The Love Parade has some good set pieces and is a lot more solidly directed than the other Chevalier films that I watched (which were made after this). The film has some brilliant set pieces and was rightfully nominated some technical awards for cinematography, sound recording and art direction. The plot maybe flimsy, the songs may drive you crazy but there's no denying that some of the musical numbers are well choreographed and well shot.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 16: Mostly Maurice

Over to the 1932 ceremony where two films starred the same leading man and had the same basic format. That man was Maurice Chevalier and those two films were One Hour With You and The Smiling Lieutenant. Of course I've heard of Chevalier but at the same time am not aware of his films that well. Just like Mae West, Chevalier was one the successful vaudeville and Broadway performers who was able to make the transition to Hollywood. With his charming voice and trademark boater hat, Chevalier was a crowd pleaser when he took to the stage and continued to charm in his films. In this case the films were both directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Firstly One Hour With You which has a very flimsy storyline indeed involving Chevalier's doctor who seems only to treat female clients who all obviously fancy him rotten but he is faithful to his wife played by Jeanette MacDonald. Both Chevalier and McDonald have perfect singing voices and basically singing seems to be foreplay to most of the characters in both of the Chevalier films that I watch. Maurice is tempted by his wife's old friend Mitzi while in turn his wife his propositioned by a man named Adolph before the name obviously became synonymous with a certain Mr Hitler. In this film Chevalier addresses the audience on a number of occasions to ask their advice on what he should do with these two beautiful women. At the end of the day even though they've both been unfaithful to an extent MacDonald and Chevalier realise they love each other most of all so it's back to the bedroom for a bit of a 'sing song'. The film is supposedly set in Paris but is obviously an American production with Chevalier the only predominant French cast member. Honestly I don't see why this was nominated for Best Picture, but that's all it was nominated for and it was obviously there to make up the numbers.
But you think the academy would only have picked one Chevalier film that year but instead The Smiling Lieutenant was also nominated. I find the plot was a little more cohesive in this film although Chevalier did essentially play the same character this time there was at least some kind of motivations for all the misunderstandings and misbehaving. This time the two women that were fighting for Chevalier's affections were Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins. After watching her as the smart-talking rich girl in It Happened One Night I was surprised how little Colbert had to do here. She was Chevalier's first romantic interest a violinist who he fell for even though his friend liked her, friendship doesn't seem to stand for much in a Maurice Chevalier film. Anyway as you can guess from the title Chevalier's character is a lieutenant in the army and when Colbert's character goes to watch him welcome the ambassadors from a small Austrian suburb to Vienna he winks and smiles at her but it gets deflected towards Hopkins' small town princess. The big plot jump sees Chevalier agree to marry Hopkins because if he didn't there would be an international incident or Chevalier would lose his job. Hopkins and Chevalier have a loveless marriage at first but when Colbert comes to confront the new couple she instead helps Hopkins improve her lingerie collection (in song no less!) and bed Chevalier. At the end Chevalier gives the audience a cheeky wink before going to bed his new wife. Again the film was only nominated for Best Picture.

So what've I learnt from Maurice Chevalier films released in 1931-1932? Women don't care if you screw around, basically everyone sings or at least talks in rhymes, America is ample substitute for either Vienna or Paris and women find Frenchmen in boater hats absolutely resistable. Surprisingly there was no nomination for Chevalier in the Best Actor line-up however that year there was only three nominees. But Maurice will pop up again in this search later on when I watch the film which he was nominated for Best Actor - The Love Parade. Until then its goodbye to cheeky French chit-chat and oh so twee musical numbers.