Friday, December 9th | 3 Movies
In the 1930s and 40s, the musical was perhaps the most popular genre in all of film.
All the major Hollywood studios of the day developed their own singular style of musical picture, from the froth and glamour of MGM to the backstage spunk of Warner Bros.
One exception to this however was RKO Pictures. Known then (and now) as one of the smallest of the major studios, RKO’s movies were often made on smaller budgets and not always with the biggest stars.
Apart from the now iconic Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing pictures, RKO’s musicals never quite developed their own singular style. Instead, the studio made musicals with a wide variety of music and performers. The result was an especially diverse library of musical films. Alas, not all of these films were especially successful upon their initial release and are not as well remembered today.
This month, TCM’s dear friend Leonard Maltin shows us three of these RKO Musical Sleepers.
1933’s Melody Cruise marked the sound feature film debut of writer/director Mark Sandrich. In his only role as a romantic leading man, famed band leader and voice actor Phil Harris plays Alan, a wealthy playboy who dabbles in several love affairs while aboard a long ocean voyage. The always hilarious Charles Ruggles is Alan’s loyal friend who tries (mostly unsuccessfully) to keep him out of trouble. If not a musical, this plot would be perfect material for any of the pre-code sex comedies of the early 30s. However, the creative music and filming techniques elevate it to its own special creation. The camera work by Sandrich and cinematographer Bert Glennon includes early use of lap dissolves and split screens. Also, much of the dialogue and action are done rhythmically, with generic noises like footsteps and wheels spinning making music with their sound. All of this leads to a famous ballet sequence done entirely on ice. These innovative techniques are reminiscent of another, better remembered musical from one year prior, Rouben Mamoulian’s Love Me Tonight. This film also marked one of the only times that the famed film composer Max Steiner (pre-Warner Bros) created music for an original film musical. The film was a modest hit for RKO and the studio made Sandrich its top musical director. His greatest successes, his five films made with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, would soon follow.
In the 1930s, Warner Bros and their secret weapon, musical director and choreographer Busby Berkeley, monopolized the sub-genre of the backstage musical. Films like 42nd Street (1933) and Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) all told stories of a performer, or performers, who fight against unlikely odds to hit it big on the Great White Way. Probably the closest RKO ever came to emulating these popular films was with Walter Lang’s Hooray for Love in 1935. Based on an unpublished short story by Marc Lachmann titled The Show Must Go On, the film stars Gene Raymond as Doug, a young man fresh out of college who dreams of becoming a Broadway producer. Ann Sothern is the beautiful chorus girl whose father (Thurston Hall) might be able to give Doug his big break, but who also happens to be a major con artist. The chemistry between Sothern and Raymond proved strong enough for RKO to pair them in four more romantic comedies (some also with music) over the next two years. However, their partnership never quite achieved the success of other musical teams like Astaire and Rogers or Jeanette MacDonald (Raymond’s future wife) and Nelson Eddy. Perhaps the film’s biggest highlight is the musical number “Living in a Great Big Way,” featuring spectacular tap dancing from Jeni Le Gon and Bill Robinson and with the one and only Thomas “Fats” Waller on piano. This was one of the first numbers from a studio musical to feature all African American performers. Not to be missed.
Some movie musicals of the thirties became slightly more highbrow when they featured performers from the world of grand opera. Films like Columbia’s 1934 Best Picture nominee One Night of Love with Metropolitan Opera star Grace Moore and the MacDonald and Eddy operettas at MGM were surprisingly popular with mass audiences. RKO contributed to this trend by bringing Italian tenor Nino Martini to the screen for 1937’s Music for Madame. Nino Martini plays Nino Maretti (what a stretch), an Italian singer in pursuit of a career in Hollywood (an even bigger stretch) who gets himself entangled with jewel thieves. Joan Fontaine plays a young aspiring composer whose latest work can only be brought to life with the golden voice of Nino. Only 19-years old during filming, this was one of a string of generic ingénue roles for future Oscar winner Fontaine. The film is mostly a showcase for the impressive singing of Martini, who delivers memorable interpretations of the songs of Rudolph Friml. A veteran of both New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the Opera Comique in Paris, Nino was already a star of both the stage and recording worlds. However, he never found success in Hollywood, due in part to his thick Italian accent. This expensive film was a box office failure and would ultimately be Martini’s last in Hollywood. His final screen appearance came a decade later in the British film One Night with You (1948).
All of these films, and many more, demonstrate the versatility of both the musical genre and of RKO Pictures. We adore the singular style of musical films as only MGM or Warner Bros could create them. Yet, when a studio like RKO didn’t have as fully developed and polished a formula, musicals and the people who made them could perhaps be their most creative. Hopefully these RKO Musical Sleepers will be awakened to a whole new classic movie audience.
