Broadway tune 1950
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Broadway tune 1950 |
| Original title | Ziegfeld Follies |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1945 |
| length | 110 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Vincente Minnelli , George Sidney , Roy Del Ruth , Norman Taurog , Lemuel Ayers , Robert Lewis |
| script |
David Freedman , Hugh Martin , Ralph Blane , and 37 other unnamed authors, including Erik Charell , Al Lewis , Kay Thompson , Eddie Cantor , Samson Raphaelson , Harry Tugend , Irving Brecher , Robert Alton, and Red Skelton |
| production | Arthur Freed |
| music |
Harry Warren , Roger Edens |
| camera |
Charles Rosher , George J. Folsey , Ray June (anonymous) |
| cut | Albert Akst |
| occupation | |
|
Prologue (Here's to the Ladies)
A water ballet
Number Please
La Traviata
Pay the Two Dollars
This Heart of Mine
A sweepstakes ticket
Love
When Television Comes
Limehouse Blues
A Great Lady Has an Interview
The Babbitt and the Bromide
There's Beauty Everywhere
| |
Broadway Melodie 1950 is an American film musical made predominantly in 1944 in the form of a colorful and magnificently furnished number revue . The film includes over a dozen episodes. The show impresario Florenz Ziegfeld , inventor and boss of the Ziegfeld Follies (also the original film title), who appears at the beginning in the framework story and watches the goings-on of his show stars with a benevolent smile from the sky, embodied William Powell . Ziegfeld Follies is the only film with a game story in which the two legendary Hollywood dance stars Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly appeared together. Other leading actors were MGM stars Judy Garland , Red Skelton , Lucille Ball , Kathryn Grayson , Lena Horne and Esther Williams . With Fanny Brice , a famous Ziegfeld girl, who had once achieved stage fame through Ziegfeld, also took part. A total of six directors were involved in this film: Vincente Minnelli , Robert Lewis , Roy del Ruth , George Sidney and the largely unknown Lemuel Ayers ; Norman Taurog staged the prologue and the follow- ups . The film had the title mentioned above in the Federal Republic of Germany because it was only released in German cinemas five years after its US premiere in 1950.
action
Prologue (Here's to the Ladies)
Florence Ziegfeld, the great revue arranger of Broadway shows in the first three decades of the 20th century, who died in 1932, dreams of a great show in heaven, with which he wants to unite all the talents of his era, starting in 1907 . The impresario reminisces and imagines how today, more than a decade after his death, he would create a new show revue that trumps everything that has come before. The introduction would of course have to be done by the dance genius Fred Astaire, whose dancing and singing performance means a bow to the great Ziegfeld and its legendary show girls, the Ziegfeld Follies. While Fred Astaire sings and Lucille Ball swings the whip, the eight show girls dance in panther look. Once in motion, the heavenly Ziegfeld mentally drafts further sequences for the perfect Broadway show.
A water ballet
Here Esther Williams shows her swimming talent in a water ballet that takes place both above and below the water.
Number Please
A man makes repeated attempts to reach Louie Sebastian's cigar store by phone, but does not get the help from the operator. When he watches a man from the American South, how easily he gets a connection delivered, the first man eats the phone out of anger.
La Traviata
Two opera singers sing and dance to “Libiamo” from Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata .
Pay the Two Dollars
When a man rides on the subway with his lawyer, he is said to have been fined two dollars for spitting out. The lawyer advises his client not to pay this fine. A police officer arrests the spit and takes him to court. The judge gives the “culprit” a choice: Either he pay the fine or he has to go to prison. The lawyer advises his client to accept the guilty verdict, after all, this can be challenged in the next instance. After twelve days in prison, the lawyer informs his client that the judge has called to a hearing on the matter. The client must learn that his lawyer has meanwhile spent vast sums of money on his defense. So he decides to give in now and asks the lawyer to finally pay the annoying two dollar fine for him.
But now things are getting completely out of hand: Although an appeals court rejects the judgment, the client is sentenced to death because he has caused the death of two subway passengers through his actions. Both died as a result of illness from the germs of his spit. The responsible New York governor pardons the client, but his life is ruined by the actions of his lawyer. After his release from prison, the client was arrested again on the subway, this time for spitting out the tip of his cigar.
This Heart of Mine
A gentleman jewel thief is also a gifted dancer and steals her bracelet when they are kissing while they dance elegantly with a beautiful princess. The beautiful woman notices the brazen robbery, but does not want to react until the dance, a sensual mixture of seduction and conquest, has ended. The princess is so enthusiastic about her long-fingered dance partner that she then gives him her necklace. The gentleman thief is enraptured by this noble gesture and hugs his dance partner.
A sweepstakes ticket
Norma Edelman has won the lottery, but when she reports the good news to her husband Monty, he has to admit that he passed the lottery ticket on to her landlord, Mr. Martin, in order to be able to use it to pay the rent. In the hope that Mr. Martin has not yet found out about the lottery win, Norma and Monty invite Mr. Martin to their apartment to put him there under pressure. When the couple fails, Norma tries to wrap Martin around her finger with a woman's weapons. Finally, Norma sees no other way than telling the landlord the whole truth, whereupon the landlord faints. In this condition she can calmly take the lottery ticket from him.
Love
In a Caribbean bar, the colored singer Lena Horne sings a song about the nature of love.
When Television Comes
Red Skelton plays an announcer for the imaginary television station Clumsy Television Broadcast System and introduces a new format called "Guzzler's Gin Program". He chokes so much with a sip of gin that he almost chokes on it. Skelton's next step shows the show host embodying a certain J. Newton Numskull, a "doctor of poetry" who recites two short poems in his own bizarre way. Between the two poems, Skelton takes a sip of gin every now and then and gets more and more drunk as a result. After all, he's so drunk that he eventually breaks down.
Limehouse Blues
The Chinese Tai Long walks into a bar in London's Limehouse district and instantly falls in love with the beautiful Chinese Moy Ling. Shortly after Tai looks in the shop window, where a fan is on display, which apparently had done it to Moy, thieves smash the shop window and steal multiple items. In the ensuing confusion, there is an exchange of fire, and Tai is hit by a bullet. While lying senseless on the pavement, the wounded Chinese fantasizes about a fan dance with Moy. Tai is taken to the robbed shop, where Moy takes care of him. When he touches the coveted fan, he wakes up again.
A Great Lady Has an Interview
A group of journalists arrive at the home of a movie star known only as the "Great Lady". Her butler Tribbins accompanies the men from the press to the star's living room, where she is to be interviewed. The "Great Lady" talks about her next film, in which she will play a certain "Madame Crematon", the inventor of the safety pin .
The Babbitt and the Bromide
Two gentlemen meet on a park bench and get to know each other. From the chat about dancing in front of the film camera, in which both have entertaining verbal battles in quick succession and Gene and Fred claim that they don't know each other, a friendly and spirited competition develops, which finally turns into music, singing and tap dancing .
There's Beauty Everywhere
Kathryn Grayson sings a song about beauty sui generis in a brightly colored landscape. A number of ballet dancers pose and dance around them.
Production notes
Ziegfeld Follies is considered to be one of the most splendid film musicals from Hollywood's heyday that was ever made. Filming began on April 10, 1944, directed by George Sidney and dragged on for over four months. The official shooting deadline was August 18 of the same year. The first preview took place on November 1, 1944 at the Westwood Village Theater. At that time the film was an enormous 273 minutes. As a result, Ziegfeld Follies was cut several times and shortened by the majority of the comic scenes. A singing scene by Judy Garland with her frequent co-star Mickey Rooney also fell victim to the scissors. Instead, there were follow-ups on December 22, 1944. Other scenes were filmed between January 25 and February 6, 1945.
The first performance of the final version took place on August 20, 1945 in Boston and was only 110 minutes long. However, the producing MGM was also dissatisfied with the version and made a number of changes again. The New York premiere was postponed by another eight months to March 22, 1946. In Germany, Broadway melody was finally seen for the first time on December 1, 1950. As part of a television broadcast in Germany, the film was titled Ziegfeld's Heavenly Dreams .
Cedric Gibbons was chief architect and oversaw the extensive construction work. He was supported by Merrill Pye , Jack Martin Smith and anonymous Edward C. Carfagno . Edwin B. Willis supervised the equipment. Irene , Irene Sharaff and Helen Rose designed the costumes. Douglas Shearer was the chief sound engineer. A. Arnold Gillespie designed the film miniatures unnamed. Sidney Wagner was a simple cameraman, Robert J. Bronner served as camera assistant.
Wally Heglin and Conrad Salinger orchestrate the compositions of Harry Warrens and Roger Edens . The musical direction was in the hands of Lennie Hayton . Kay Thompson made the vocal arrangements. Numerous other composers were also involved in this film with individual song contributions, some of which were not used.
Despite the high cost of production, the film grossed about two million dollars, a substantial sum for the time.
William Powell was not the first man to play the Broadway show mogul (photo left): He had already been seen in the title role in the film The Great Ziegfeld in 1936 .
useful information
In this film, the direct comparison of the dance styles of the two genre superstars Kelly and Astaire, which is only possible here, proves to be particularly appealing: As the film 's great personal dictionary stated in Astaire's biography, the 13-year-old Astaire was able to assert himself well against Kelly, “were both dance styles are fundamentally different. If Astaire embodied the feather-light elf on the floor, Kelly appeared more like a peppy, athletic powerhouse. "Kelly himself paid his colleague the greatest possible respect by later admitting:" Fred Astaire represents the aristocracy when he dances, I the proletariat " .
Some of the episode numbers shown had been tried out on stage years before. Fanny Brice's “A Sweepstakes Ticket” was already part of a Ziegfeld show called Follies of 1936. The “Pay the Two Dollars” sequence came from the George White's Scandals show from 1931. The “Limehouse Blues” number, in turn, was the first shown by Gertrude Lawrence in Andre Charlot's Revue of 1924 , and Astaire presented the dance episode "Babbitt and the Bromide" in 1927 with his sister Adele Astaire in the 1927 Broadway musical Funny Face . After all, the sketch "Number Please" was based on a model by Fred Allen and was first introduced by Willie and Eugene Howard in the 1930 Broadway revue Three's a Crowd (1930).
Reviews
Bosley Crowther wrote in the New York Times : “The best (for us) numbers in the movie are some comedic performances, most notably one with Red Skelton as an announcer on a television show. To give a demonstration of the enjoyment of Guzzler's gin ('A nice smo-o-oth drink'), Mr. Skelton screamingly mixes joy with business. Fanny Brice revives 'A Sweep-stake Ticket' from the 'Follies of 1936' and plays a housewife from the Bronx with Hume Cronyn as funny as she once did with Bobby Clark. Judy Garland is also amusing as a movie queen interviewing the press, and Victor Moore and Edward Arnold are temporarily funny in Willie and Eugene Howard's old 'Pay the Two Dollars' laugh. (...) Strictly episodic with its inevitable ups and downs, Ziegfeld Follies is entertaining - and that's exactly what you expect! "
US star critic Pauline Kael thoughtfully wrote in the 1970s: "The finicky are advised to hurry into the cinema lobby when Kathryn Grayson sings There's Beauty Everywhere against magenta-colored sky foam."
“At least three numbers would be the highlight of any meeting…. In A Great Lady has an Interview , Judy Garland and six men show an unexpected flair for work-related satire. With Numbers Please , Keenan Wynn shows again that he is one of Hollywood's leading comedians. But the dance act for the archives is The Babbitt and the Bromide , where Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly provide a photo finish. "
"Highlights are the Brice-Hume Cronyn sketch, the Astaire Kelly dance, the Moore-Arnold comedy number, Skelton's 'Guzzler's Gin', Hornes Solo, Garland's 'The Interview'."
"Between the opening scene and the closing scene, a huge amount of material was packed in, some of which, frankly, is not worth dealing with in such a splendid way."
Kay Wenigers In Fred Astaire's biography "Broadway Melody 1950", the film's great lexicon of people was one of Minnelli's "candy-colored, splendidly decorated musicals" that "gave the genre a new lease of life."
The lexicon of international film says: "Ballet, songs, sketches and an abundance of top stars in an opulent nostalgic retrospective of the American show business of the 1940s."
Halliwell's Film Guide found the film to be "pretty much a vacuum, all-star entertainment in which comedy suffered rather from lack of audience. However, some of the production numbers have a splendid elegance. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ The production devoured around $ 3.4 million and grossed 5.34 million.
- ↑ Ziegfeld Follies on allemovie.com
- ^ The large personal dictionary of films, Volume 1, p. 170. Berlin 2001
- ^ The large personal dictionary of films, Volume 4, p. 350. Berlin 2001
- ^ Review in The New York Times, March 23, 1946
- ↑ Quoted from Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 1149
- ^ The large personal dictionary of films, Volume 1, p. 170. Berlin 2001
- ^ Broadway Melody 1950. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 19, 2019 .
- ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 1149
Web links
- Ziegfeld Follies at Turner Classic Movies (English)
- Broadway Melody of 1950 in the Internet Movie Database (English)