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y%e Movie-
Musicals
face REFORM
HOLLYWOOD.
SOMETHING hod to happen to
movie musicals, for they had been
growing beyond all reasonable
physical and financial limits.
The spectacle-specialists were run
ning shy on super-colossal ideas. Chorus
directors were running out of girls.
Blurb-writers were running out of ad
jectives. And the customers, weary of
seeing the same old stories presented
by the same people in different cos
tumes, were running out of patience.
So the tune-and-tap shows are under
going alterations. For one thing, they're
readapting themselves to the limitations
of the standard-shed screen. Produc
ers are realizing that a dozen cavort
ing cuties, in close-up, are more inter
esting to the fans than 250 girls in a
long-shot which no liliman eye—even
an agile, roving eye—can encompass.
There are some who believe that mu
sicals will turn for variety to the stylo
of tht. intimate stage revue. Meanwhile
they’re borrowing heavily from the
better night clubs and what is left of
vaudeville.
But the most decided trend is that
musicals are- going musical. That’s
right. Call it operatic; call it sym
phonic; call it highbrow. Call it ba
loney, but it’s still auditory nourish
ment. From now on, whether they
notice it or not, the fans are going to
hear some pretty fine music in their
neighborhood flicker palaces, and its
effect won’t be lessened by the show of
too many legs or the vast spread of
stage props.
Most of the nation’s foremost com
posers are working in Hollywood, or
ior it Even more important is the
By Paul Harrison
caliber of the musical technicians—the
arrangers, and the choral and sym
phonic directors —who are transposing
good music to celluloid.
A GOOD example of the transition
from musicals of sheer size to musi
cals of near-operatic characteristics is
“Top of the Town.” This Universal
production has plenty of magnitude; in
fact, some of the shots in the latter
part of the picture are the longest ever
taken on a movie sound stage.
Virtually every square foot of the big
building is utilized for the working set.
It is called the Moonbeam Room and is a
Hollywood glorification of the Rainbow
Room atop Rockefeller Center in Man
hattan. *
But this is like nothing that even the
Rockefellers ever dreamed of. All very
moderve, with mounting tiers and ter
races filled with diners and choirs and
bands. The walls are covered with
shimmering blue cellophane, acres of it,
and through it glimmer more stars than
can be seen with a telescope.
Poking about the room is a 50-foot
camera crane of marvelous mobility.
Perched on the end, its camera picks up
a group of dancers here, a singer there,
a group of merrymakers on a balcony.
When it rears back against one wall
and its camera soars near the 70-foot
ceiling for a full-length shot of the
room, Hollywood filmusicals have
reached their final dimension —the lim
its of the modern camera.
“There was only one way for the
musical to grow,” said Louis Brock, pro
ducer of “Top of the Town” and of
many another musical since “Flying
Down to Rio.” “That way is musically.
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Revue specialty numbers are tend
ing to displace the chorus line.
Here’s an item from “Ready, Will
ing and Able,” with Dance Expert
Bobby Connolly in the foreground.
“The last six reels of ‘Top of the
Town’ are continuously musical except
for one breathing space for the story.
Development of the story makes this
possible. It isn’t opera, but it is op
eratic in form while lacking the delib
erate tread of the classical subject. It’s
pretty far from classical, because the
picture ends with 600 people in this big
night club joining in a giand jam-ses
sion. But it's good music.”
gROCK sees the doom of the old
fashioned kicking chorus spectacles
or “line numbers.” His show has
chorus girls, but only 24 of them, and
they really dance.
The producer doesn’t believe that
Here’s the biggest of all musical sets.
When the camera crane comes back to
the position of the man who took this
picture, it gets the longest, interior
shot ever made: 250 feet. It’s in “Top
of the Town.”
stars are the making of musicals, but
he has seen many a star made by a
musical. Fred Astaire was one.
Warner Brothers and M-G-M had
him under contract and let him go.
Brock begged for his services in “Fly
ing Down to Rio,” and then shot half
the picture without letting him dance.
RKO executives nearly had apoplexy
when they saw the rushes. You're try
ing to make an actor out of that bald
headed, homely galoot!” they screamed.
“If he’s anything at all, he's a dancer!”
He was a dancer, too, before the pic
ture was over. But it was his intro
duction as an actor that won him the
attention of millions of fans.
Brock hails pictures of the type of
“Sing, Baby Sing” and “Pigskin Pa
rade,” which are comedies with tunes
thrown in, as an exclusive development
of the movies which is both popular and
profitable.
“Specialty numbers, added to out
standing stories, make excellent enter
tainment,” he said. “In the same way.
several of the recent big musicals have
been saved by their novelty acts.
‘Born to Dance’ was pretty awful as a
story, but the specialties covered the
flaws.”
Busby Berkeley, who is said to be
incapable of counting people in num
bers smaller than even hundreds, started
the extravaganza competition when he
whipped up the elaborate dance concoc
tions in the early Cantor pictures, such
as “Whoopee” and “The Kid From
Spain.” Then he started anew at
Warners with “42nd Street.”
The rivalry continued until M-G-M
decided to make a musical that would
dwarf all other musicals, and spent
$250,000 on the mechanistic and fem
inistic flash in “Ziegfeld.” That spe
cialty ran 10 minutes and cost, if you
like your figures broken down to un
derstandable terms, $416 per second, a
prodigious sum even in these days of
extravagant movie-making.
A few months ago there was a short
age of chorus girls in Hollywood. Now
every studio reports that it is using
fewer girls, smaller choruses. And
with this reduction in numbers there
is a new standard of beauty and ability.
The competition is tougher.