The Broadway Melody (1929) Good News (1947)

Generally I give credit to the director as the main creative force in a film.  This is not always true in a musical, more of a collaboration than other genres, as been made more than clear in Mad About Musicals, the on-line course I am taking with Ball State in collaboration with Turner Classic Movies.

The Broadway Melody was one of the first sound musicals; it is pre-code (dancers in their underwear and sleeping with backers) and the kind of backstage musical that was common in the early days of sound.  There was also a silent version, a straightforward melodrama for theatres that had not yet converted to sound.  It was also the first film to use the "playback" system for musicals, live sound being expensive to fix if there were mistakes.  Dancing mistakes were usually redone, though there is a scene of dancing in The Broadway Melody where a dancer almost falls after completing a tour jete and has to put out her hand to steady herself.  Director Harry Beaumont had done many silent films and probably had little to do with the singing and dancing numbers; the songs are by Arthur Freed (lyrics) and Nacio Herb Brown (music) and the choreographer/dance director was George Cunningham.

Lyricist Freed became a producer for MGM -- starting with The Wizard of Oz in 1939 -- and most of the great MGM musicals of the 40's and 50's were produced by the so-called "Freed Unit."  One example is the energetic Good News, from 1947, directed by the reliable Charles Walters.  Good News was originally a Broadway musical, in 1927, and Freed's film takes place in that year, keeping most of the original book by Laurence Schwab and the original songs by B.G. DeSylva, Lew Brown (lyrics) and Ray Henderson (music), including "The Best Things in Life Are Free."  The choreography is intensely restrained for stars June Allyson and Peter Lawford but exuberant for the one major number by Broadway star Joan McCracken:  "Pass That Peace Pipe" (a new song written for the film by Roger Edens, Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane).  Choreography is by Robert Alton, the vivid cinematography by Charles Schoenbaum and the witty screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolph Greene.