Creating a 30's Film

     As part of our exploration of  1930's Hollywood, our group in class decided to create a feel-good blockbuster including big-name actors and musical numbers.  Synopsis follows:

     After the tragic death of his wife, Floyd is laid off from work by the bank.  Struggling to stay afloat financially, Floyd and his daughter Ruthie travel to  New York to stay with Floyd’s sister-in-law.  While singing and dancing on the street to cheer her father up, Ruthie is discovered by a Broadway producer.  She becomes famous very quickly, and meets Sherri, a dancer in the shows.  Both Ruthie and Floyd spend more and more time together with Sherri, and eventually she and Floyd fall in love. This is a heartwarming tale of the familial bonds between father and daughter, and the ability to pick up and move on.

      This movie is entirely meant as an escapist film to bring people's minds off the hardships of the Great Depression.  People wanted to get away from the bad things for a while and just sit and enjoy a feel-good movie.  And just to appease the masses, we added in a negative view of the banks (seeing as Floyd was laid off by one).  We didn't go so much for a message as for a "life is good, everything's okay" type of feel.  So, of course, it's a melodramatic film with musical elements.  And somehow it seems wrong to have a film like that without Shirley Temple.

      The first thing we really decided on, before a plot or director or anything else, was that we wanted Shirley Temple as the star.  That limits our studio to 20th Century Fox, known for their melodramas.  Fox was also known for it's cheesy American films, which is basically what our film is.  We can't really market this film in other countries, since it's mostly about Broadway, which is very American, and this film is also as cheesy as it gets.  So Fox is a good choice.  We want this movie to be big and expensive (especially since Temple is involved), a giant blockbuster that everyone knows about.  Fox would work for that as well.  

       We then narrowed down who we wanted in our cast to pair with Shirley Temple.  We picked Spencer Tracy to pair with Shirley Temple.  In 1935, Tracy was signed with 20th Century until he was later picked up by MGM.  He never achieved stardom under 20th Century and wasn't very well-known, so we figure this film was his attempt to become famous.  We also picked Vivien Leigh to play the dancer, Sherri, due to her reputation as a beautiful actress.  We figure that even though at this time she was living in London, she came to America to visit her significant other, Laurence Olivier, and happened to hear of this film (same way she ended up in "Gone With the Wind").  To direct this stellar cast, we wanted Frank Capra to direct since we know him from other feel-good cutsie movies like "It Happened One Night" and "It's a Wonderful Life."  However, we also know he is tight with Columbia.  To counteract that, we figure Fox traded Capra for John Ford so each studio could film with each famous director.  Columbia wanted Ford to do a Western, and Fox wanted Capra for our film.  We know that this film is going to rely heavily on sound, since it is about show business and Broadway, so we needed someone good to work with sound.  We chose W.D. Flick, who worked with Shirley Temple on "Our Little Girl."

(Spencer Tracy and Shirley Temple)

      Since this film is most certainly going to be under the limitations of the Hays Code, we thought out exactly how that will effect our film.  We can't show the death of the mother, so it will only have to be mentioned in passing.  And once Floyd falls in love with Sherri, any kiss they share can only be a maximum of 3 seconds.  All romantic elements have to be toned down to be very innocent.  Not only that, but all the dancers in the Broadway shows have to be conservatively dressed so as not to be deemed offensive.
      As a lover of Independent and Art-House films, this kind of movie goes against everything I really appreciate about a movie.  Most likely it will sell, but it isn't a movie I would want to make.  If I had worked alone, I probably would've chosen to make a more experimental, art-sy film.  I probably also would've cast Loretta Young as Sherri, since Tracy was dating her in 1935, and that on-screen chemistry would've been a nice element.  But all-in-all, I'm very happy with how this project turned out.  We worked hard, we have a stellar cast and crew, and we understand Hollywood in the 1930s!