The Broadway Melody won Best Picture in 1930. Saw it advertised as the first musical to win best picture. Which is true but is also only the second movie ever to win best picture and the first movie with sound to win best picture. If you have seen Singing in the Rain(which is a fictionalized behind the scenes of The Broadway Melody) then you have seen some of the difficulties of integrating sound into movies. Directors weren't sure how to film a movie with sound. There are still a lot of parts with no sound and they still used title cards to start certain scenes. Other interesting fact about the movie was that it was the first movie to win Best Picture without winning any other awards.
The movie itself isn't too bad. Its about two sisters who move to NY from the country and try to make it big on Broadway. Hannah is the smart business savvy sister who is dating some guy from the city and Queenie is the pretty blond who gets by on her looks. When Hannah's boyfriend gets them an audition with Mr. Zanfield(an obviously take on Broadway legend Ziegfeld) he puts Queenie at the star and Hannah gets cut from the show. Of course this causes some friction between the two sisters and things get more complicated when Hannah's boyfriend falls in love with Queenie. Fairly standard plot I guess even for that time as I read that critics at the time found it kind of cliche. The real draw of the movie and one of the reasons it probably one best picture was because as the tag line said it was "all talking, all singing, all dancing". I found the musical sequences a little lackluster probably because I am use to watching more modern movies but guess it was good for its time. Overall not the worst movie I have ever seen and while I haven't seen any of the other movies nominated for best picture in 1930 I read that this really was the best one.
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