Couch Film Festival :: 2nd Academy Awards

WINNER Best Picture
The Broadway Melody (1929)

Vaudeville sisters “Hank” (Bessie Love) and Queenie Mahoney (Anita Page) take their act to the Broadway stage in New York when Eddie (Charles King), a professional song-and-dance man appearing in a new show, invites his girlfriend Hank to join him.

Soon after, Eddie transfers his affections to Queenie, who attempts to do right by her sister by dating another man — high society member Jock Warriner (Kenneth Thompson).

The showbiz melodrama is quickly overshadowed by the romantic subplot.

Bonuses ::

• It was one of the first musicals to feature a Technicolor sequence
• The film was the first musical released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
• Hollywood’s first all-talking musical.
• It is a pre-Code musical.

WINNER Best Actor
In Old Arizona (1928)

The Cisco Kid is a gay caballero whose flair for dramatic thievery and penchant for dangerous trysts keep him just one step ahead of Sgt. Mickey Dunn. T

he Kid’s reputation has preceded him when he approaches the local stagecoach, and he needs to fire only two warning shots to wrest the Wells Fargo box from the driver.

His infatuation with a Mexican girl named Tonia María exposes him to near-capture, because of the señorita’s double-dealing association with Dunn.

Eventually, a showdown becomes imminent, and the Kid exacts a final revenge by framing Tonia so that Dunn shoots her by accident, while the Kid rides laughing off into the sunset.

Bonus :: First singing cowboy,

Interesting Fact ::
Raoul Walsh was set to direct and star as the Cisco Kid in this film, but had to abandon the project when a jackrabbit jumped through a windshield of a vehicle he was driving and cost Walsh an eye, after which he wore an eyepatch for the remainder of his life. Walsh never acted again but continued his illustrious career as a film director.

WINNER Best Actress
Coquette (1929)

The object of many a local man’s attraction, Norma Besant (Mary Pickford) shrugs off her father’s suggestion that she take up with a sophisticated suitor, Stanley Wentworth (Matt Moore), and begins dating unpolished Michael Jeffery (Johnny Mack Brown).

A tussle between Norma’s new love and her father results in Michael’s death.

When her father is put on trial for the killing, Norma must decide if she’ll tell the truth, or lie to preserve his freedom.

Pickford did lobby hard for the Oscar, inviting the judges over for tea at her home Pickfair.

Interesting Fact ::

In 2008, a legal battle ensued between The Academy and Buddy Rogers’s heirs over the sale of the Coquette Oscar.

The heirs were trying to sell the award for charity, as stipulated in Rogers’s second wife’s will.

The Academy insisted that the Award must be offered back to them for $1, to comply with a rule made long after Pickford won her Oscar.

The Academy won the legal battle, but announced they were willing to pursue a private agreement with the heirs.

The outcome of this agreement is unknown.

This might explain the difficulty in finding legit sites for online viewing.