For the in-class 1935 movie project, we decided to put the movie in context of the period and, considering the Great Depression occurring at the time, made the decision to make our film one geared to the general populous, an escapist, feel good melodrama and musical directed by none other than the (rather unknown, at this time) Frank Capra.
In this all-ages feel good Christmas movie, Shirley Temple plays young Ruthie, a bright eyed curly-haired optimist who has a love of singing and dancing. The movie begins in 1935, during the Great Depression and right after Ruthie's father Floyd,played by Tracey, has been laid off from his job. A hint is dropped that implies that Ruthie's mother had died over a year ago, and they are forced to move to New York to stay with their late mother's sister. While walking in the street one day, Ruthie attempts to cheer her father up by singing and dancing for him--which is when a local Broadway Producer, Mr. Anderson, played by Fox's Joel McCrea, notices her and decides to make her a big star, bringing her to be the star of his show. While performing in the show, Ruthie meets a fellow dancer, Sherri (played by Vivien Leigh) who she takes a liking to. Floyd soon meets Sherri and falls in love with her. At the end of the movie, Ruthie is a huge hit in New York and the family is brought out of their financial and emotional depression. Floyd and Sherri are married, and it all ends very happily.
We chose Fox as our production company, mainly because the real star we were after here was Shirley Temple. Although at this time Frank Capra was directing with Colombia pictures, we took initiative to make a trade off with Colombia, and gave them John Ford fora short time to direct a Western they were interested in, while we took Capra for our feel good family special. We also got Fox's very own Spencer Tracy to play Shirley's father, and the spunky new face of Vivien Leigh, who was visiting the US and decided to take the role in this movie during her short visit.
This is a big scale and expensive Blockbuster movie, with all the stars that will appeal to people of this time, mainly the explosive Shirley Temple. Fox makes sense for this because they were, at this time, they were signed with Shirley Temple and produced all of her big movies at this time--and knew how expensive she was. We chose to make this film in black and white, although color was coming out at this time, simply because it was more popular at the time and the focus of Fox for the film was to please audiences and, in all honesty, make money. For our technological focus, we decided to really make it about the sound and sound editing, as it is a musical. For this,we used Fox's very own sound editor W.D. flick, who worked with Temple before on her movie "Our Little Girl" and did a number of movie for Fox and other production companies during the 30s and beyond.
As this movie does take place in 1935, the Hays code made big influences on the storyline and direction this movie was able to take. For example, we were unable to show the death of the mother, and so all we were able to do was imply that she had died, and begin the movie a year after this occurred. As well, the kiss shared by Floyd and Sherri was limited to only 3 seconds, following directly the Hays Code, and we were unable to show Sherri in a sexy or seductive light. Connecting to this, we unfortunately had to make the costumes of the Broadway dancers excessively modest instead of true to fact or even glamorous and fun as we had wished, in order not to violate the Hays code's rules of on-screen sexuality or promiscuity.
Were I alone in doing this project, I would probably have attempted to do a more political, Oscar-winning type film, or a more low-key artsy kind of movie, which would taken a lot more thinking and planning out in order to make it work. However, considering this particular movie we chose, I probably would have kept the mother alive and gone deeper into the relationship between her and the father; perhaps, that they fall apart through the depression and his being laid off and as Ruthie rises to fame and raises the spirits of the family, they rekindle their love and ends happily still, remaining a perfect escapist movie for the people affected by the Great Depression at this time.
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