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Buzz’s Babes 164 Buzz made the move to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with none of the grief he had suffered from Sam Goldwyn under similar circumstances. Mervyn LeRoy’s May memo came to fruition with Buzz’s first assignment. Bobby Connolly, Buzz’s peer from Warner Brothers, had been hired to direct the musical numbers for The Wizard of Oz when Buzz was busy with They Made Me a Criminal. Arthur Freed allowed Buzz a free hand in directing the number “If I Only Had a Brain,” sung by the scarecrow (Ray Bolger) to Dorothy (Judy Garland). Buzz employed reverse footage and undercranked his camera to an amusing effect. At his new studio he designed the number in much tighter physical space than his Warner Brothers soundstages allowed. The scarecrow flies, runs manically to and fro, and, like a dervish, spins merrily from fence post to fence post and back again. It was a great four-minute sample of Buzz’s adaptive ability, and it allowed him the opportunity to work with the enormous three-strip Technicolor camera, its process much improved from the twostrip bleached hues of Whoopee! Oz’s director, Victor Fleming, was quite taken with what he saw and wrote to Buzz: “I’ve just run the Scarecrow number. It’s simply great. You should have directed the whole picture.” The Wizard of Oz notwithstanding, Buzz’s first true test at MGM was Broadway Serenade. The story of a musical couple (Jeanette MacDonald and Lew Ayres) who split when the wife’s career trajectory eclipses her husband’s (a similar story arc to A Star Is Born) was almost complete until producer and director Robert Z. Leonard decided a spectacular ending was needed. Time, unfortunately, was of the essence. Jeanette’s availability was compromised with other commitments, and the picture had to wrap by early February 1939. The new director on the lot had his assignment: quickly create a ten-minute number. And so Buzz tweaked his imagination with little input on how to proceed. He followed the description in the film expressed by manager and impresa8 Buzz’s Babes 165 rio Cornelius Collier Jr. (Frank Morgan): “I’m going to treat the whole thing impressionistically with symbols and movement. It’s never been done before.” The boast sounded like Buzz’s own. He devised a surrealistic treatise on the birth, development, and maturation of a composition using Tchaikovsky’s “None but the Lonely Heart” as its musical motif. Buzz contacted art director Cedric Gibbons and relayed his ideas. He needed a large set with various elevations, each level covered with black oilcloth. The cast would wear striking Benda masks (after Wladyslaw Theodor Benda), some of them meant to represent famous composers. In the theater, the musicians play a short overture as the camera pans from stage lights to parting curtains. A shepherd in native garb is holding a shillelagh and playing an Irish flute; sheep are placed on various levels of the black-draped ersatz mountain. The camera pulls back to reveal a pianist (Tchaikovsky?) embellishing the flautist’s melody. Out from the darkness steps Jeanette MacDonald as an ethereal choir sings. Buzz’s camera is now fully maneuverable, swiftly panning to groups of grotesquely masked musicians—violinists, flautists, cellists, accordionists , kettle drummers, and singers. The dark lighting Buzz employs is especially effective, adding a sense of eeriness to the manic musicians. As the music, photography, and editing build to their shared climax, all illumination is removed, leaving Jeanette alone under a single spotlight. Buzz brings up another of his transitional devices, a tight shot of an Asian gong. The gong is lowered, and a new set is revealed, brightly lit and spectacular in dimension. Amid a busy stage of left and right risers—men in tuxedos and women in flowing white dresses—stands a pedestal, thirty feet high, on which Jeanette MacDonald is perched. From her vantage point she sees her true love (Lew Ayers) playing the piano. A quick nod from them both ties up a dramatic plot point from earlier on. The camera boom, high off the stage, pulls back from a final close-up of Jeanette as the orchestra stirringly crescendos, while the tall open curtains meet each other in the middle, and “The End” is superimposed on the screen. Buzz’s one-picture deal for Broadway Serenade paid dividends. His “audition” was lauded by studio chief Louis B. Mayer, who was quite impressed with the “None but the Lonely Heart” number...

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