Preceded by: The Gold Diggers of Broadway (fragment): This spectacular, 2-strip Technicolor 1929 musical, unseen for many years, was thought lost until one reel was rediscovered by the National Film Archive in London. The restored reel is the finale, a glorious all-singing, all-dancing production number. (1929, 10 min. fragment, Color, 35mm, Print courtesy Turner Entertainment Co.) The Broadway Melody The Broadway Melody introduced the MGM musical to the world with its formula of lively and imaginative production numbers, witty and entertaining dialogue, and the ever-durable "backstage story" (two star-struck country gals and a song-and-dance man trying to make a name on Broadway). In his Dictionary of Cinema, Jean Mitry refers to The Broadway Melody as "the first sound film in which song and noises became partially integrated and significant in the film." In other words, what we take for granted in a musical-songs written for the film (by the new team of Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown) and intended to advance the plot, and camera and microphone working together to reveal story and character-were innovations in 1929. With a chorus and several leads recruited from Broadway, the film truly is a bridge between the worlds of vaudeville and cinema (content and form). The first sound film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, it also included a Technicolor sequence ("The Wedding of the Painted Doll") which today exists only in black-and-white.