MAD ABOUT MUSICALS
TCM, 7:30 a.m. ET
April showers bring May flowers – and on TCM, May flowers bring June musicals. Tuesdays and Thursdays this month, TCM devotes all day, and even prime time, to the Hollywood musical. There are plenty on view today to see, and hear, including some old Busby Berkeley classics and other pivotal early movies. Kicking it off this morning is 1933’s Footlight Parade, a prototypical musical featuring Berkeley’s iconic choreography and stars Ruby Keeler and Joan Blondell – but all three are put to better use in 1934’s Dames, which follows at 9:30 a.m. ET. And in prime time, at 8 p.m. ET, pay particular attention to the rarely televised The Broadway Melody from 1929. Starring Anita Page and Bessie Love (pictured) as an aspiring Broadway sisters act, it was the first musical to win the Best Picture Oscar. For that matter, it was the first sound picture to win, period.