In the late summer of 1928, as Hollywood studios raced to wire their stages and retrain their stars for sound, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer authorized a project that ran counter to almost every instinct guiding the industry’s transition to talking pictures. The film was Hallelujah—a rural Southern drama with an all-Black cast, heavy musical content, extensive location shooting, and a director willing to gamble his own salary to get it made. In trade terms alone, it was a high-risk production at the worst possible moment to take one.
The film's champion was director King Vidor, one of MGM's most trusted directors thanks to such films as The Big Parade (1925) and The Crowd (1928). For years he had talked to studio executives about making a picture with Black themes. He felt audiences would respond to the truth and emotion of such a film, not novelty. The executives remained unconvinced, with sound still being untested and exhibition uncertainties in the South always looming. As trade papers of the day reported, Vidor finally won the studio over by agreeing to postpone his salary and take a share of the film's profits if there were any, an uncommon practice at MGM at this time.
Finding suitable actors was an issue from preproduction. MGM maintained no lists of contract African American actors suitable for leading roles in prestige productions, and the need for early sound performers further limited the field. MGM trade notices throughout mid-1928 documented Vidor's talent searches through New York City and Chicago, where he cast actors from the stage, nightclub performers and singers used to performing before live audiences. Daniel L. Haynes was ultimately cast as Zeke, the cotton picker whose rise, fall and redemption forms the basis of the story.
The lead female role was more difficult. Initial reports called for an actress named Honey Brown. Near the start of filming, however, the role of Chick, the film's sexy centerpiece and agent of chaos was recast with Nina Mae McKinney, a Broadway chorus dancer new to motion pictures. McKinney's role would become a focus of reviews of the completed film.
Vidor's screenplay was a hybrid of melodrama and religious spectacle designed to take advantage of synchronized sound. Zeke battles temptation with the faith he discovers at revival, a conflict which escalates to bloodshed and spiritual accounting. From a nuts-and-bolts perspective, the story necessitated that MGM weave spirituals, work songs, and songs from revival meetings into the plot -- sounds used as structural elements, not window dressing. Structurally, this made Hallelujah more operatic, or like a musical, than the dialogue-driven potboilers studios were timidly churning out.
Production started in October 1928. After filming exteriors on location, as was his preference, Vidor moved the production into the studio environment of Culver City to shoot interiors. Reported in trade coverage at the time was that MGM moved south to shoot many exterior shots, with Memphis and outlying countryside being used as its backdrop and also filming staged shots along the Mississippi River. The famous baptism scene was shot on location as well, utilizing extras from local churches and even consulting religious leaders on how to make the scene authentic. From a technical production standpoint, this made sound filming even more difficult than it already was at that time, with delicate microphones, heavy machinery, and uncontrollable background noise.
Even strategy regarding sound was modified on the fly. Hallelujah was originally promoted as a partial talking picture using Movietone. However, once footage began to roll and MGM saw how well audiences reacted to musical numbers and dialogue sequences, the studio decided to incorporate more sound into the film, requiring reshoots and reconfiguration of scenes. MGM's mid-stream switch was one of many occurring in late 1928 and early 1929 across Hollywood as studios scrambled to adjust existing production schedules based on positive audience response to talking pictures.
Nina Mae McKenny and Daniel Haynes
On Hallelujah, the change added additional expense and timetable concerns to a production many within MGM feared would lose money. Music was still the most valuable property in the production. Eva Jessye and her Dixie Jubilee Singers were hired to perform spirituals during important dramatic moments in the film, and Irving Berlin wrote new songs intended to help close the gap between popular song and traditional music. From a trade perspective, the integration of these elements distinguished Hallelujah from both novelty race pictures and conventional studio musicals, positioning it as a prestige experiment rather than a marginal release.
MGM's release of the film was calculated. Opening day, August 20, 1929, was held at both the Embassy Theatre on Broadway and Harlem's Lafayette Theatre. Booking simultaneously in both venues was not only a shot at the general market but also to reach Black audiences. This move was considered by many exhibitors and trade papers to be unconventional for MGM. Reviews praised the film's pictorial quality, spirit of the music and sincerity. Attention was given to Vidor's direction, and he later received an Academy Award nomination for the film.
However, the film's exhibition was mixed at best. Rumors soon spread that the film was banned by the Southern Theatre Federation due to its content, reasons which were left deliberately vague but became common knowledge. Therefore, Hallelujah's play centered on northern markets and the border-states with limited engagements elsewhere. Reports indicate Vidor even backed the film financially with exhibitors to insure against loss, and it enjoyed some repeat engagements in certain markets indicative of good turnouts. Despite this, the film's ban in the South hurt its box-office receipts severely and could not perform as well as your typical MGM film would have done.
From a trade standpoint, Hallelujah emerged as both a qualified success and a cautionary example. Artistically, it demonstrated that a major studio could mount a Black-centered talking picture with scale and seriousness. Commercially, it exposed the structural limits imposed by segregation and exhibition politics—factors that no amount of creative commitment could fully overcome in 1929. For MGM, the film did not inaugurate a cycle of similar productions; for Vidor, it remained one of the most personal and risky projects of his career.
In hindsight, Hallelujah doesn't necessarily hold up as a prototype Hollywood scrambled to reproduce. It was a proof of concept released too early for the industry to understand or accept what it stood for. Created during one of cinema's most tumultuous technological transitions, it's a reminder that Hollywood isn't always driven by committee. Sometimes one man (or woman) is willing to bet salary, reputation, and job security on the idea that audiences may be ready for something new — even if the trades believe otherwise.
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