"Don't Put Your Record Money Into Any Other!"

In the 1929 news photo to the left, two stylish young ladies are seen pretending to listen to what was, by then, seen as a relic of another day --- the standard mechanical horn phonograph. Perched atop another dusty floor-standing talking machine, in a room strewn with suitcases, trunks and litter, the story behind the image is lost to time but the meaning is clear. In a mere slip of time, less than twenty years, a machine that would have been the pride of its owner was now a mere curiosity and ripe for ridicule at that.

Despite my passion for vintage film, I've yet to entirely part from the interest that first nurtured it --- that of recorded sound. While researching and viewing film product of the first thirty years of the last century can be a daunting and oftentimes impossible quest, the medium that grew up alongside it remains surprisingly accessible. Good thing too, since more often than not, it provides clues, solace and negligible compensation for early musical films that remain lost or inaccessible. But, even more than that, the sheer volume of material recorded for the phonograph provides a seemingly endless opportunity to be entertained, amused, touched and educated in a way that the written word or visual image usually cannot. It's a moment in time, locked forever in a black sliver, waiting to be unleashed for whomever cares to listen.

Newspaper readers on a Sunday morning in October of 1914 couldn't help but notice the dramatic full page advertisement pictured to the right, which offered an irresistible lure to a dance-mad public. For a mere thirty-five cents, one could learn to dance all the modern dances --- the One Step, the Maxixe, the Tango and the Hesitation! And, to sweep away whatever doubts may have existed, you'd be taught by no less a personage than one Mr. G. Hepburn Wilson (M.B.,) of The Salon De Danse of New York City, "the foremost authority on modern dances in the United States." A classic gimmick that would last for decades, from the One Step to The Hustle, it's no small wonder that readers responded in great numbers. A series of similar ads would appear in the following weeks for other dance instruction records, and each ad would display an ever increasing tally of how many responded to the previous ad. By the end, the total was well into the thousands and while it's doubtful anyone mastered the intricate steps via the stern recorded instructions and impossibly convoluted printed instructions, we can listen in on what could have been heard in many a home as 1914 drew to a stiffly syncopated close.

Columbia Graphophone Instruction Disc: "The One Step" (1914)

The arrival of the "Double Disc" (two-sided) record came rather early in the game, although later than one might suppose, given the simple logic involved. When Columbia entered the field around late 1913, they did so with a slew of ready made advertisements filtered out to local dealers for placement in newspapers and with in-store promotional material that, in retrospect, was rather forward-thinking. If you were to wander into a music store or phonograph specialty shop, you might see a clerk dart over to the store's largest and most expensive model and within moments, you'd hear:

Columbia Double Disc Demonstration Record (1914)


Listened to in context of the day, it's an effective piece of audio advertising that promises what it delivers, via an exceptionally well recorded demonstration that which, even today, should impress the listener with musical instruments that sound precisely as they're described. Notice the unsubtle dig at the rival Edison Company product!

A great leap ahead, it's 1926 and "The Cocoanuts" is doing boom business on Broadway. Before long, the Marx Brothers would travel with the show across the country, big city and tank town alike, before returning to the main stem for their next production, "Animal Crackers." As December of 1928 ended, news items heralded the fact that "The Cocoanuts" would begin production as a talking film at Paramount's Astoria studio on February 1st of 1929. Recorded by the Victor Light Opera Company in 1926, only three of the tunes within the medley would make it to the filmed version, "Florida," "The Monkey Doodle Do" (vocalized here by Billy Murray, and lamentably brief) and "Tango Melody," which would be relegated to background scoring for the talking film.


Selections from "The Cocoanuts" (1926)

At this great distance from the first appearance of Victor Herbert's musical fantasy "Babes In Toyland" (1903), I find it astonishing that there has yet to be a release of a recorded version of the full score, especially as so much of the material has long since become a part of American popular culture, helped along largely by the fine film version with Laurel & Hardy. (RKO announced a version for the 1930 season that would have likely featured Wheeler & Woolsey and Bebe Daniels --- a mid-boggling notion!) Supposedly, the brilliant John McGlynn, who resurrected Ziegfeld's "Show Boat" in a matchless multi-CD recording, recorded a painstakingly period authentic re-creation of "Babes In Toyland," but its release remains in limbo for a variety of reasons, none of them having to do with anything Victor Herbert could have ever imagined when he first wrote it. The medley heard here dates from 1927, is by The Victor Light Opera Company, and is sure to bring a smile, a sigh or both to most listeners.


Selections from "Babes in Toyland" (1927)

The Minstrel Show, or rather the living memory of it, lingered long enough to make it an infrequent but important part of music and film, from its inclusion in Metro's "Hollywood Revue of 1929," Fox's "Happy Days" and on through 1934's "Kid Millions" (Goldwyn). A staple on the phonograph from its earliest moments, recorded minstrel shows often stretched over the length of four cylinders, and the popularity of recorded minstrel shows would continue well into the acoustic and electrical eras.

From 1929, a double-disc recording, "The Victor Minstrels of 1929," that while inducing an uncomfortable cringe or two, is an assembly of masters of their art: Billy Murray, Henry Burr, Frank Crumit, James Stanley --- a couple of whom likely experienced the odd sort of deja vu that would have come from having had recorded almost precisely the same material for Edison's wax cylinders in another place and time that, by 1929, was a world away in more ways than one.




"Victor Minstrel Show of 1929" - Part 1

"Victor Minstrel Show of 1929" - Part 2

For veteran phonograph artist Billy Murray, who recorded innumerable cylinders and records with Ada Jones, an initial impression of his late 1920's pairing of much younger Aileen Stanley may be that its an odd match, and yet the old master and the youthful girl managed to record a series of discs that not only succeeded but hold up beautifully today, if only for the fact that they really seem to be enjoying one another --- playing off each other like polished vaudevillians who'd been teamed for decades.

Out of all their recordings, I think this is the most memorable. Dating from 1926, "Whaddya Say We Get Together?" is formed almost like a miniature vaudeville routine, with spoken introductions blending seamlessly into song --- and a lovely, wistful one at that.

"Whaddya Say We Get Together?" (1926)

To close out this post, and to return to our starting point of 1929, an item of interest to early musical fans with a good ear. A portion of "The Wedding of the Painted Doll" sequence from Metro's "The Broadway Melody," with a difference --- although whether minor, negligible or huge is left to the listener. Those familiar with the film from television, laser disc, videotape, cable and DVD incarnations are hearing a soundtrack far removed from the way it originally sounded, and even further away from what audiences of 1929 heard when it played in theaters equipped for the rival sound-on-disc process. Decades of transferring between magnetic and optical formats, careless noise-filtering and various tinkering "improvements" to meet the demand of modern listeners who demand utter flat, dead silence between each spoken syllable often does vastly more damage than good to these vintage soundtracks. While not perfect --- but what could be of this age? --- see if you can't detect something a bit more alive, a bit more vital, immediate and "full" in this fragment of audio from disc. If you can, you're in the right place. If you can't, you're still in the right place!

"The Wedding of the Painted Doll" (1929) Sound Disc Excerpt

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Ace of Spades

If it's a remarkable feat for a musical number in an early sound film to "stop the show," then what are the chances of someone achieving the nearly impossible: stopping the show within a showstopping musical number?

Yet, that's precisely what happens during the "Turn On The Heat" production number sequence in the 1929 Fox film "Sunny Side Up" when unexpectedly, the camera cuts away from the manic jazz frenzy led by Sharon Lynn --- to focus on two of the film's auxiliary performers, Marjorie White and Frank Richardson. The pair, posing as party servants, have been standing on the sidelines watching. Richardson merely says "Listen to this," (not so much to his partner as to the film audience) and then lets loose with a rooster's crow of a vocalization that cuts through seventy-plus years of film grain, murk, damage and hiss like a machete. You almost don't want the moment to end --- it's that good, and that pure and so exhilarating --- and then you're kept waiting throughout the rest of the film to see if Richardson is given another such moment, but it never comes.

Well, actually it does -- but only as part of the "Sunny Side Up" end-credit exit music tag. Richardson isn't seen, he's just heard --- and he's not quite the strutting chanticleer here because this tune doesn't call for it, but in retrospect, Fox couldn't have left audiences who'd just seen the film with a better departing musical souvenir.

"Sunny Side Up" (1929) Exit Music Tag


Here, to the right, is an early glimpse of Frank Richardson's career on the move. It's 1923, and Richardson --- at twenty-five, has already had a career that's filled seventeen of those years. Born in Philadelphia, he'd later say he wanted to go on the stage almost as soon as he could walk and talk. Maybe so, but it wasn't until he learned to sing and developed himself into something of a boy soprano that he'd get his chance to step on a stage and exhibit the same strong presence he'd always possess. Someone took quick note, and before long the eight year old Richardson signed an engagement with Dumont's Minstrels, appearing as "The Wonder Boy Tenor."

Richardson would later join Emmet Welch's Minstrels at Atlantic City, New Jersey's Million Dollar Pier venue and then break out on his own, first with circus shows and then as master of ceremonies and entertainer in vaudeville and motion picture houses across the country.

When we next look in on Frank Richardson, in 1925, he was about to cut what he thought would be his last ties with his minstrel show lineage. Usually booking himself as "The Joy Boy of Song," he still relied heavily upon minstrel material and performance style in his act--- so much so that he sometimes billed himself as "The Ace of Spades," whenever he thought this title would have greater appeal.

By late 1926 though, his "Ace of Spades" persona was ready to be buried once and for all. According to a publicity placement likely composed and distributed by Richardson himself to newspapers in towns he was booked into: "Frank Richardson, the Joy Boy of Song, is no longer a blackface comedian. He will sing his songs 'natural,' which is the vaudeville slang for whiteface. One day Mr. Richardson, because of a delayed railroad schedule, reached a theatre where he was to play too late to make up. He went on in street clothes without the customary burnt cork. His act went better than it had ever gone before. Then and there he ceased to be a blackface comedian. In calling himself the Joy Boy of Song, Mr. Richardson merely announces that he is a singing comedian of a different type with individuality."

Richardson's "Ace of Spades" persona might have been buried then and there, but he little suspected it would come calling again, in less than four years time, and that he'd be donning the customary burnt cork for an entertainment medium that would present him to more people in more audiences in just a few weeks than he had ever played before in half a lifetime of show business.

By 1927 he'd be called before the Vitaphone cameras for a short subject titled "The Joy Boy of Song," that would be booked into theaters throughout most of 1928, so it must have seemed but a moment to the always busy performer before he was summoned to California, to Fox Studios and he'd spend a whirlwind-like two years in some of the most popular and highest earning musical films of the day.

Unfortunately, we currently have no way of knowing what Frank Richardson's debut performance in "Fox Movietone Follies of 1929" looked or sounded like, but he couldn't have been given a better tune, the cheeky "Walking With Susie," just right for the strutting, cocksure Richardson's barrel-chested ringing voice and demeanor.

In "Sunny Side Up," he's given more to say than he's given to sing --- but he pulls it off, and in a role (that of a braggart ham) that could just as easily prompt audience dislike as much as acceptance, he wins the day --- largely because he's an endearing, gentle sort of braggart ham who, the viewer feels sure, probably believes less in his boasts than anyone else. Interestingly, it's the secondary roles in "Sunny Side Up," enacted by Richardson, White and Lynn that linger long after Gaynor & Farrell's sticky affectation wears off. As for El Brendel, well.... that's something else entirely!

The fact remains that "Sunny Side Up," was and is a remarkable film that impressed audiences so upon its original release that it was only one of very, very few early sound films that would be revived, most of them musicals incidentally --- by popular demand --- well after its premiere, in this case well into the last months of 1933.

Richardson's first two successes proved a hard act to follow, although he'd briefly have a chance to shine again in Fox's minstrel-themed "Happy Days," where he's billed and presented as himself, singing the infinitely catchy tune "Mona." How Richardson and his highly recognizable voice eluded the phonograph companies is any one's guess, so while we don't have a 78rpm commercial recording of his performance, I offer the two next best things. First, an extract of Richardson's performance from the film "Happy Days" itself, and then George Olsen's equally fine commercial rendition of the same tune, released late in 1929 on Victor Records with Fran Frey providing the warbling in lieu of Richardson.

"Mona" (1930) Frank Richardson

"Mona" (1930) George Olsen & His Music


Following "Happy Days," Richardson would still have one more film appearance to put in before he could finally cast off and bury his "Ace of Spades" persona, although after he did just that, following end of work on "New Movietone Follies of 1930," his film career would evaporate along with it --- an irony that couldn't have escaped him entirely.

Still, for his farewell film, Richardson is given what amounts to a reprise of his role in "Sunny Side Up," and considering he's again partnered with Marjorie White, their work together in the film almost plays like a continuation of the earlier film, presuming they left their pals Gaynor and Farrell alone to gaze into one anothers eyes undisturbed while White and Richardson got on with their lives and struck out in show business. Released and/or previewed in some areas under the ghastly title "Svenson's Wild Party," "New Movietone Follies of 1930" is a weak film only when compared to what we know of its earlier 1929 incarnation. As it stands --- on its own, it's fast, slick, polished, risque, funny, tuneful and filled with ingenuity in direction and photography of the sort that makes its current senseless imprisonment in vaults all the more lamentable.

In this audio excerpt, Frank Richardson bids noble farewell to the screen musical via his crack-the-roof-plaster rendition of "Here Comes Emily Brown," and exits as proudly and as confident as he entered --- leaving off with a high note in which traces of Boy Tenor and Minstrel Man are still very much in evidence, and resonate even now.

"Here Comes Emily Brown" (1930)

Afterward: Richardson returned to vaudeville, where he can be found appearing as a performer or master of ceremonies up through the mid-1930's. In 1934 he'd be named in a breach of promise lawsuit for $100,000.00 by lover Joan Williams, when she discovered he was already --- and had long been, married to Adele Richardson. Happily, in a case that was already starting to set reporters and gossip columnists drooling, Adele Richardson simply stepped out of the picture --- leaving a clear field for Joan Williams who, rather surprisingly, eagerly dropped her lawsuit and married Richardson almost immediately.

Thereafter,throughout the 1940's and 1950's, there's precious little mention of Richardson. He could have chosen to retire, or he could have worked sporadically --- perhaps even contributing his talents to wartime entertainment requirements. I simply don't know.

In February of 1962, on a page filled with movie ads a world away from his own films --- with titles like "Wild For Kicks" and "The Day the Sky Exploded," there could be found this simple, two sentence obituary for the entertainer, who died in the city of his birth of a heart attack.

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"On A Frequency of Nine Million Drinks A Day"

If it isn't frustrating enough to discover that some of the most intriguing motion pictures of the early sound era are apparently lost forever, then it's even more discouraging to learn that virtually the entire output of a medium that walked hand-in-hand with the talkies as they both took their first tentative steps --- radio, is also gone for good.

Whereas there's always the outside chance that a print, or portions of a print, or even just sound discs may turn up for any number of missing early sound films, the bulk of the radio programming that was churned out --- live --- on a daily basis during this same period is not only gone, but gone beyond recall. Oh, I like to think that all that sound is reverberating somewhere in deep space around about now, and perhaps even being listened to. If so, we can only hope it's all being documented, archived and preserved far better than anyone on this planet thought necessary.

On the evening of March 19th of 1930, it's likely that most radio listeners were tuning into Old Gold Paul Whiteman hour, where they would have had the chance to hear two featured players from the Universal revue film "King of Jazz," performing songs from that production, backed by the magnificent Whiteman orchestra. Similarly, a set of tunes from Fannie Brice's second (and last) starring vehicle, "Be Yourself" would also be given the Whiteman treatment. Glorious sounds, lost to time the moment they were transmitted --- or perhaps transcribed to disc for use within the same week, and then filed away --- and then? (It's honestly almost painful to browse radio broadcast schedules of the period, noting all the shows that were direct products of various film studios or countless others that used material from then current films as content. Why, there's even instances of "direct transmission" from movie theaters, teasing and luring radio audiences by broadcasting entire reels of sound from early talkies. How many innumerable gaps in the shadowy history of this period in entertainment could be filled if only this material had been retained and archived!)

That same Winter evening in 1930, a movie or music fan turning their radio dial might have happened upon a swirling string orchestra rendering "I'm A Dreamer" from the 1929 Fox film "Sunny Side Up," and liked what they heard enough to settle back and let the radio dial alone.

Within moments though, these very same listeners might be back at their dial again --- but this time to tune away from a stilted, scripted interview of sports figure Ty Cobb. Likewise, this same broadcast that might, and surely did, attract casual sports enthusiasts, youngsters and rabid baseball fans alike probably --- within moments --- furrowed brows and sent hands scrambling for the dial when it was immediately followed by an oh-so-dainty rendition of "Wild Rose" from the 1929 Warners film version of "Sally." What were they listening to? What was this?

It was, for approximately four months, "The Coca-Cola Top-Notchers," a radio show that combined sweet music, soft drink sales and sports into one unwieldy and unappetizing oil and water concoction.

The premiere broadcast, dating from 19 March 1930 has survived, as does the one that followed, from the 26th of that month. The latter show refers to upcoming broadcasts which either aren't in circulation or haven't survived, but there's no evidence to suggest the show continued any later than late May or early June of 1930.

Additionally, the premiere broadcast is likely not only the oldest surviving, complete and non-transcribed radio shows in existence, but also the oldest musical-variety show existing in a complete format. The second show even includes a station ID break, for WEEI in Boston, which is preceded by a series of chimes: one of the earliest surviving recordings of the NBC chimes, though not the familiar G-E-C chime which evolved shortly thereafter.


NBC Chime - WEEI Boston - 26 March 1930

Surviving advertisements for the show (for which there appears only to have been two or three basic designs) and both show announcer Graham McNamee, emphasize the most unusual aspect of the show, which was made one of its selling points: An "all-string" orchestra, led by Leonard Joy, at the time a well known recording artist (and musical director at Paramount) that would bridge interview segments by Grantland Rice, a respected sportswriter of the era, with various figures from the world of sport

Graham McNamee was one of NBC's leading announcers of the 1920's and 30's, and after The Coca-Cola Top-Notchers, he would go on to be Ed Wynn's foil on "The Texaco Fire Chief," a show that enjoyed tremendous popularity and the staying-power that eluded the Coca-Cola effort.

In the surviving episodes of Top-Notchers, McNamee manages to work in the commercials for Coca-Cola fairly well, even with the crude sledgehammer-like copy he was given, no doubt by the D'Arcy advertising agency.

With apologies to sports historians, what all but kills "The Top-Notchers" are, unfortunately, the sports interviews. The interview with longtime Detroit Tigers star Ty Cobb, is a trial to listen to, as it's painfully obvious that Cobb is reading from a script that attempts and fails to create an illusion of impromptu conversation. Cobb is, however, quite a bit cleaned up from the terrifying figure that he often presented to rival ballplayers and others who got into his way.

The second surviving show includes an interview with Stewart Maiden, the mentor of golf champion Bobby Jones, although at this distance in time, the interview is largely of archaeological interest to golf fans.

Interestingly, both guests have Georgia connections of one kind or another. Ty Cobb was, of course, known as "The Georgia Peach," and just happened to be a significant investor in Coca-Cola, having bought stock during a reorganization of the company at the end of the Great War, which made him a wealthy man. Bobby Jones had close ties to Augusta National, the famed golf course where the Masters tournament was (and still is) played. Do you get the sense that the first two guests were chosen with an eye toward what would appeal to Coca-Cola executives?

The program musical interludes are, for lack of any other way to describe them, incredibly odd. For one thing, Leonard Joy's arrangements (for the "all string orchestra") seem to be not so much of 1930, but very nearly of the lush orchestrations of the 1950's and even 1960's --- almost bordering on the sound of "Light FM" muzak-type radio. Therefore, it comes as a jolt to suddenly realize that these swirling, soaring strings that might be at home in any elevator, supermarket or shopping mall circa 1975 are playing tunes from musical films of 1929 and 1930.

In the example of the premiere broadcast, offered below complete and intact (and apologies for the very mediocre sound quality!), musical selections include "I'm A Dreamer" ("from that famous talkie, 'Sunny Side Up,' says announcer McNamee,) the sentimental standard "My Gal Sal," "My Sweeter than Sweet" from the Paramount film "Sweetie," "Rosita," a tango, "Wild Rose," from the Warner Bros. film version of "Sally," "Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life," (which was featured in the 1929 RKO film "Syncopation,") and finally, "I'm Following You" from the Duncan Sisters' starring Metro vehicle, "It's A Great Life."

A solid, enjoyable parade of melody --- but again, there's something about the orchestration and arrangement that doesn't spell 1930 so much as 1960. Delightfully odd perhaps to us, but how I wish we knew what listeners of 1930 made of this.

As noted earlier, the show simply pulled up stakes and vanished by June of 1930. But why? Mark Pendergrast's book, "For God, Country and Coca-Cola" refers to the program, indicating that it had a budget of $400,000, a significant expenditure for 1930. With the looming Depression, this may have been too much for a show with the kind of production value that it had, even for a company that weathered the economic storm like Coca-Cola.

Another possibility is corporate unease with the show. Pendergrast notes that the tyrannical president of Coca-Cola, Robert Woodruff, hated the initial theme music Leonard Joy composed for the show, forcing a change from the original tango-influenced theme to the ethereal (drippy) waltz melody that replaced it. Ironically, this latter version would provide the signature tune for many other Coca-Cola sponsored shows on the radio, according to Pendergast. Coca-Cola's obsession with wholesome, upbeat theme and content for its radio shows may have also been a factor which made it difficult to sustain an early effort such as the Top-Notchers; certainly, the D'Arcy advertising firm was subjected to all manner of headaches in managing radio shows throughout the 1930's.

So, if you're seeking a half hour of "refreshing rest," I can't guarantee that you'll find it in listening to this oddly fascinating example of early radio, marketing cross-promotion and sports history --- but as it's one of our very few chances to listen in on 1930 radio precisely as it was originally transmitted, can you resist?

"The Top Notchers" - 19 March 1930


A puzzle: The sheet music for "Sally" (WB-1929) pictured to the left, heralds a song ("After Business Hours") that's nowhere to be found in surviving prints of the film. Has anyone thoughts or information?

Special thanks to friend and supporter, Eric O. Costello of New York City, for his contributions to this post!

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The Soul of an Adventuress

Prolific though ordinary popular vocalists of the 1920's, when remembered... if at all, usually lurk in the shadows cast by others in their profession who arrived somewhat earlier or later, or those who have been granted the mighty title of "Jazz Legend," either by fans or by record companies seeking a marketing hook.

Then too, there are those singers who would unknowingly catapult themselves to fame in the far distant future by choosing to retire early in their career, or just happening to unexpectedly die --- both mundane acts that can, with the passage of time, be looked upon as something spectacular or profound for no good reason.

Or, there's that most revered of all career moves: one could kill themselves with alcohol and/or drugs ---and if they somehow smash their car into a tree or wall in the process, so much the better grist for the mill.

And then there are singers who had the desire, need, talent and popularity required to slowly work their way through the cavalcade of changes in music and technology that would spring up throughout the early 1900's --- each one presenting a challenge of some sort, a hurdle to either overcome or to be used as a marker for the end of a career.

Vaughn DeLeath is, at least for me, the undiluted and largely unadorned essence of the 1920's female vocalist. Some, and indeed most do, opt for the likes of the vastly talented Ruth Etting or Annette Hanshaw, but you always know what you're going to get with these two singers before you hear any of their recordings for the first time --- and that's precisely why I find them dull.

Not so with DeLeath, who never really developed or locked herself into one single performing style, whether intentional on her part or not. Effortlessly switching between Torch Singer, Child, Red Hot Momma, The Loving Wife, The Heartbroken Sweetheart, Every body's Mother and Every one's Mammy, to Concert Singer and then to Female Crooner --- she simply became whatever type of woman was needed for the song, and then she'd give it her all --- and often then some. For that reason, before listening to a VDL recording for the first time, there's just no telling whom you'll encounter --- and I deem that something wonderful.

I won't detail DeLeath's life or recording career, as all that information can be readily found elsewhere on the Internet, but a few basic facts are in order. Born in 1894 (Mount Pulaski, Illinois), she began her vocal performing career as the Great War ended. In the oft-told tale, she was called upon by radio pioneer Lee De Forrest in 1920 to vocalize for his early "wireless telephone" experiments, thus gaining the title of "First Lady of Radio," a medium she would remain close to until her death in 1943. In addition to a few Broadway roles in the mid-1920's, she also participated in early television experiments that would include a twice weekly telecast for CBS in 1931 --- although exactly who was tuning in, or was able to, isn't clear.

What is clear, however, is that DeLeath is most easily and best encountered via the many, many (many!) 78rpm recordings she produced throughout the 1920's, on just about every major (and not-so-major) label imaginable.

Here's Vaughn DeLeath in late January of 1927, at her best --- or very nearly so, performing "Crazy Words, Crazy Tune." It's interesting to note that the song's catch-phrase, "Vo-doh-de-oh-doh" was precisely that: a short lived catch phrase that initially amused and then irritated the public. It's ironic then, that the phrase would be forever after trotted out to evoke the decade when, in fact, it mercifully flamed up and burnt away all within the space of a few months. The sort of song that allowed each individual performer to play with the lyrics as they liked, Vaughn DeLeath injects an already topical song with additional topical references --- putting the listener squarely within the time frame in which it was recorded.

"Crazy Word, Crazy Tune" (1927)

Infrequently mentioned in the press, except in ads heralding new record releases or radio broadcasts, here's an example of the latter. In this radio schedule for 8 October 1928, she's listed as appearing on the "Eskimos" (Clicquot Club Eskimos, I'm guessing) show airing on WGV, a Schenectady NY radio station (lower right column) that, an hour later, is mysteriously listed as offering a "television transmission."

A few months earlier, a syndicated column geared to the ladies mentions VDL's passion for collecting earrings --- a topic that would pop up in similar columns throughout the 20's and 30's, and undoubtedly a real passion for the singer. "It is her ambition to acquire the largest and most representative collection of ear ornaments outside a museum. She wrote somebody 'It's really remarkable what earrings will do to one's personality. A pair of long slender black ornaments, almost long enough to touch the shoulder, will transform a Sunday school teacher into a woman with the soul of an adventuress'."

That "Sunday school teacher with the soul of an adventuress" may have well been herself, for either she kept her personal life extraordinarily private or, most likely, she led a typically normal and uneventful one. Then too, there's no getting away from the fact that DeLeath was quite rotund and the whole business with the earrings strikes me as the sort of passion a woman like herself might nurture --- her focus being placed on delicate, fragile and decorative items that can be changed at whim whereas her figure wasn't and couldn't. A reach perhaps, but then again maybe not. Whatever the case, this mention of her hobby can be thought of as a deceptively simple "human touch" worth remembering.

From September of 1927, an equally deceptively simple tune that, at the last moment, throws the listener an unexpected curve. If, while listening, you find it all too impossibly saccharine to continue, I urge you to hold out --- at least once, for that last verse.

"The Tin Pan Parade" (1927)

Exceptionally busy throughout 1928 and 1929, the arrival of film musicals offered up a wealth of new recording material and DeLeath jumped right in, most often successfully --- and sometimes less so.

From Paramount's 1929 Chorus Girl On a College Campus themed musical, "Sweetie," comes VDL's rendition of "He's So Unusual." Deftly recorded by Helen Kane (who was also featured in the film,) I prefer DeLeath's version for a number of reasons, not the least of which is her ability to make it quite clear that the young man in question isn't sweetie material for her or, for that matter, any other woman.

"He's So Unusual" (1929)

DeLeath had her share of really bad recordings to be sure, and while the tune "Singing in the Bathtub" from SHOW OF SHOWS (WB-1929) would seem a natural for her, this is a misfire from the first groove. Thinly orchestrated with an arrangement seemingly done on the fly, DeLeath just doesn't know what to do with herself here and pulls out every trick in the book in an attempt to get it go somewhere, which it never does. Worst of all, she switches the line "a ring around the bathtub is a rainbow to me" into "a rainbow from me," putting a different and nauseating spin on the title event.

"Singing in the Bathtub" (1929)

Although DeLeath recorded two superb versions of tunes from the first all-Technicolor film musical ON WITH THE SHOW (WB-1929), "Am I Blue?" and "Birmingham Bertha" which have been widely circulated and issued on CD (imperfectly, I believe --with overly heavy noise reduction virtually eliminating the original upper sonics and creating a weird gurgling effect in the process) she would also partake in a double-sided Edison "Needle Cut" electric recording of a medley from the same film, joining other vocalists as "The Edison All Star Ensemble." Not surprisingly, she's given the two same tunes to handle here too as part of the medley --- which she does expertly.

Gems from "On With the Show" - Part 1

Gems from "On With the Show" - Part 2

As the 1930's dawned like a cold dark hangover after the frivolity of the 1920's, change was afoot everywhere. In the world explored in these pages, the musical film was being shunned, singing styles had altered to reflect the mood of the day, Edison's recording days were finished, and vaudeville was in it's death throes. Radio work kept DeLeath busily and gainfully employed, and she was as yet still enough of a personality to permit a syndicated column such as this one from June of 1931, entitled "How I Make My Husband Happy," with the husband in question being one Livingston (aka Leo) Geer, an artist. It all reads like prefabricated fluff, which it probably was.

Sketchy though its outlook was, vaudeville is also where we frequently find DeLeath throughout the early and mid-1930's, small-time bookings mostly, such as at the Upstate New York "State Theater," in February of 1934.


By 1938, newspaper writers (and readers) weren't content with just content exclusively about marriage balms and earring collections, and DeLeath couldn't have been overly pleased with one of many articles such as this one, that mentions that both she and Kate Smith "have not permitted corpulence to bar them from the spotlight," not unlike the later mention of a beauty pageant winner who lost her legs in an auto accident but found success by modeling for magazine covers, presumably only from the waist up.



Five years after making her artist husband happy in 1931, DeLeath apparently opted to make herself happy instead and changed partners in 1936, marrying "orchestra leader" Bernard Rosenbloom. An additional five years down the road, however, the match-up of vocalist and musician would fall away too, as mentioned here in a 1941 news item.




Around the time of her 1936 marriage to Mr. Rosenbloom, DeLeath was still a regular on the radio dial. Here, in a fragment from one of very few surviving transcription discs, DeLeath is introduced by an announcer and then sings "With All My Heart," a tune from the 1935 Broadway show "Her Master's Voice" which was filmed by Paramount in 1936 with Edward Everett Horton and Peggy Conklin as stars. At first, DeLeath seems a world away from the vibrant, rollicking voice of a few years earlier --- but just as you think she's given up the ghost, she opens up that gloriously mellow voice full throttle for the song's finish.

Vaughn DeLeath - Radio Transcription Disc Excerpt

The unhappy news began filtering through wire services on 27 May 1943, prefaced by "teaser" items such as this one, variations of which still are used today and invariably prompt a collective "Uh-oh!" from sympathetic readers.

In Buffalo, New York where she was appearing on Red Cross charity broadcasts, Vaughn DeLeath expired in her room at the city's Statler Hotel, aged 49 --- with a few years shaved off for print.

As with everything, what once was eventually departs and traces that it left behind are either discarded, picked apart, forgotten or destroyed. A mere two months after DeLeath's death and we find no happy reminiscences of the performer or her music, but instead we do find this unseemly news item sent out on the news wire:

No mention, mercifully perhaps, of what became of a lifetime's worth of scrapbooks, mementos and records --- that is, if she retained any. Surely though, a few? Likewise, we'll never know what became of the beloved collection of ear ornaments that once belonged to "a Sunday school teacher with the soul of an adventuress." For all we know, they could still be adorning the ears of women in Bridgeport, Connecticut --- and beyond, today. I like to think so.

To my mind, one of DeLeath's most effective recordings is the one that follows, "Lonely Lights Along the Shore," which dates from 1927. It's bound to hit home at least to some degree for most of you, and while the sonics are a bit dodgy, it's Vaughn DeLeath at her purest, unadorned best.

"Lonely Lights Along the Shore" (1927)

###

"For the Last Time Anywhere!"

By the time it was barely eight years old, "Fox Movietone Follies of 1929," an extraordinarily popular film that was seen by hundreds of thousands of people, seemingly vanished from this earth --- completely and thoroughly.

Although countless other Fox titles were lost in a catastrophic film storage facility fire in 1937, many of these films have since been discovered elsewhere and have, in some cases almost miraculously, struggled back to life again --- aided by passionate individuals, archives and organizations around the globe. However, it appears that "Fox Movietone Follies of 1929" died a violent and rather final death in that celluloid inferno of 1937.

Indeed, it's because that the film has left so precious little of itself behind that it tends to receive perfunctory mention at best in most explorations of the early musical or sound film and, even worse, is often so poorly described and misrepresented that each new book or article further obscures and mangles the film's fleeting but brilliant life.

Despite the title, "Fox Movietone Follies of 1929" wasn't the plot-less, all-star revue film it's often thought to be. Although MGM's "Broadway Melody" (a musical with backstage sequences) would reach screens in February of 1929, the arrival of "FMF29" two months later, signalled the arrival of the first sound film to be set entirely within a theater, the first "backstage musical" in the truest sense, which played on the screen in what amounts to a "real time" format --- long before that term existed --- and similar to the way "On With the Show" (WB-1929) is also constructed.

Simply, "Fox Movietone Follies of 1929" details one hectic day and opening night of a lavish musical revue, beset with problems stemming from romantic intrigue, creditors and investors demanding satisfaction, and a spiteful leading lady and her hopeful understudy. Approximately eight reels in length, the first two reels of the film are given over to plot and character exposition, which then gives way to a series of incredibly elaborate musical revue sequences. Between these sequences, the thread of the plot is picked up and advanced, until all is well by the film's finale with personal problems solved and the success of the apparent. Yes, of course we've seen this all before --- but it should be remembered that it was done here for the first time in a sound film.

The first of the film's musical sequences, which also serves as the opening of the show-within-the-movie, presents chorus girls as the various notes of a musical scale:

"DOn't expect an opening chorus

RAise your eyes and don't ignore us!

MEdiocre shows start with them,

FOllies have a newer rhythm!

SO we have no opening chorus,

LOts of shows did that before us!

SEE dear public how we know you,

DOn't get nervous, now we'll show you!"

Attention is then turned, somehow, to the lower limbs of the musically attired chorines, who proclaim:

"Legs - Legs! We're hot for plenty of speed,

We've got the thing you need,

Legs - Legs! No face could ever replace,

A pair of beautiful legs!

Legs - Legs! Hips - Lips! Eyes - Hair!

No face could ever replace,

a beautiful pair of legs!"

Another musical sequence immediately follows, a fantasy with dress mannequins springing to life, titled "Why Can't I Be Like You?," which served to introduce Dixie Lee, who had been recently featured in the Broadway production of "Good News." (The All Movie Guide cites "The Varsity Drag" as being performed in FMF29 --- it isn't.) As described in 1929 reports of the film:

"Strolling down Fifth Avenue, she (Dixie Lee) is struck by a marvelous display of gowns on models in a modiste's window. She stops to inspect them, wondering why she never can get clothes like those she sees in the window. She sings, 'Why Can't I Be Like You?' based on this theme, and is astounded when the models come to life and parade for her inspection."

Although the song was published as sheet music, it was never commercially recorded. For that reason, the words are offered here:

"I love to window shop, I always have to stop ---

and look at beautiful ladies.

Each time that I compare

their clothes with what I wear,

It makes me sigh -- I want to cry.

Why can't I be like you, and look the way you do?

To me you always seem too lovely for words,

Lovely feathers make lovely birds,

A yard of silk and lace, add to your charm and grace.

You're in my dreams, but my dreams never come true,

Why can't I be like you?"

Four tunes from FMF29 would gain widespread popularity via radio, commercial recordings, piano rolls and printed sheet music. The first, "That's You, Baby" had a unique presentation, with the setting being a beach and seaside amusement pier --- where the tune is performed by two couples, Sharon Lynn & David Percey, and Sue Carol & David Rollins. The "double duet" effect is heightened by the camera alternately cutting between each player and each pair as the lyrics are sung. Observing all this musical romancing are two small youngsters (one of which was Jackie Cooper,) who then perform a chorus of their own before they're joined in by the two couples and then a large singing and dancing chorus. (The concept of having children singing an adult love song proved popular with audiences, and would result in it being utilized, in a nearly identical manner, for "If I Had A Talking Picture of You" in a later 1929 Fox musical, "Sunny Side Up.")

"That's You, Baby" (1929)

For the second musical hit from the film, "The Breakaway," the approach used here was to have the tune performed in a two contrasting but loosely connected settings. Opening with a close shot of "little colored girl" rhythmically chanting "Breakaway! Breakaway! Breakaway! Bing-bing! Dottin' yo' eye! Bing-Bing! Dottin' yo' eye! Breakaway! Breakaway!," the camera pulls back to reveal a city street setting and a large chorus. Performer Sue Carol enters, and with an exuberant cry of "Hey Kids!," that cues the orchestra, she continues:

"Hey, flappers - this way, flappers, I'll floor ya --

with a new dance, oh what a new dance,

hotter than hot, and it's got new tricks in it!

I'm fixin' it for ya, So you can learn every new turn,

Oh here is the high spot!"

The scene then switches to that of a schoolroom filled with students. A bookish professor surprises his class by suddenly piping up:

"Dear students, I'm here students ---

To make you follow this rule,

When you leave school, go out to work, and never shirk!

Take others before others can take you!

Do as you're told, 'till you grow old,

Don't break away!

Sue Carol appears on the scene again (she was apparently en route to school in the first segment,) who leads the students in a chorus. Then, as the camera moves in close on Carol, she looks directly into the camera (thereby addressing audiences in both the imaginary theater and the audience watching the film) and says:

"Hey, how would you all like to learn how to do the Breakaway? You wouldn't?

How would YOU like to learn?

Come on, come on, three times upon your heels - that's it! Come on, try it!

Aw, Daddy, come on - that's it! See? Just as easy - come on YOU try it!

You ready? You ready, Arthur?"

The "Arthur" here is Arthur Kay, as the theater's orchestra leader. He replies, "For you? Always!" and the tune is given another and final closing rendition by all, including the little girl from the opening moments of the segment who wanders in to sing a verse by herself.

"Breakaway" (1929) Milt Shaw & His Detroiters

At this point, we have an opportunity to get as close to "Fox Movietone Follies of 1929" as we'll ever likely be able to. A fragment of audio from the actual film's soundtrack which somehow managed to beat the odds and survive on disc --- long separated from the footage it once accompanied to theaters only equipped to handle the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system.

Here, we can listen in on a bit of plot advancement. The setting is the girls' dressing room, immediately following the conclusion of the last number, "Breakaway," (although "That's You Baby" can be faintly heard in the background scoring.) Despite everything having gone smoothly so far, the chorus girls have issues with the new owner, George Shelby --- which they lay on thick, purely for the benefit Lila Beaumont (Lola Lane) who's divided in her allegiance to George and to the show. She suddenly explodes in anger, allowing catty star of the show, Ann (Sharon Lynn) to really twist the knife. Unfortunately, George walks in during Lila's outburst and deems her as the resident troublemaker --- a fact which delights Ann, who then plays it up for all she's worth.

This is followed by one of the film's color sequences (there appears to have been at least two), a moody, elaborate tableaux /piece called "Pearl of Old Japan" that evolves into a surreal "underwater" ballet involving sunken pirate galleons and skeletons --- surely a visual feast in pastel hues! --- with the onscreen action being directed and described via vocalization (by David Percey) of the mournful lyrics:

"Pearl of Old Japan" (1929) - Soundtrack Excerpt

"There's a legend in Japan, of a maiden and her man,

He fished for pearls they say, and disappeared one day,

She's left alone to pray and plan!

Pearl of old Japan, do all you can - to find your man.

If you have a notion he's under the sea,

show him your devotion --- go under the sea!

Throw all else aside, search far and wide,

where treasures hide.

And in the wreckage of a sunken galleon,

you are sure to find your man,

poor Pearl of old Japan!"

For the third pop-music hit the film would turn out, the jaunty "Walking With Susie" is first sung by iron lunged Frank Richardson, then given a song and dance treatment by what's described as a "colored troupe," and then finally by Richardson again for the finale. How the number was staged, or in what setting, is unclear --- but given the spirited "bumpin' and thumpin'" mentioned in the lyrics, it was doubtless anything but sedate. The tune's seldom heard opening verse, as performed in the film:

"Every day I take a walk, it's Sunday.

From Monday to Sunday not one day I miss,

every little walk that I can squeeze in...

this season, it pleasin' --- the reason is this...."

"Walking With Susie" (1929) Milt Shaw & His Detroiters

At last, the plot elements --- such as they are, converge and reach a head just prior to the film's last big number. Prickly show star Ann (Sharon Lynn), is still finding things to gripe over --- in this case the simple costume for "Big City Blues," designed to depict the plain workaday outfit of any number of nameless people who find themselves alone and friendless at holiday time, in an intolerably cheerful city filled with loving families and friends. Of course, she completely misses the point and after refusing to "make a fool of myself by repeating a costume," she very nearly stops the show cold --- until a furious Lila Beaumont snatches the costume away and dons it herself before stepping out on the stage.

In a vast departure from preceding musical sequences, "Big City Blues" presents us with the lone pathetic figure of a woman, huddled beneath a city street lamp --- snow falling about her. The commercial 78rpm recording offered by Annette Hanshaw, is perhaps the only one out of many renditions of the tune that appears to perfectly capture the mood and tone of the piece, as well as including all of the lyrics as they appeared in the screen version. According to contemporary reports, while the song was performed, to underscore the isolation of the singer and her lament, the screen displayed "occasional flashes of joyous holiday crowds, adding tremendously to the dramatic effect." Indeed, yes!

"Big City Blues" (1929) Annette Hanshaw

The star's understudy, Lila Beaumont scores a hit --- just in time to allow her to join in on the show and film's big musical finale, which masterfully blended all of the film's melodies (save for "Pearl of Old Japan"!) into one sequence --- brief snatches of each song performed by those who originated them, with Lila replacing the sulking Ann, as the show concludes with full orchestra and chorus basking in thunderous applause.

As George Shelby embraces his sweetheart, he's immediately offered $55,000 for his interest in the show and he agrees, just as quickly --- and no gallant quibbles about the extra 5K profit either! Still breathless from her instant rise to stardrom, Lila has no interest in pursuing it any further and readily agrees to return with George to Virginia, provided they marry first.

The film's final view is that of Stepin Fetchit (Lincoln Perry) and a heavily accented French costume designer, concluding what was a repetitive dialogue routine that extended throughout nearly the entire length of the film --- cutting to it and away again.

I hadn't mentioned Fetchit up to this point because, quite simply, his presence in the film is comparatively small --- just one of many plain truths about the film which have been misunderstood or mangled over the years.

True, Perry's "Fetchit" character scored big with audiences and enhanced his popularity greatly, but he was by no means the film's star, as eluded to or flatly stated as truth in some published works.

Portraying the theater custodian, Fetchit's dialogue is limited to an exchange with the Shelby character in the film's opening moment, and then --- a full reel later, he exchanges a very few words with cast members of the show while delivering flowers and telegrams to their dressing rooms.

After Dixie Lee's "Why Can't I Be Like You?" number, Fetchit encounters the aforementioned French costume designer, kicking off the ballet-slipper dialogue exchange. The scene lasts for about a minute, and then resumes for roughly half that time following the "That's You Baby" sequence. Later on, when it's learned that Ann has sent a cast member for a "colored skit" or blackout, out of the theater on an errand, Fetchit is called in to fill in for him, and the skit (consisting of ten lines of spoken dialogue) ensues and ends, to be immediately followed by "Breakaway."

We return to the Frenchman and Fetchit yet again just prior to "Walking With Susie," and his character is seen again for the last time prior to the film's closing moment, in what could be termed his only featured sequence in the film --- a fleeting, peculiar and unstructured solo musical bit that's utilized (in the film) to fill stage time while difficulties with the star of the show are being ironed out. Without any title, it's described thusly in a surviving transcription of the actual film:

Cut to Stepin dancing and singing on stage:

Stepin:

"Start steppin', Stepin Fetchit,

Turn around, stop and catch it ---

Now and then if you miss it,

start again, Stepin Fetchit,

Turn again go and get it,

If they holler, Stepin Fetchit."

Cut backstage - George and creditors

Without having the ability to see the film, written transcriptions of the film's action and dialogue, newspaper reviews and accounts, still photographs, and about eight minutes of audio all add up to a miserably poor close second --- but, they do allow us, if we take the time to do so, to "see" and briefly hear the contents of a lost film that, over seventy years ago was so popular with audiences that it was booked into theaters for sometimes as many as three return engagements -- a very uncommon event to be sure.

For now, and probably forevermore, it seems that late 1930 printed advertisements for the film which declared "Final Engagement! Last Time Anywhere!" were more profoundly and sadly prophetic than anyone could have possibly imagined.

Medley - "Fox Movietone Follies of 1929"

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On With the Show of Shows!

Prologue:

"Spare me, I bring a message! I'm the bearer of glad tidings!

Oh, if you will but listen to me..."

Executioner:

"Listen to you? You scum? We have listened to you for years!

You've wasted hours of our time, wasted... aye, years!

You're useless!

You're an alibi that stands for all that is worthless,

and now you will pay for your crime and by all the Gods above,

we intend to stamp you out forever!

Hear ye! Prologue is dead! On with The Show of Shows!"

~

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A Brief Pause

"Vitaphone Varieties"

Will Return on Monday, November 27th

...

Thank You! and Happy Thanksgiving!

An Evening's Pleasure

A time worn photograph, badly reproduced --- but one with a story behind it worthy of telling here, perhaps for the first time --- in a very long time indeed.

On an oppressively hot day, August 31st of 1929, a special train pulled into the railway station in Fresno, California and deposited a cargo the likes of which, if a similar event occurred today, would be fodder for every evening news broadcast and television "entertainment magazine" show imaginable.

Unloaded from the train to be met by throngs of cheering fans, photographers and Fresno's dapper mayor, Z.S. Leymel, was a fair portion of Warner Brothers-First National & Vitaphone's most precious cargo: it's stars and directors.

Monte Blue, Edward Everett Horton, Patsy Ruth Miller, Frank Fay, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Dorothy Mackaill, Alice White, Noah Beery, Georges Carpentier, Myrna Loy, Edna Murphy, Frank Lloyd, Lloyd Bacon, Loretta Young, Alice Day, Grant Withers, Tully Marshall, William Boyd, Hallam Cooley, Walter Woolf, Winnie Lightner, Lee Moran, Vivian Segal, Marion Byron, Sally Eilers, Bull Montana, William Bakewell, Armida Vandrill, Jaqueline Logan, and, apparently on a day-pass from Metro, Joan Crawford --- then acting as Mrs. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

Also stepping off the train and gaining somewhat less attention was Warners' General Manager of Theaters, Max Shagrin and Mrs. John C. Porter, wife of the mayor of Los Angeles. As the mayor's chauffeured limousine sped towards Fresno, it was said to be passed by a private airplane holding a party of eleven, with chief passenger being Warner Bros. executive Darryl F. Zanuck, and Benjamin Warner, father of the boys who would one day own a movie studio.

This wasn't, as one might suspect, a publicity opportunity concocted to drum up interest in studio's all-star revue "The Show of Shows" which would be released in four months time. Rather, all this performing and creative talent was gathered on a blistering day in Fresno to participate in opening day (and night) festivities for a something that would get scant attention today. A new theater opening with a new movie.

Built only a year before as part of the Pantages vaudeville house chain, the stunning theater (B. Marcus Priteca, Architect) blended Spanish, Moorish, and Italian Renaissance-Revival elements into one cohesive terra-cotta whole, with store fronts built into the flanking sides of the building that maintained the structure's design throughout.

While workmen and electricians worked throughout the day outside the theater to set up wooden blockades, bleachers, floodlights and a powerful street level loudspeaker connected to the stage microphone, the elite of the Warner Bros. studio made tracks to their accommodations at Fresno's Californian Hotel --- with some remaining at the hotel and others making personal appearances around town, including a ladies' club and a public "plunge" in Sunnyside, where a few of them joined flabbergasted citizens in the pool and "proved themselves expert swimmers."



By late afternoon, spurred on by word of mouth and decidedly spectacular newspaper ads such as the one pictured above that appeared in the morning newspaper, crowds had begun to form lines outside the theater that would eventually stretch for four blocks, creating numbers that were more than twice the capacity of the Fresno Warner Theater --- which by sunset, was bathed in floodlights and flashed with huge searchlights, setting it brilliantly ablaze against the darkening azure sky behind it.

While crowds continued to gather outside the theater, grateful for the slowly setting sun and breeze that came with it, a grand dinner for 150 in the ballroom of the Californian Hotel was winding up, that had been "marked by the attractive decoration of the ballroom and the lovely gowns of the various actresses." That summer, full body tans had been the vogue --- a fad that even spawned a film, "Tanned Legs" (RKO) --- and newspapers couldn't resist calling attention to the bronze effect (described as "white and gold skin tones") of Alice White, Edna Murphy and Mrs. Fairbanks (Joan.)

Shortly before 7:PM, Warner Bros. notables headed to the new theater, their arrival announced via a loudspeaker that did losing battle with the cheers, screams, and whistles that were thrown upwards from the crowd. By 8:30PM, with the show underway inside, lines outside continued to increase --- and by 10:PM, with hopes of getting inside gone, the crowds opted to wait for the stars to emerge --- although with less patience than previously displayed, requiring police to be called in to maintain order. Still and all, the mood seems to have been one of pure festivity and celebration --- and all for a form of entertainment that, only a year before, had barely made an impression on the public.


For the audience that was safely in the much coveted seats inside the theater, it was a memorable evening, "the high spots of which were Frank Fay's dexterous handling of the job of Master of Ceremonies, Monte Blue's speech, the unexpected appearance of Joan Crawford, who came on with her newly-acquired husband, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.; the broken English of Georges Carpentier, who some people still wish had licked Dempsey, and Bull Montana in a very short but effective impersonation of himself."

"After the personal appearances of the stars came the feature picture, 'The Hottentot,' starring Edward Everett Horton, supported by Patsy Ruth Miller. This picture was made from the stage success of the same name, and is based on the predicament of a man who, never having ridden a horse before, attempts to act as jockey in a famous steeplechase."



The film, "The Hottentot," directed by Roy Del Ruth, may seem at first an odd choice for so gala an event, as it wasn't a large scale film by any means, without the glitzy appeal of the Technicolor process that was starting to infiltrate a good many Warner films, and it was of fairly short length too. Yet, it achieved exactly what it was designed as: a swift-moving, light, action-comedy peppered with sharp, funny dialogue.

The New York Times: "...hilarious talking picture. The dialogue in the picture is fast and funny, and the audience at yesterday's matinee missed a good many laughs when its mirth overlapped the ensuing lines. This is an example, it is to be presumed, of how really enjoyable a picture can be by having only good, clean fun. Miss Miller is sufficient and pretty as the heroine."

Variety: "... the dialogue is abundantly hoked, with some male members of the cast exaggerating this by inferior performance, (but) the theme is touched by the whip at the start."

Mistaking Sam Harrington (Horton) who greatly fears horses, for a famous steeplechase rider, Peggy Fairfax (Miller) enthusiastically prevails upon him to ride the high-spirited horse, Hottentot. Director Roy Del Ruth added a clever touch of the sort later to be coined as "screwball" to his presentation of Miller and her horse riding and racing obsessed family, as the New York Times review by Mordaunt Hall indicates: "Her whole family is... horsey. The sheet music on the piano is composed of songs about equines, the statuary in the house are all models of horses, and the family plays a horse-racing table game while dressed in riding clothes."


Some seventy-seven years after that forgotten day and night in Fresno, time has been selective if not a bit cruel as to what remains today. Newspaper accounts, photographs --- perhaps a newsreel (surely Warners would have seen to that!), but little more. Prints and negatives for "The Hottentot" aren't known to exist, and the surviving audio from a European release version eliminates all the dialogue that prompted so many gales of laughter in theaters across the country. Although it can be compared to opening a rare old beautifully bound volume and finding no words imprinted inside, some faint idea --- or feel, of the film may be gained from the following audio selections.

Here, from an early portion of the film, an incredulous Edward Everett Horton is led into Patsy Ruth Miller's "horsey" home. Terrified of equines, Horton notes with mounting discomfort a telephone receiver in the shape of a horse's head, horse paintings and statuary everywhere and a piano laden with horse-themed tunes: "Horses," "The Old Gray Mare," "Barney Google," etc.

"The Hottentot" (1929) Excerpt 1

From the closing moments of the film, following Horton's unintended steeplechase victory --- Horton's confession to Miller of the fluke and his loathing for the beasts, which segues into reconciliation and his romantic victory in Miller's arms. The jaunty melody that closes the film can also be heard in a fox-hunting sequence ("Bring on the dogs and horses," shouts the stage manager) in another Warners production of 1929, "On With the Show."

"The Hottentot" (1929) Excerpt 2

On the bright side, the theater that began life as a Pantages and became the Warners a year later, still survives --- miraculously intact, largely unaltered inside and out, and seemingly lovingly maintained by the present owners. Best of all, it's still very much alive --- used regularly for select film, stage and musical performances --- and spared the saddest of all fates for a vintage theater, that of being shuttered and left to slowly decay before being torn apart by heavy machines and sledgehammers.

I've always felt that if not buildings, then at least places certainly, retain a memory or an imprint of an important event that had been laden with human emotion. If so, the theater that proudly stands today --- seeming perhaps a bit dismayed at the changes that surround it --- has at least one fond memory, often replayed in ghostly silence, embedded deep inside itself. Can a building smile? I believe this one can, and does.

###

A Cup of Coffee, A Rose, A Magician and a Monkey

A Variety Programme.

One of the nicest things--- and people, to arrive as 1925 busied itself packing to leave, was "The Charlot Revue," which played New York City's Selwyn Theater until March of 1926 --- a most respectable run for a show of this sort, that featured an "all English cast." It's really not impossible to imagine that for at least some (alright --- a few?) of those attending, it may have well been their first glimpse of a real live English variety performer, and audiences and critics alike were enchanted. That at least, is a fact.

A tune that emerged from the show which clicked almost instantly, and would be revived numerous times over the coming decades was "A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich an You," with music by Joseph Meyer and lyrics by Irving Caesar. With starkly effective interpretation and performance by Gertrude Lawrence and Jack Buchanan, it almost seems a defining moment in 1920's musical comedy.

"A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich and You" (1925)



Swiftly becoming a pop hit across the country, by the end of 1926 it would be given a far lusher but no less magnificent treatment by Roger Wolfe Kahn and his
Orchestra, who recorded it for Victor in December of that year.

Roger Wolfe Kahn (1926)




Blossoming in the mid 1900's and really taking off with the November 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb, Orientalism swept the United States as all aspects of Eastern culture worked their way into architecture, design, fashion, cinema and popular music --- a trend that never completely faded nor reversed itself, as most others did.

"Exotic" musical pieces flooded the market, many of them admittedly terrible ("Mummy Mine" comes to mind here), but some of them wonderful. "Hindustan," composed by Wallace & Weeks, is doubly wonderful as it not only neatly encapsulates the Orientalism musical trend, but is also so firmly rooted to 1918 that to listen to it is to hear, see and all but feel a warm summer's evening of that year --- preferably at a brilliantly illuminated Luna Park, with the music rising from one of the park's many bandstands, softly wafting through the sound of laughter and ocean surf.

"Hindustan" (1918) Joseph C. Smith Orchestra


By 1920, those seeking music that hearkened back to an earlier day of the "heart song" were seeing their choices quickly narrowing, as new syncopated rhythms began to replace the older and more familiar brand of recording. One notable exception arrived in March of 1920, courtesy of Columbia Records and vocalist Henry Burr, "The Rose of Washington Square." While it would be a parody version (performed by Fannie Brice among others) which would grab the brass ring and ears of listeners, I must say I was genuinely surprised when encountering the original "straight" version for the first time.

It's so sentimental, but so gently sweet a little tune that it defies all odds stacked against it from the get-go, and succeeds wildly. After all, what could be a prettier or more heartbreaking thought than a butterfly falling in love with a rose that grows, forgotten and alone, in a dim corner of a busy city park? And then, "when summer turns to autumn" --- well, it's really enough to prompt weeping at the utterly innocent and silly loveliness of it all, the sort of thing that seems to have long been torn away from life, music and art.

"Rose of Washington Square" (1920) Henry Burr


"A garden that never knew sunshine, once sheltered a
beautiful rose ---

And a butterfly gazed in to tell her one day, a story
the whole world knows ---


Rose of Washington Square, a flower so fair,
should blossom where the sun shines!

Rose, for nature did not mean that you should blush unseen, but be the queen of some fair garden!

Rose, I'll never depart! But swear in your heart,
your love to tell!

I'll bring the sunbeams from the heaven to you,
and give you kisses that sparkle with dew,
my rose of Washington Square!"

The lyrics take a sorrowful turn after this, but I'll leave you to discover precisely how (if you choose) and mention that the recording's final moments artfully incorporate a chorus of an older (and equally sentimental) tune, "Ma Blushin' Rosie."

Let's return now to the year we began this post in: 1925. A year that wasn't all gloss and frivolity by any means, it also marked what's been come to be known as "The Scopes Monkey Trial," a Tennessee event (basic details of which you're doubtless familiar) that would reverberate forever after its conclusion in July of 1925.

By October of 1925, light hearted politically minded sorts might have even danced to a musical spin on the event, and although the actual contents of the following recording has marginally little to do with anything of the trial except monkeys and Tennessee, little else was needed. A recording by the Victor Novelty Orchestra (with vocal by the always perfect Billy Murray) awaits for the eager, or merely curious.

"Monkey Biz-Ness Down in Tennessee" (1925)


A chimpanzee also figures into our next and final entry, although not without some difficulty in getting there!

George Jessel. "Who?" you might ask, and well you may --- while others might nod in recognition of the name. Fully deserving of vast amounts of space, I'll instead refrain by mentioning that he began a lifelong career at the age of ten by entering vaudeville, under expert tutelage of entertainment legend Gus Edwards. By 1919 he had produced his own solo show, and by 1925 he was starring in the Broadway stage version of "The Jazz Singer." The oft-repeated story is quite true. When Warners approached him with an eye towards a filmed version of the play --- but with the addition of a mechanical device known as the Vitaphone, Jessel demanded an impossibly high salary and was out, leaving the Warner Brothers to seek another stage name for the film. For better or worse, how different film history might have been!

Although his decision would haunt him for the rest of his life, in Jessel's defense, he couldn't have possibly known the electrifying effect the Vitaphone would have upon an unsuspecting cinema world, so (to quote an old song title) he's more to be pitied than censured. Doubtless, he didn't think twice when Warners called again, and after filming a silent comedy ("Private Izzy Murphy"-1926) and Vitaphone short in the studio's Brooklyn studio ("A Theatrical Booking Office"-1927) his film career was still far from spectacular.

In the article at the right, circa July of 1927, we catch a beautifully cocky George Jessel weakly pondering the inexplicable success of the Vitaphone, and seemingly completely missing the point of it at the same time.

"I believe the Vitaphone has about had its run," he declares. "It is so make-believe. It is impossible to make the public believe anything is real when they see the image on the screen and hear the voice coming from another part of the theater. The secret of success in the motion picture industry has been that the public believes what it sees on the screen. The Vitaphone will in time dispel such a belief."

The article goes on to mention that Jessel is "now rushing work on 'Ginsberg the Great,' his second picture, so he can get back to New York for a winter stage engagement."

What the article didn't mention, and what Jessel himself may have not known at the time, was that "Ginsberg the Great" would be released four months later with a synchronized Vitaphone music and effects score for use in key theaters already wired for the sound on disc system.

With Vitaphone or without, "Ginsberg the Great" (WB-1927) was received politely but with scant attention or fanfare in most cities. Theater booking and, in turn, newspaper advertising was kept to a minimum, and when it does appear in ads, it's without mention of a soundtrack, and booked into the smallest of theaters --- second billed after a live stage performance or wee hours closing entertainment at a "Midnight New Year's Eve Frolic" in a small Midwestern theater.

No small wonder that it's a lost film then, a pity too as it really sounds quite engaging and just the sort of film that, with Langdon or Lloyd (but especially Lloyd) and with a bit of re-tooling, could have been something magnificent. Jessel plays Johnny Ginsberg, a tailor's apprentice who longs to be a great magician.

When a carnival arrives in town he leaves with it, joining the troupe as a "double" for various sideshow attractions. What Ginsberg doesn't know is that the troupe is also a traveling gang of thieves --- and that their featured attraction, a trained chimpanzee, is also a skilled pickpocket. This premise allows Ginsberg to be used as a dupe and a fall guy, and one sequence sounds especially promising: Setting their eyes on the Russian Crown Jewels (purchased by a theatrical magnate who befriends Ginsberg) as the haul of lifetime, they enlist the troupe's Oriental dancer "Sappho" (played by a perfect-for-the-role Gertrude Astor) to seduce Ginsberg and become his girl, which allows her to accompany him to the rich gentleman's home. Once inside, she gives entry to the rest of her gang --- the jewels are stolen, but Ginsberg catches on and a chase ensues with Ginsberg using ingenuity (and likely his magical devices) to capture each thief individually for the film's finale. Johnny Ginsberg is rewarded, and given a performance contract by the grateful owner of the gems.

It sounds pretty wonderful, but we'll likely never know for certain how well it all translated to the screen. Certainly not a physical comedian, nor either especially elegant or comical in appearance, the young Jessel's best features seem to have been his very expressive face --- large dark eyes, a gentle childish mouth, and a rather prominent nose. Then too, there's no getting around the fact that he was rightfully deemed an "ethnic type," which is something that didn't translate well across the country, or to be blunt, simply wasn't welcomed in all theaters.

Still and all, the combination of magic, a circus and sideshow, an expressive comedian, stolen jewels, Gertrude Astor as "Sappho" and a trained chimpanzee makes this all seem irresistible --- certainly to this writer!

In the surviving Vitaphone disc extract from "Ginsberg the Great" that closes this entry, it's fairly simple to envision the film's final scenes as the score appears to have been typically closely orchestrated to match the screen action.

The gang stealing the gems while Ginsberg entertains guests downstairs --- cymbals, coconut shells heard here. Then, using little physical effort but a lot of his magician's ingenuity, suavely knocking off the crooks one by one. Jaunty, evocative music for that. Wonderful stuff this! Popular music archaeologists will note the clever interpolation of Irving Berlin's "The Sncopated Walk" and "Discoveries" (from the Broadway revue "Watch Your Step") into the score. As melodic as it is effective? Who knows? But, let's hope --- and wait. And while we wait, we can listen:

"Ginsberg the Great" (1927) Vitaphone Disc Excerpt

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Monkey & Man Image DN-0084029 courtesy the Chicago Daily News Collection, Chicago Historical Society

"An Awful Ordeal"

Not often, but every now and again, a period film review can serve as a window --- allowing the modern reader to invisibly slip into a theater of the dim past and briefly become part of the audience, seeing and hearing what the reviewer did through his eyes and ears.

Better still, if the review was exceptionally well written, and if you're attuned to this sort of thing, it's not impossible to transport yourself to a cinema demolished decades ago, surrounded by an audience that has similarly been returned to dust, watching a film that was allowed to rot and vanish entombed within a rusted canister tossed in the corner of a vault.

Admittedly, that all sounds rather dramatic --- but the fact remains that as we move further and further away from a point in time, what were once fixed elements all begin to fall away until we're left with only the most meager of fragments to explore, making the rare first-hand account all the more precious.

The fact that the 1929 First National film "Fast Life" had just what the title prophesied and is now deemed a lost film doesn't necessarily mean the loss is an especially grievous one. However, simply by being "lost", this automatically attaches an element of importance to even the most routine of films that, in all honesty, likely isn't deserved. To be fair, the film's featured players --- Loretta Young, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Chester Morris --- all have their justly deserved fans, and if the film survived today it would likely be trotted out every now and again on Turner Classic Movies, serving as either part of a "birthday tribute" to any one of the film's stars. Or, more often than not, it would simply be relegated to impossibly late or early hour time slots into which vintage material such as this always seems to be carelessly flung, serving as what amounts to filler material.

The real value to be found in "Fast Life," were it possible, is that it seems to have been mighty powerful stuff --- if not especially by late 20's film standards, then by the fact that sound itself appeared to attach weight and reality to topics and themes that seemed, in silent films, more the illusions they actually were. A true Pre-Code film in every sense of the term. Audiences, exhibitors and local censorship boards took note. Not enough to create any real fuss --- but enough to at least prompt ads like the one below, firmly barring children from attending. Then as now, I doubt this was seriously enforced --- and it likely even boosted business, but such proclamations weren't common at the time.

So just what was "Fast Life" all about? Opening with a party sequence, we meet the two youthful leads, Loretta Young and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. as a secretly married couple. Following the party, one of Young's admirers --- believing her fair game, creeps through her bedroom window, is thought to be an intruder and is shot dead. Fairbanks is hauled off to prison --- tried for murder and found guilty, and scheduled for a trip to the electric chair.

As it turns out however, the innocent intruder was actually shot dead by another guest who was skulking about, the scheming Chester Morris --- who is not only the son of the Governor, but the nephew of the prison warden as well! A set-up? Do you think?

At the last possible moment, the warden (aware of Morris' misdeed) breaks down, releases Fairbanks from the death chair, and sends the police to fetch Chester. Rather than face arrest and the wrath of his Governor-Father, Morris shoots himself dead just as the young couple are reunited.

Precisely the sort of film one would expect from Warners circa 1932 or 1933, but amidst the comedies, costume dramas and pastel hued musicals of 1929 it's not surprising that audiences didn't quite know what to make of it, and that critics thought it decidedly far fetched. It didn't perform exceptionally well at the box office, and then crept off --- never to be seen again.

But, before we move on, let's return to the audience and critic mentioned at the start of this post. At the close of New York Times reviewer Mordaunt Hall's rather ordinary discussion of the film's plot, one of those rare windows in time that I spoke of suddenly opens:

"There is a Governor of State who, after listening to final arguments for and against the death penalty, sums up the whole business by saying: 'This has been an awful ordeal for all of us.'

A wave of modulated laughter arose from the audience, who appeared to take it for granted that the man with the power of life and death in his hands was including those in the theater in his mournful statement."

Alright, it's not much --- but because of it, we know first-hand (even if remotely) how the audience reacted to the film and interpreted an intended highly dramatic moment as one of unintentional humor. Mordaunt Hall, being his usual perceptive self, picked up on this and, as it turns out, liked the irony so much that he titled his review "An Awful Ordeal." I pay humble homage to Mr. Hall, and that audience at New York's Central theater on August 16th of 1929 by doing the same here with the title of this post.

Failing discovery of picture and audio material for "Fast Life," all that exists for the film now is various printed matter and a set of discs for the Spanish language export version --- although it's a safe bet that the American discs survive in private hands or in an archive. Like other early Warners & First National sound films set for export, the existing synchronized Vitaphone soundtrack was removed, and accompanying visuals for the lengthy dialogue sequences were trimmed. Inter-titles (in this instance, Spanish) were then inserted wherever deemed appropriate, and the finished product was then given a new synchronized disc soundtrack --- largely music, peppered with sound effects. As was usually the case, moments of song were usually left intact or newly performed in the appropriate language, loosely --- very loosely, "dubbing" the voice for the original performer.


Four extracts from the surviving Spanish language release version:


1) From the opening moments of the film, we're at the "wild party" being thrown by Young and Fairbanks. As it was in the American version, a vocal by an unnamed female vocalist singing "Fast Life" remains intact, but this then segues into the "new" material, in this case an unidentified female singer performing the film's theme song ("Since I Found You") in Spanish, replacing what I presume was Loretta Young's voice --- who herself may have been dubbed in the American version. Confused?

"Fast Life" (1929) Excerpt 1

2) Rushing ahead past the middle portion of the film, it's time for Fairbanks to be led in a final prayer in his cell, before being led down the long, long hallway to the awaiting chair of doom. The scenes cut between Fairbanks and the last mile, the Warden thinking it all over, and an inconsolable Young in the prison office with the Governor, dabbing at her eyes. The warden relents! A phone rings! Hurry! We've only seconds before an innocent man is put to death!

"Fast Life" (1929) Excerpt 2

3) A bit further ahead, and the jig's up for Chester Morris --- who's laying low somewhere (this portion of audio has been left intact from the original American release) but the approach of wailing sirens heralds his pending doom. Morris can be heard, faintly, sobbing.

"Fast Life" (1929) Excerpt 3

4) Lastly, the film's theme song is heard for a moment --- but then a gunshot and scream signals Morris having had taken the coward's way out --- leaving just enough time for a glimpse of Young and Fairbanks embracing. Fade out, and then up swings the exit music recorded for the film --- a peppy rendition of the film's theme song.

"Fast Life" (1929) Excerpt 4

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"The New Thrills That Sound Brings"

For as many up-tempo, jazzy and otherwise "hot" melodies attached to films of the transitional and early sound years, there are nearly as many quiet and even solemn ones too. Here then, an assortment of tunes less boisterous than those usually featured in these pages.

Paramount's "Lilac Time" (1928) broke more than a few box-office records around the country upon its late 1928 premiere, and proved so popular that it was being booked for "Special Return Engagements" well into 1929. Synchronized with sound effects and a musical score featuring vocalization of the film's theme song, "Jeannine I Dream of Lilac Time," various period newspaper accounts indicate that a silent version, also in release at the same time, didn't do nearly as much business --- a point I suspect that wasn't lost on small theater owners still as yet unsure about the coming deluge.

"Jeannine, I Dream of Lilac Time" was recorded by numerous artists for all the major and dime-store record labels --- here's one of the prettiest, recorded for Victor in July of 1928, by Nat Shilkret and the Victor Orchestra, with a vocal by Franklyn Bauer --- a featured singer in the "Ziegfeld Follies of 1927." (See post, "A Castle in the Air.")

"Jeannine, I Dream of Lilac Time" (1928)

Although "Our Dancing Daughters" (MGM-1928) is often thought of as the ultimate jazz-age film --- all flying legs, cocktails and speed --- it was given a theme song that's as wistful as it is melancholy, a waltz tempo piece called "I Loved You Then As I Love You Now," which wafts throughout the film's synchronized score and is even vocalized by a disembodied voice in one especially effective sequence.

Recorded in late September of 1928 for Victor, once again our vocalist is Franklyn Bauer.

"I Loved You Then As I Love You Now" (1928)


The theme song for Marion Davies' "Show People" (MGM-1928), while not as melodically somber as the previous tune, has arguably even more dramatic lyrics however, placing the vocalist at he very cross roads of life itself! In fact, it's called "Cross Roads," and it figures prominently in the film's original synchronized score.

The version heard here was recorded for Victor in late October of 1928, by Nat Shilkret leading the Victor Orchestra and with a corpulent but silvery voiced tenor by the name of Frank Munn who'd later enjoyed a radio stint as "The Masked Tenor."

"Cross Roads" (1928)



The 1929 Fox film "Married In Hollywood" was a lavish original operetta (by Oscar Straus, no less) featuring former Broadway performers Norma Terris and Harold J. Murray. The rather sensationalistic title might have been enough to lure early audiences, but this was one case where heavy newspaper publicity seemed to hurt rather than help --- as it became clear this was anything but a risque romantic romp set in a movie studio. A string of unmemorable tunes attached to the film didn't help either at a time when the competition was incredibly heavy and formidable. Outside of key cities, the film performed poorly --- no "held over another week!" announcements for this one. Attending audiences seeking a bit of the largely undelivered Hollywood thrill would have, at least, been treated to views of the Fox studio and back lot in the film's final reel --- one of the "many scenes" filmed in the Multicolor process. Amazingly, this lone Multicolor sequence has survived to be trotted out at infrequent archive and museum screenings, and I'm told it's duly impressive.

The film's love theme, "Dance Away the Night" is pleasant enough as these things go, and it's performed here by the Columbia Photoplayers, who recorded it in September of 1929.

"Dance Away the Night" (1929)

Although not featured in any film of the period that I'm aware of, the 1929 melody "Deep Night" is included here simply because it's an incredibly sensuous piece of music, worthy of attention. "Sensual" isn't a word that usually springs to mind in conjunction with Rudy Vallee, and yet his success was based upon just that --- in addition to his obvious talent. The photo at the left leaves no doubt that he was a romantic figure of his time, and he had legions of rabid fans precisely of the sort that would soon clamor for Bing Crosby and later, Frank Sinatra.

The strident, thumping rhythm strikes me as an End of Jazz Age "Bolero," and if that isn't enough to convince you, then the understated purring vocal refrain by Vallee just might. Whispered words on a moonlit summer evening of long ago.

"Deep Night" (1929)


Interestingly, foreign audiences attending the export version of Sophie Tucker's tour de force "Honky Tonk" (WB-1929) might have been surprised to hear the tune utilized within the film's synchronized soundtrack, utilized as suitably dramatic underscoring for what would be the first of many confrontations Tucker would have with her insensitive daughter, played by Lila Lee. Nowhere to be found in the surviving American sound discs, here it is, from the overseas release version.

"Deep Night" (1929) Vitaphone Disc Excerpt



An unexpected and uncharacteristically piquant moment arises within Alice White's "Show Girl In Hollywood" (FN-1930) wherein actress Blanche Sweet effectively stops the show with what amounts to a soliloquy of words and music that form a cautionary tale told for the benefit of Alice White who, judging by her reaction shots, seems to have absorbed little and understood less. Audiences and critics did however, and Blanche Sweet's performance remains the highlight of an otherwise uneven "inside" look at Hollywood fame and the talkie industry that swings wildly from awesome moments and grand musical spectacle to decidedly cheap laughs and inane situations of the sort that could be found in the cheapest of poverty row two-reelers. In the end, though, it's this simply staged sequence with Blanche Sweet that lingers in the memory, excerpted here from disc source material.

"There's A Tear for Every Smile in Hollywood" (1930)


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A Fancy Lady and the Winnipeg Kid

One of the most endearing figures to romp across the screen between 1929 and 1930 was actress, comedienne, dancer and singer Marjorie White. Offering able support and more than holding her own against the likes of Janet Gaynor & Charles Farrell, The Three Stooges, Wheeler & Woolsey and even "Charlie Chan" and Will Rogers, she lit up the screen with a manic energy and distinct personality of the rare sort that didn't lose audience favor as quickly as it would with Winnie Lightner or even White's frequent co-star, El Brendel.

A mere twenty-seven years old at the time of her death --- an auto accident near Santa Monica, California --- Marjorie White began her career as Marjorie Guthrie during the First World War as a member of the "Winnipeg Kiddies," a performing troupe comprised of youngsters that toured Canadian and American cities. After outgrowing the "kiddie" designation (although only 4'10" tall), the combination of marriage, a name change and an arrival in New York City resulted in the start of a career that would remain active until her demise. Vaudeville tours on the Orpheum and Pantages circuits with Thelma White (where they appeared as the "White Sisters") would eventually lead to Marjorie answering the call to Hollywood in where she appeared in six films for Fox between 1929 and 1930 alone, four of them musicals.

Although a key figure in "Happy Days" (Fox-1930) --- with the film's minstrel show/revue portions being hung upon a thread of a plot led by Marjorie White, it's "New Movietone Follies of 1930" that allows for the one and only spotlight performance in her film appearances. One of many elaborate musical sequences in the film, "Talking Picture Queen" presents White as a young nobody arriving at the studio gates, eager to impress studio executives who pleads "How I long to be synchronized!"

Quickly advancing through the required course of voice and dance lessons, she emerges a full blown talkie diva at last --- only to be joined by a thundering herd of dancers who share her moment of glory. It all plays far better than described, and is one of those rare self-depreciating jabs at the movie industry, set to music, that remains timeless and as sharp as ever.


"New Movietone Follies" also served as a showcase for a fascinating yet shadowy actress, Noel Francis --- of whom I could find little personal detail aside from the oft-repeated fact that she hailed from Texas, was disowned by her father for choosing a performing career, and was a former Ziegfeld girl before entering films in 1929.


The image of Francis at the left, while hard to equate with the languid yet edgy actress seen throughout the 1930's was, interestingly, used as a publicity image for her appearance in 1931's "Blonde Crazy," despite it obviously dating back to a far earlier day. Possessing a surprisingly powerful singing voice that was given free reign in a rendition of "Cheer Up and Smile" in the 1930 Movietone revue, it was her distinct and beautifully melodic speaking voice that really stands out. Although her appearance, personality and mannerisms would vary quite a bit in her 1930's roles (she seems unquestionably ill in a small unbilled role in 1933's "Havana Widows," a remake of Winnie Lightner's 1930 "Life of the Party") the strangely appealing quality of her voice --- always somewhat halting with a note of repressed hysteria --- remained intact.

Of her later roles, she's especially memorable in a small cameo lasting but a moment in 1931's "So Big," where she's seen as a prostitute (billed as "A Fancy Lady") wearily roaming the nearly deserted night-time streets. Encountering an industrious young woman (Barbara Stanwyck) and her toddler son readying for bed in their wagon, Francis is utterly heart-breaking in her display of impossible yearning for the maternal relationship and life she knows will never be hers. Equally, while decidedly a minor villain in 1932's "Night Court," she's incredibly effective here too in a role that allows her to be victimized by Walter Houston and then, in an attempt to gain something out of the ordeal --- she attempts to have her way with a drunken Phillips Holmes, allowing her a priceless fade-out moment as the intended seduction fails miserably.



By 1935 steady work in increasingly smaller roles began to fall away, and by 1937 she left the screen as quietly as she entered it, but not without leaving many small but perfect, gem-like moments behind.


The history behind "Happy Days" is also tied into that of the Fox 70mm widescreen process named "Grandeur," --- a topic that forthcoming posts will eventually explore. For now at least, it should be noted that while "Happy Days" survives, it's commonly seen only via dreadfully poor quality video dubs, riddled with splices and missing a number of sequences. A number of years ago, a superb quality print was viewed at New York's Museum of Modern Art, indicating that it's still out there, perhaps waiting for the studio that created it to show the slightest interest in it once again. I wouldn't hold out hope, however.

"New Movietone Follies" also survives in a beautifully restored print that has been given a few isolated screenings here and there, but apparently no thought has been given to DVD release or cable airings in addition to its sporadic outings. It's the old, old story.

Note that in the above ad and in the one to the right, prospective patrons are being assured that neither film is a revue. An early indication of a tide that was slowly but surely turning!

From "Happy Days," an unnecessarily pretentious but enjoyable medley of tunes recorded by the New Mayfair Orchestra in 1930. Included, "I'm On A Diet of Love," "We'll Build A Little Home Of Our Own," "Mona" and "Crazy Feet."

Medley - "Happy Days" (1930)



Also from "Happy Days," perhaps the film's best tune, "Mona" performed here by Ben Selvin and his Orchestra. The vocal, by Irving Kaufman, doesn't do justice to Frank Richardson's soaring version as performed in the film --- but it comes close!

"Mona" (1930)


Two selections from "New Movietone Follies of 1930." The first is Noel Francis' solo number, "Cheer Up and Smile," which has similarities to a bit of business contained within Janet Gaynor's performance of "Sunny Side Up" in the well known 1929 film of the same name.

"Cheer Up and Smile" (1930)

Next up is a bit of romantic intrigue and melody. Swedish dialect comedian El Brendel is mistakenly thought to be a rich "lumber king" by White and Francis, his secret (he's a servant) is discovered by the latter, who then wants to rid herself of him as quickly as possible --- and feigns gallant self-sacrifice to unload him on an unsuspecting Marjorie White. This is followed by a comedic duet/wrestling match between Brendel and White titled "Bashful."

"Bashful" (1930)

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"The Best Sound in Town"

Paramount's "The Cocoanuts" was selected as the grand re-opening feature for the Metropolitan Theater in Circleville, Ohio --- a theater which clearly had some issues with disc based sound reproduction systems, as revealed in the delightful ad to the left. Although Irving Berlin's "When My Dreams Come True" was to emerge as the hit from the filmed version of the 1926 stage musical, it's ultimately dreary when compared to "The Monkey Doodle-Doo," which --- oddly, wasn't widely recorded at all.

A lush version of "When My Dreams Come True" that hails from Australia, featuring a female vocalist who does as well or better than Mary Eaton.

"When My Dreams Come True" (1929) - Australia

As hot a tune as Paul Whiteman's band ever approached, "The Monkey Doodle-Doo" was recorded under the house-band alias "Busse's Buzzards" for Columbia in the last days of 1925. To quote the movie ad, "to miss it is a regret."

"The Monkey Doodle Doo" (1925)


Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer spared no expense advertising and promoting "The Broadway Melody," a landmark film which well deserved whatever boasting rights the studio could muster up. Theaters that booked the film had access to a wide array of ad copy, including one clever bit of advertising showmanship in the form of what looked to be an honest to goodness Western Union telegram from MGM to the theater owner, granting them --- above all other theaters in the area --- the right to show the film based upon their individual sterling qualities as presenters of fine motion pictures. Although this gimmick probably fooled as many newspaper readers as it was supposed to, audiences would arrive in droves with or without it.

It's interesting to note in the ad at left that even the smallest of local theaters presented the film with a specially recorded Overture (by New York's Capitol Theater Orchestra), discs of which seem to have fallen by the wayside.

Commercial recordings of the film's tunes are as many and varied as they are familiar, so here's two lesser known renditions of the title tune.

The first, by incredibly prolific songster Irving Kaufman (was there a record label he didn't record for?) is surprisingly restrained for a vocalist with a voice that could rival a klaxon and burst from the grooves of even the cheapest of dime-store discs.

"The Broadway Melody" (1929)

Odd though the combination is, Hawaiian guitars don't seem especially out of place in the second version, by a group calling themselves "The Four Aces," on the bargain Velvet-Tone label.

"The Broadway Melody" (1929) - The Four Aces

Little more than a scant minute or so in length, a fragment of recently discovered Technicolor footage will eventually allow us a glimpse --- for the first time in over seventy-five years --- of what so captivated audiences and critics alike when the Warner Bros. all-Technicolor production "On With the Show!" first premiered.

The prognosis is somewhat more optimistic for Warners' other smash-hit all-Technicolor release of 1929, "The Gold Diggers of Broadway," a film that seems intent upon slowly putting itself back together after decades of assisted exile from the world of the living.

British dance orchestras seem to have had a remarkable knack for producing the best 78rpm medleys from early musicals, and what follows are three of the best.

The first is a selection of tunes from "On With the Show" recorded by the Broadcast Dance Orchestra in late 1929. Included: "Welcome Home," "Am I Blue?," "Birmingham Bertha," "Let Me Have My Dreams," and the unfortunate "Lift A Julep To Your Two Lips.

Selections from "On With the Show" (1929)

From "Gold Diggers of Broadway," a two-sided medley (joined into one file here) quite unique in that it covers just about every tune performed in the film (aside from incidental scoring), three of which were never commercially recorded in the United States to my knowledge. Although the sonic quality is a bit thin, it's a remarkable compilation of diverse melody and rhythm. Included is: "In a Kitchenette," "What Will I Do Without You?," "The Gold Digger's Song," "Tip Toe thru the Tulips," "Go To Bed," "Keeping the Wolf from the Door," "Painting the Clouds With Sunshine," and "Mechanical Man."

Medley - "The Gold Diggers of Broadway" (1929)

From Al Jolson's 1930 part-Technicolor film "Mammy," which has made a few furtive appearances on screens following its recent restoration before retiring to points unknown, our last British dance band medley --- this time featuring tunes by Irving Berlin.

Selections from the Talkie Success "Mammy" (1930)

To give fair due to elaborate recorded medleys from early musicals that were produced on these shores --- and there weren't that many --- a fine one by Ben Selvin and His Orchestra paying homage to Metro's "Hollywood Revue" recorded for Columbia in late August of 1929.

Included: "Your Mother and Mine," "Orange Blossom Time," "Nobody But You," "Singin' in the Rain," and "Low Down Rhythm."

Medley - "The Hollywood Revue" (1929)

Lastly, in response to a reader's request regarding the previous post (Melody Native), although Ramon Novarro did not record a commercial version of "The Pagan Love Song" at the time the film was in release, he did include it in a medley of tunes recorded in Great Britain in 1936. Despite the fact that Novarro's accent seems to have thickened considerably since 1929, whether in actuality or not, it's a lovely recording --- although there's an underlying strain of sadness that's as touching as it is difficult to quite define.

Medley - Ramon Novarro (UK-1936)

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Melody Native

When the early talkies weren't busily exploring the backstage area of theaters and night clubs --- which wasn't often, they displayed a remarkable diversity of settings that belies the popular and largely incorrect notion that they were all hopelessly static, claustrophobic productions. If anything, it's the films that would arrive in 1931 and 1932 that seem to me to always be set primarily in offices and apartments, --- or at least the vast majority of them do.

Audiences between 1929 and 1930 who desired something other than views of dancing legs, dressing rooms and city streets enjoyed a wealth of options. Those seeking far flung exotic locales could see films set in jungles, tropic isles, the Far East, atop the ocean and underneath it, and amidst polar glaciers. Equally exotic but no less picturesque were films entirely or partially set in prisons, airplanes, zeppelins, submarines, ships of the sail and steam eras, rail and subway trains, coal mines, the deep woods, snowy mountain ranges and just about every European city you can think of, ancient and modern.

The one setting that most easily lent itself to melody (although no setting or locale was beyond the ingenuity of film theme song composers) was the tropics. Irresistible to composers and lyricists, even what is thought to be the first modern era stage musical, "Florodora" (1900-1902) had a mythic tropical setting that allowed for at least two songs which celebrated that fact --- and countless tropical themed melodies would follow in the coming years, most rather undistinguished and sounding suspiciously much alike, but vastly popular nonetheless.

"The Pagan," an MGM feature released in April of 1929, hit the mark with escapist minded audiences and devout fans of its star, Ramon Novarro, alike. Although a silent film with a synchronized music, vocal and sound effects score, "The Pagan" had enough drawing power to succeed at a time when theaters were swelling with all-talkie product. Visually stunning, and containing what many justly believe to be Novarro's signature performance and perhaps even role of a lifetime, success of "The Pagan" was also due in no small way to the film's theme song, which swept the country and globe before, during and after the film's release. Despite the widespread popularity, it's always interesting to find one somewhat slightly dissenting voice, as it was with one unnamed reviewer in a July of 1929 newspaper:

"Novarro, who is said to be studying for the opera, sings the theme song --- and you are never in doubt deciding it to be the theme song. It is sung again and again, at opportune times and some not so opportune. This song is the only vocalization...."

While not the "only vocalization" in the film, "The Pagan Love Song" may arguably seem that it is. That aside, its first presentation in the film is incredibly memorable, with Novarro first hearing the melody as a siren song --- from a distance, wafting across water, seashore and greenery. Intrigued, he follows it --- slowly, then rushing forward through the underbrush, while "answering" it with his own vocalization of the tune until he reaches the source, thereby kicking off the film's plot-line. Far better seen and heard than described, the effect is dramatically lessened by an error in circulating prints that ruins the once careful synchronization, rendering the sequence more than a bit confusing and unintentionally clumsy. A few moments of a well placed someones time is all that's needed to fix the problem, but --- ah well, so it goes.

One of the purest and most faithful to the source period interpretations of the tune can be heard here by vocalist Annette Hanshaw. Epic in its simplicity.

"The Pagan Love Song" (1929)

1929 would also find Joan Crawford removed from a dance floor and placed in a jungle in "Untamed," but unlike "The Pagan," her character (given the chimp-ish name "Bingo" here) lost no time in hitching a ride back to civilization and, well --- dance floors. The film spawned two popular melodies, "That Wonderful Something" (which can be heard in numerous other 1929 and 1930 Metro films as background music) and the far more memorable, in my opinion, "Chant of the Jungle."

Here, two fine 1929 versions of "Chant of the Jungle" recorded just weeks apart. The first a strident, somewhat sensual rendition by Paul Specht and His Orchestra for the Columbia label, and the second a more playful, high spirited interpretation by Nat Shikret and the Victor Orchestra.

"Chant of the Jungle" (1929) Paul Specht & His Orchestra

"Chant of the Jungle" (1929) Nat Shilkret & His Orchestra

The only palm tree to be seen in Warner Bros. "Is Everybody Happy?" (1929) was one serving as a backdrop for a wonderfully tawdry song and dance number by Ann Pennington, the chirpy and risque tune "Samoa," which can be heard (although not seen --- the film is lost) in an early sequence where fresh from Budapest to New York City immigrant and saxophonist Ted Lewis happens upon his leggy girlfriend from the old country after spotting a poster outside a "follies" theater.

"Once they sail into the bay, then they never sail away,
from old Samoa --- Hello, Aloha!

It's the port of missing men, 'cause they won't come home again,
from old Samoa!

They say the native girls wear dresses there with leaves that are grown,
I've never seen a sailor yet who'll leave them alone ---

Once I heard a captain crack, as they danced around his shack,
'I want some more of some more of Samoa!'"

Simply because we have the rare luxury of being able to do so, here's the "Samoa" sequence from both the domestic release version of the film, and the foreign export version. The latter version gives fair indication of how these overseas release versions were prepared, with music and song being brought up front and center and dialogue being deleted altogether or bridged over with a newly prepared musical score. (The domestic release segment contains what's probably the most intentionally amusing dialogue exchange in the whole film. Listen for it!)

"Samoa" (1929) Domestic Release Version

"Samoa" (1929) Foreign Release Version

Lastly, although firmly out of the early talkie era, and for no reason other than I think you may enjoy it, a few moments of the Hawaiian themed melody, "Honolulu Baby," from the 1933 Metro-Roach film "Sons of the Desert," which --- for the uninitiated --- starred Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

Not a soundtrack excerpt nor a commercial 78rpm recording (it was never recorded for that purpose, inexplicably) the following audio is that of a scoring session disc recorded prior to actual filming and then played back whilst the cameras rolled. For those familiar with the film, it's always a novelty to hear the melody without a dialogue overlay and other ambient effects. Roach Studio composer/musician Marvin Hatley supplies the tune, and Ty Parvis the vocal.

"Honolulu Baby" (1934)

Aloha!

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An Audience Mystified

Not long after the birth of recorded sound itself, the same instrument that astonished the world would take on a far more mundane and familiar chore, that of first advertising itself --- and then every other technical innovation it would spawn.

In the following justly famous Edison advertising cylinder from 1906, the phonograph is brilliantly presented not merely as just a way to hear selections from "The Bohemian Girl" after a theatrical presentation has left town, but as an indispensable mechanical device bestowed with almost human qualities, always at the ready to serve you.

"Edison Advertising Cylinder" (1906)

If your home contained dispirited elders, the phonograph was there to draw them from the chimney corner and effectively amuse and quiet them --- while serving a similar purpose for dull infants, raffish youngsters, a fatigued spouse, or those confined to the sick room who always ran the risk of becoming potential candidates for transforming into one of the "loved ones who are far away" mentioned in the machine's recording capability segment.

While unspoken, the selling point here is clearly that of a product that will effectively relieve the owner from restrictive domestic duties, leaving them free to presumably rush out and buy additional cylinders to keep the phonograph fed and running. Or, perhaps to visit... Coney Island?

Although it would take time, recorded sound and Edison's phonograph would cease being a novelty. Instead it became so completely integrated into the movement of daily life that a visitor to Coney Island's Luna Park probably wouldn't be astonished by the raucous sound of a mechanically reproduced voice saying "Thank You" from a concealed speaker as they exited an attraction via a gate or turnstile. While I suppose a typical reaction might be along the "What won't they think of next!" sort, the real purpose of the installation was to create memorable and effective cross promotion for a product or service other than the one just consumed.

In the brief audio fragment offered below, patrons were lured to ride adjacent attractions such as "The Pretzel Ride," "The Wild Cat," Scooters, "The Whip" (for real fun!), "The Old Mill" or merely politely asked to try (meaning buy) popcorn.

Edison Coney Island Advertisement Cylinder

The effectiveness of the device isn't known, but I suspect it wouldn't be long before the small cylinders became horribly degraded from constant use, ultimately emitting a garbled squawk that would frighten or annoy rather than persuade. Then too, pity any attendant stationed nearby for hours on end!

The arrival and wide public acceptance of radio as a source of immediately accessible entertainment coincided with the arrival of talking films, and both mediums formed an almost instant union with the objective of one aiding the other, although ultimately it was film that reaped the benefit.

In a convoluted bit of supreme joint effort, the following audio excerpt from 1929 features a radio show ("Brunswick Brevities") that was transcribed onto phonograph discs, promoting radio sets for the home by utilizing a medley of tunes from a selection of then current talking pictures produced by MGM. Everyone was served --- and then some, while the public enjoyed a lovely piece of music to listen to over dinner. Here, a Brunswick Brevities "talkie medley" containing tunes from "The Pagan," "The Broadway Melody," "Marianne" and "The Hollywood Revue."

"Brunswick Brevities" (1929) - Excerpt

The early musicals were a boon to the record and sheet music industries, with all closely aligned corporate hands in a pot being duly filled with coin at every turn, as the public sought to quench its thirst for music from the latest talkies they've seen, or wanted to see --- or somehow managed to miss.

Here, in a promotional disc produced by the Victor Record Company, Richard Barthelmess' film "Weary River" (First National-1929) is used as the peg upon which to hang lures for not one but two different renditions of the film's theme song (by Rudy Vallee and Gene Austin) and also for the film itself.

Victor Promotional Disc for "Weary River" (1929)

Not long afterward, Columbia could be heard promoting its Tele-Focal radio ("No dead spots on the dial!") via a transcribed radio commercial elegantly masquerading as an entertainment offering, that utilized Ben Selvin & Ruth Etting's recording (on the Columbia label) of "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes" (a fantastically popular tune unwisely cut from the 1930 Warners film "Dancing Sweeties") as the primary lure.

Columbia Tele-Focal Promotional Disc

In then new concept that would outlive products, songs, films and activities --- and generations of consumers, for that matter, it's still with us today but as an inescapable bludgeon rather than something as genuinely attractive as the closing offering, a transcribed radio promotion for the 1933 Paramount film "Torch Singer," wherein it is supposed Claudette Colbert's singing voice was supplemented with one belonging to vocalist Sylvia Froos. As with most things, the illusion is preferable to the reality. Certainly more mystifying.

Paramount Radio Promotional Disc - "Torch Singer" (1933)

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A Moment's Ornament

Imagine, if you will, a world some eighty odd years hence --- bereft of any visual home entertainment devices. If you can imagine that, then you might also be able to envision a writer of the same dim future pondering whether or not a film of 2012 was seen by audiences in an eye wear-free 3-D holographic format or not.

Although admittedly not the best comparison, such is the case with many films of the early sound era that now exist (if at all) in forms that are dramatically different from the ones that audiences first experienced.

It's easy to pick up one of the few truly good books on films of the period and learn of a film's plot, who directed it and who could be seen in it. But, in the case of missing films or those which have been visually or aurally altered over the decades, we never seem to quite learn why this has happened. And, more to the point, if we can't possibly see the "XYZ Follies Revue of 1930" today as audiences of 1930 saw it, we're seldom told just what those differences may be.

If there's one thing I've learned over years of sometimes leisurely research and other times frantic quests for information of films of the 1928-1930 era, it's to not entirely believe everything one is told, or reads, or has heard. (And that should certainly include these posts, to be perfectly fair.) Film history is inevitably history as it's interpreted when it's being written. Read a "movie history" book from the 1950's or 1960's and you'll see what I mean.

Even today, with the DVD format that allows for viewing of stunning presentations of titles like "The Broadway Melody," "The Great Gabbo," "Hell's Angels," "Dixiana," etc. and a number of exceptionally solid books on the topic, confusion and unintended misinformation still prevails.

For instance, "The Great Gabbo." A guilty-pleasure film that remains close to my heart ever since first viewing it via a super 8mm sound print from Thunderbird Films while suffering from the 'flu and a high fever (which didn't prevent me from crawling out of bed when it arrived to thread up the projector), I'm sure it looked and sounded mighty fine to me back in the late 70's. The version now available on DVD is almost startling in terms of clarity and in image detail, but ever since seeing this magnificent restoration, I'm unable to really recall seeing it any other way even though I did.

Although persons with impeccable credentials maintain that "The Great Gabbo" never contained color sequences as have long been thought, or (when pressed) that if it did, then it was only for selected showings at a premiere in a key city or two. Scour through newspaper archives, and a different story emerges. We see small theaters in small towns of small cities showing "The Great Gabbo" all the way into mid-1930 (it was released in late 1929), and accompanying advertisements and reviews that clearly mention "natural colors" or "Technicolor" (which it wasn't) or "Prismatic effects" for not just one, but many scenes. One lazy editor or type-setter or reviewer can be dismissed, but as many as twenty or thirty?

Similarly, the 1929 Warner Bros. revue, "The Show of Shows" is often cited today as having had only key sequences in the Technicolor process. Yet, once again, there's contrary evidence --- a lot in this case, indicating the entire film was in Technicolor.

Revealing though vintage press coverage can be, it can also be maddeningly frustrating and puzzling. Try as I might, I could not find a single reference hinting that the infamous "Turn on the Heat" musical number in Fox's 1929 "Sunny Side Up" was ever seen in anything but black and white, and some reviews of "The Broadway Melody" detail a "Technicolor" sequence that doesn't have a thing in common with any footage in surviving prints. Finally, there's mystifying types of comments such as one which cautions that the Marilyn Miller film "Sally" (WB-1929) is "98 per cent in Technicolor."

As I said earlier, don't believe everything you read --- especially when it comes to the fantastically convoluted history of films that talked, sang and danced across screens long, long ago.

(Three melodies from "The Great Gabbo," the first two featuring vocalist Greta Keller.)

"Every Now and Then" (1929)

"The New Step" (1929)

"The Web of Love" (1929)

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Talking It Over

It's Christmas of 1930, and self-proclaimed "Broadway's Bad Boy" (which he alternates with "Broadway's Playboy") Jack Osterman, appears to be riding high.

The Vitaphone short subject he filmed in Warner Brothers' Brooklyn, New York studio in late 1929 was winding down a successful run in theaters across the country, where it accompanied the All-Technicolor feature "Song of the Flame," and there was even talk of Osterman doing his own feature for Columbia, with a story penned expressly for him by no less a personage than Eddie Cantor.

For now though, there was a brief holiday lay-off to enjoy, and then it was off to a frigid Syracuse, New York to fulfill a booking with the Loew's circuit, where he'd be on the same bill with old-timer Jack Norworth (former partner of Nora Bayes), putting in performances between screenings of the Ronald Coleman film "Condemned."

Things weren't what they once were in the vaudeville world just a fleeting three years earlier, but signs of its inevitable collapse hadn't quite set in yet either.

The proposed Eddie Cantor scripted Columbia film never materialized, and it would be three years before he'd appear before the camera again --- for Columbia and for the last time, in an musical novelty comedic short titled "Um-Pa." Although he didn't know it during the holiday season of 1930, Osterman's star would never rise higher than it already had, nor would he live to see the conclusion of that decade.

An audience favorite throughout the 1920's, Jack Osterman's career would peak in 1926 with his contributions to a musical revue, "A Night In Paris," which played the roof garden of New York City's Century Theater (dubbed "Casino de Paris") for 208 performances, an incredibly impressive run for the time. But, as with Osterman himself, the frivolities of 1926 were a world away from the biting winter winds of Syracuse in 1930, and that same year would mark the demolition of the site of his greatest success, the Century Theater itself, leaving nothing but memories and press clippings.

Bittersweet recollections don't buy food and pay hotel bills however, and Osterman plugged on continuously after 1930 --- accepting and fulfilling play dates across the country in theaters that now billed vaudeville performances as an "Extra! No Additional Charge!" feature, as well as in supper clubs, burlesque houses, seaside amusement piers, fun parks, and anywhere else where work could be found for orphans of the vaudeville circuit.

Apparently well liked by his peers (he counted George Jessel and Eddie Cantor as his closest chums) and the press, period newspapers are filled with syndicated "plugs" for Osterman in columns by Walter Winchell and his imitators, that much in the same way they do today, served primarily to keep a name in the public eye and to give the impression of activity, excitement and viability. Sometimes, a photo would accompany such a publicity placement, as it did here earlier in 1930 when Osterman shared the spotlight with actress Esther Ralston in what amounts to a filler.

1935 would see an attempted shot to reclaim prior fame in a new musical revue, "Smile At Me," booked into New York City's Fulton Theater (later the Helen Hayes Theater) in late summer of that year, for which Osterman contributed his own musical material, but it would wither and close after struggling on for only 27 performances.

Sometimes, one's failure is seen as a key to future success, which is why in 1937 Osterman (perhaps unwisely) agreed to a syndicated newspaper spread for Kings Features that may have done more damage than any intended good. Illustrated with images of much earlier, and presumably happier days, (even the image of Osterman "as he appears now" seems to be circa 1928), it's as bizarre a bit of showmanship as it is sad. It does, however, give us a now forgotten look at the performer's life as he wished it to be known, as well as a glimpse of a beaming Osterman with his wife and former Ziegfeld girl, Mary Daley.

Two short years later, Osterman would become ill and travel to Atlantic City to recuperate at a time when sea air was still thought to be a cure all, but pneumonia would set in and he succumbed on June 8th of 1939. The obituary wired to newspapers across the country is in stark and rather plaintive contrast --- both in size and content --- to the elaborate spread from 1937.

Following his death, newspapers would dredge up all manner of unpleasant material they could find on Osterman, which suggests that while alive, he could be a formidable opponent and well connected enough to make any efforts at negative publicity a losing and possibly long-lasting damaging notion. The following syndicated show business column, by Charles Driscoll takes publishing ghouls to task following Osterman's death, as well as aiming a well deserved brick at George Jessel, who couldn't resist turning in to what amounts to a "performance" at his deceased pal's funeral.

In the years that followed, Osterman would receive mention, albeit infrequently, in syndicated nostalgia oriented columns of the "I Remember The Good Old Days" sort, but even these would fade by the end of the 1940's and arrival of the 1950's, when his name would make news again --- but only in connection with the tragic death of his wife, Mary Daley.

Years pass, memories fade, and the onrush of time and technology sweep away traces of much of what has come before. It's surprising then, to discover that fate has chosen to preserve Jack Osterman as he was in mid-1930, still youthful, still vibrant... at a time when his greater glories had already passed but the future still held a spark of hope and possible new fame. Although the Technicolor feature film it once accompanied, "Song of the Flame" has vanished, Osterman's short subject "Talking It Over" has the power to transport the observer to front-row center in a theater of 1930 where for a scant seven minutes, the performer moves us between smiles, laughter and wistful sighs. Effortlessly and forever.

Jack Osterman in "Talking it Over" (1930) - Vitaphone Disc

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Hard To Get

Sloe-eyed, swan-necked Dorothy Mackaill (1903-1990) seemed to be finally coming into her own just as the talkies took hold --- but true mega-stardom eluded her. Why? Was it the fact that she'd been a supporting player for so long, and in so many films, that audiences looked upon her as an old friend rather than a "new exciting discovery" during a period in film already saturated with new names and faces? Or was it her own restless, somewhat defiant and fickle, personality that didn't move her to seek fame in the way it did others?

Born in Hull, Yorkshire, England in 1903, she'd arrive in Hollywood via what seems almost a text-book route to fame. Running away from school (The Thorne Academy in London), joining the chorus at the London Hippodrome, becoming an overnight sensation for performing a novelty dance called "The Chicken Walk," an introduction to film acting in Paris when the show traveled there, and then to New York. As Mackaill would recollect in 1929, she crashed the stage-door at a revival of "Florodora," and met with Lee Shubert who found her a part. Using this as leverage, she arranged a meeting with Ziegfeld ("Dorothy Mackaill of London to see Mr. Ziegfeld" she loudly announced in the producer's outer office,) and impressed with her nerve, voice and legs, she was put into the roof garden's "Midnight Frolic" show, and into the costumes of departing actress Jacqueline Logan.

Small film roles soon followed, and after co-starring with Richard Barthelmess in "The Fighting Blade" and "Twenty One" (both 1923) she was contracted to go to Hollywood. However, her next film performed so poorly that she ripped up her contract (she claims) and instead accepted a dodgy offer from two producers in the process of forming Syracuse Pictures --- a company they claimed would soon make the small upstate New York city "an Eastern Hollywood." Signed as star for the only two films the company would produce, when Syracuse Pictures folded, Mackaill gladly accepted work with First National where, with her newly bobbed hair, she made an impact that was to last for the remainder of the decade and into the next.

After supporting Jack Mulhall and others in a string of successful, albeit lightweight films, she was in the right place at the right time when sound films began to emerge, and when "The Barker" (1928) was hastily re-tooled to include talking sequences, Mackaill clicked.

Released in late Summer of 1929, "Hard To Get," (First National & Vitaphone) is a lost film, and like the greater majority of lost films it's neither eagerly sought after, spoken of in hushed tones tinged with yearning, or written about with trembling hand. Rather, it was just one of many films produced that year that aspired to little more than turning a profit when all was said and done. Based upon the Edna Ferber short story "Classified," there was nothing here that hadn't already been on the screen countless times and under countless guises. Mackaill portrays a working girl employed as a mannequin in a chic dress salon, who yearns for more than a workaday world and an ordinary home life. Her parents, played by James Finlayson and Louise Fazenda (now that's a combination worthy of at least a somewhat hushed tone!) and loutish brother (surprise --- Jack Oakie!) like everything just as it is, as does her auto mechanic boyfriend, Charles Delaney.

Of course, Mackaill will have none of this and soon sets a bright eye on millionaire Edmund Burns who quickly responds. Period reviews invariably cite a sequence during which Makaill's family meets the elegant suitor as one of the highlights of the film and given the cast, it's impossible not to sigh with regret at likely not ever being able to see for ourselves. But, to move on bravely, the suave Burns soon shows himself to be vastly less a man than, say, an auto mechanic or loutish brother are --- and Mackaill turns tail and returns to kith and kin, wiser but not particularly remorseful for what amounted to a grand adventure.

Mackaill would go on to make numerous other films, many of them far more extravagant and memorable, such as 1930's all-Technicolor "Bright Lights" and particularly the still astounding "Safe In Hell" of 1931. With her First National contract dropped in 1931 and seen thereafter in the sort of roles and films you'd expect to find Constance Bennett or Kay Francis in, Mackaill seemed to be edged out by bigger box office draws and slowly but surely faded from a spotlight that never quite reached it's full potential.

Deemed suitable for overseas export, "Hard to Get" was fitted out with a new synchronized Vitaphone soundtrack to accompany the film (see the post "In the Land of Jazz" for details on this process) and apparently played foreign venues where the Spanish language was the norm. It is a set of discs for this version that survives and is at hand, although I suspect the English language discs are out there too. While chock full of period pop tunes, themes lifted from other Vitaphone productions of 1929, and a variety of sound effects, the only voice to be heard on the Spanish language version discs is that of a regrettably unknown male vocalist beautifully rendering the film's infinitely charming theme song in a sequence set in a night club.

"Hard to Get" (1929) Vitaphone Disc Excerpt

And, for those who'd like to hear an English language, more up-tempo version of the same tune... Why, here's Allan Selby's Frascations (of Frasciti's Restaurant, Oxford Street, London) waiting to perform it for you.

"Hard to Get" (1929) The Frascatians

Newspaper Ad - 27 February 1930 : Two Lost Films

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Distant Voices

The phonograph and later, the talking film, would serve as a repository for vaudeville era performances that would be otherwise lost forever. True, archived newspapers and periodicals provide an invaluable record of these performers and the time in which they worked and lived, but no amount of prose --- however descriptive, can replace or duplicate hearing what we can't possibly experience from our present position in time.

Vaudeville and vaudeville-type performances always seemed to go hand-in-hand with technical advances that appeared during the format's lifetime. From the birth of recorded sound and soon thereafter the motion picture film, and throughout the development of the talking film, vaudeville routines were captured in great numbers, either by the original performers or interpreted by others. Most curiously, all of this happened seemingly without much thought given to the fact that a live and original performance, once caught on shellac or celluloid and then duplicated and widely distributed, made the original performance something vastly less the "event" it once was --- it's commercial value immediately diminished by a competing form of public entertainment.

Indeed, by the time talkies firmly took hold and countless theaters ceased vaudeville performances in favor of continuous talking film presentations, how many vaudevillians faced the odd dilemma of being thrown out of work, replaced by their own images, in short films that they so willingly agreed to appear in months before? Many would migrate to radio, others would gamely plug on aboard a train destined for oblivion, and the great majority would simply move on with their lives and leave behind yellowed scrapbooks and recordings ultimately destined for destruction or rediscovery decades ahead in the future.

Here then, a sampling of voices you may have never heard, from another time and place...

The unrivaled beauty of her day, Lillian Russell (1860-1922).. Voluptuous, elegant and possessing a certain indefinable something that captured the public fancy in a way we can't easily understand today. Actress and contemporary Marie Dressler would later remember, "I can still recall the rush of pure awe that marked her entrance on the stage. And then the thunderous applause that swept from orchestra to gallery, to the very roof." It's difficult to equate the tremulous, unremarkable voice heard in the following 1902 recording with a woman widely accepted as the sensation of her day, but perhaps --- in the end --- that fact says much more of us than of Miss Russell.

"Come Down, Ma' Evenin' Star" (1902)
From "Twirly Whirly"
Weber & Fields' Broadway Musical Hall
247 Performances
"Come Down, Ma' Evenin' Star" (1902)

***












In July of 1908, visitors to Washington D.C.'s Luna Park amusement area could end the evening by visiting an all-star vaudeville entertainment that included a dog & monkey act, acrobats and one Miss Florence Gibson, who was buried alive ("six feet underground") at every performance. The Master of Ceremonies, Press Eldridge, billed himself as "The Commander in Chief of Fun," and at least a small portion of his performance would be forever entombed within the grooves of a wax cylinder in 1909.


"A Confidential Chat" (1909)
Press Eldridge
Edison Cylinder Recording
"A Confidential Chat" (1909)

***

Stage performer Raymond Hitchcock (1865-1929) appeared in over thirty major Broadway productions between 1898 and 1928, various motion pictures (both silent and sound) and toured the globe with countless personal appearances, with a unique style and wit that's difficult to describe. Imagine a Yankee version of Will Rogers or a somewhat more refined George M. Cohan, if you will. But why explain, when you can listen for yourself?

"In the Days of Old" (1910)
Raymond Hitchcock
From "The Yankee Consul" (1904)
The Broadway Theater - 115 Performances
"In the Days of Old" (1910)

Nora Bayes' solo recording of "The Japanese Sandman" (1920) is, despite the audio limitations of the acoustic recording process, a vaudeville performance come to life and a moment in music history, somewhere between the fading influence of ragtime and the emergence of jazz, captured forever. The dawn of the 1920's. While listening, try and see if you can't visualize a dim theater stage and the figure of the vocalist standing before a dim backdrop of Asian design. As the opening refrain draws to a close, a lighting effect reveals the images spoken of in the song, interpreted by a papier mache tree bearing crepe paper cherry blossoms.

"The Japanese Sandman" (1920)
Nora Bayes & Orchestra
78rpm Disc - Recorded 25 August 1920
"The Japanese Sandman" (1920)
***

Clarence Senna, a pianist and humorist of the 1920's, seems to have spent much of his performing career offering musical support to vaudevillian Ruby Norton, perhaps his wife, who toured with an act titled "A Song For Everyone." Playing small venues in the South that offered a film and vaudeville for the price of admission (see ad below) one can imagine the frustration involved in delivering a song or monologue while audiences busily entered and exited at will! Through luck or ability (and he was, after all, decidedly clever) he landed a contract with Columbia in 1927 that produced at least one two-sided record containing two abbreviated musical routines, one of which is heard here. Beyond 1927, what became of Mr. Senna -- and Miss Ruby Norton for that matter, is unknown to me.

"How to Write A Popular Song" (1927)
Clarence Senna
Columbia 78rpm Disc #1277
Recorded 29 December 1927
"How to Write a Popular Song" (1927)

***

For the final entry in this post (and I suspect there will be others of this sort eventually, as the topic is irresistible and vast), allow me to introduce two vaudevillians of the highest order, Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields. Partners in life and career (a fact which formed the basis for a grossly inaccurate 1952 film entitled "Somebody Loves Me"), they were the ultimate professionals. Always delivering an incredibly polished performance as finely tuned and timed as a clockwork mechanism, but never seeming anything but fresh, immediate and vital. In the following audio excerpt, from a 1928 Vitaphone short subject appearance, Seeley & Fields' exuberance and sheer joy in performing for a new medium is very much in evidence, and positively infectious. It is moments such as these that has power enough to make the "days of old" which Raymond Hitchcock spoke of seem as though they were only yesterday.

"In A Little Spanish Town" (1928)
Excerpt from "Blossom Seeley & Benny Fields" (WB-Vitaphone-1928)

"In a Little Spanish Town" (1928)


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Raymond Hitchcock photo #DN-0054391 Courtesy Chicago Historical Society

"In Clear Technicolor"

It's unfair to assume that audiences attending cinemas during the turbulent period of 1928 to 1930 weren't discerning or sophisticated, and were lured into theaters primarily by force of habit and the added incentive of such technical innovations as sound and color. To the contrary, public dissatisfaction with particular performers, types of movies and imperfect reproduction was closely monitored and, for the most part, heeded to by studios unwilling to risk revenue loss.

Then as now, when something new shows even the faintest signs of wide popularity and acceptance, the public is bombarded with more of the same until a saturation point is reached and a backlash begins. Such was the case with film musicals and, to a lesser degree, films photographed in various color processes --- both of which skyrocketed in numbers throughout 1929 and would peak in mid-to-late 1930. At this point, weary of the endless aural tumult and eye-straining poorly printed color films, the tide turned and a general dissatisfaction was made plain by both audiences and critics alike.

An exploration of color films of the early sound era is badly warranted, but beyond the scope of this forum, and, admittedly, the author. So rather than attempt to (badly) explain the "why" and "how" of these films --- most of them lost to time --- it's more within my ability to focus a spotlight on a particular title or two every now and again, some familiar to readers, others not.

An infrequent cable airing recently of the 1930 Warner Bros. film "The Life of the Party" presents us not only with a very different film than audiences originally saw, but also rather different than the film the studio set out to make. Filmed entirely in Technicolor, "Life of the Party" would retain it's hues (although not most of it's music) by the time it reached cinema screens, yet it can only be seen today, for a variety of reasons, in black and white.

The loss of Technicolor doesn't particularly harm the film or hamper enjoyment of the simple plot, but it was clearly once as much a part of the show as it's stars, Winnie Lightner, Irene Delroy and Charles Butterworth. Such sequences as the opening montage of brilliantly illuminated nighttime Broadway, a fashion show, and the highly ornate and spacious hotel in which much of the action is staged, all must have been a feast for the eyes in the muted pastels of the two-strip Technicolor process.

When color footage surfaces for films we've previously only seen in monochrome, the effect can be awesome. Details in costume and setting that once were hidden in murky gray film grain suddenly spring to life and catch the eye, and with it the very actors on the screen themselves seem to move and breathe with a renewed vibrant life spark that wasn't present before. So then, when the process is reversed, and we're left with a film that exists as a mere shadow of it's former self, the effect is often so sad that no amount of music and jollity can shake off the forlorn, ill-treated aura that encompasses what's left.

Adding to it's woes, "The Life of the Party" was also caught in the aforementioned public backlash against musical films, and although never intended as a full blown musical, the axe would fall on much of what music and song the film did originally contain, most notably a dance production number set in the hotel's garden restaurant, and a comedic song entitled "You Ought to See the Horse!" presumably performed by Winnie Lightner in the race track sequence of the film. Lamentable losses, but it's a credit to the performers and director, Roy Del Ruth, that despite all this, the film holds up beautifully.

Happily, some all-talking, all-color films manage to beat the odds and survive unscathed, like the 1930 Goldwyn production of "Whoopee!," which exists today with it's visual beauty and entertainment potential undiminished --- not entirely unlike the one last marble column left standing after destruction has leveled the rest of an ancient structure we'd like to learn more of, yet can't easily without careful study and more than a bit of detective work.

In a period ad duplicated below (click to enlarge), there's mention of the film being in "Clear Technicolor," suggesting that it was important enough a selling point to warrant special mention, as opposed to the usual "In Technicolor" or "In Natural Colors" seen in ads for other films of the period. Indeed, another ad (pictured right), heralds a "New Technicolor Process" for the film!

Interestingly, the ad to the left mentions three songs that do not appear in surviving prints, bringing up the question of just how complete the film we're familiar with is. It's possible that the ad was prepared by the studio while the film was still in production and they were never filmed or included to begin with, but it remains something worth investigating.

Doubtless, "Whoopee!" looked gorgeous when first screened, and it looks remarkable even today when it's let out for an infrequent airing. In the prints I've seen, at least, the film only falls somewhat short in the audio department, with the soundtrack having been so overly processed by various noise-reduction gizmo's in an attempt to erase noise artifacts that it's also lost a hefty amount of it's original fidelity along the line too.

While "Whoopee" is likely not "the greatest entertainment ever made," and Winnie Lightner's "Life of the Party" has long dimmed into near-nothingness, they're as important and priceless a document of our past as anything else to be found behind glass in a museum --- and infinitely more fun.

Audio Addendum:

While having the surface noise and hiss inherent in a vintage sound disc, here's an example of the film's original audio as recorded on disc by Goldwyn for those theaters unable or as yet unwilling to switch over to the sound-on-film process which would soon prevail. Compared to audio on circulating prints, the difference is surprising --- at least to my ears, that is.

"Stetson" - Disc Excerpt

The tune "Love Me Or Leave Me" couldn't easily be worked into the film version of "Whoopee!". A signature tune for vocalist Ruth Etting, it was originally performed on the stage in front of a drop-screen while scenery was changed behind. Simple though the setting, the tune took off and, even today, remains a standard. Here's an infrequently heard version recorded in 1929 by Allan Selby's Frascatians --- a group so named because they performed at an Oxford Street restaurant in London called "Frascati's." Simple, eh?

"Love Me Or Leave Me" (1929) The Frascatians

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"To a man, a Widow is like finding another drink in the bottle after you thought it was empty."
Winnie Lightner, in "Life of the Party"

Flick'ring Shadows Softly Come and Go...

"Clanking chains. Clutching hands. Mysterious shadows. Deep groans or sudden cries of horror. Something hidden behind a secret panel. Footsteps overhead --- where there is no living creature. Wailing wind. Shining eyes in the dark. A horrible something that slithers across the floor. A dark hooded figure that rises from an obscure corner. Doors that close unaided. A gray thing that mops and mows in the shadows."

According to a syndicated publicity release for the late 1928 First National title "The Haunted House," a silent photoplay with a synchronized Vitaphone music and sound-effects soundtrack, all of the items quoted in the opening paragraph are "fine ingredients for a mystery film."

Today, we cannot easily determine for ourselves just how effective "The Haunted House" is, for it is yet another lost film of the transitional period between silence and sound. Like most lost films however, it's left traces of itself behind --- mostly print, some compelling static visual images, and... perhaps most revealing of all, it's sound discs.

Vitaphone discs, like any phonograph record, would begin to show signs of wear after just a few plays and like their more familiar contemporary 78rpm counterpart, were prone to damage from mishandling, dropped needles, and of course, run-of-the-mill, drop-on-the-floor type of breakage. The main difference between the durability of a 78rpm music disc and its larger, thinner Vitaphone relative was that a skip or damaged groove in one of these discs would not only wreck havoc with synchronization, but that even a moderately worn surface would reproduce as loudly as hissing steam or crackling thunder. With a maximum of twenty plays suggested for optimum results, and duplicate sets of discs readily available to film exchanges and theater owners, the sound discs were --- for all purposes, disposable. It's this fact that has resulted in their high survival rate, especially in comparison to the films they once happily accompanied with a sense of purpose and importance. It's sadly odd, in a way, that all we have left for so many historically notable or at the least, intriguing films is just their disembodied voice --- and in some cases, not even that.

Based upon the three-act stage play by Owen Davis, which ran for 103 performances at New York City's George M. Cohan theater in the waning months of 1924, the 1928 First National film version was directed by Benjamin Christensen, who --- it was announced while "The Haunted House" was in production, was contracted to helm a trio of similar thrillers that would continue with "Seven Footprints to Satan" (filmed and released in 1929) and conclude with "Shh! The Octopus!." (The latter film wouldn't appear on the screen until 1937, with a different director and, by then, a world away from the early sound period.)

The scenario for "The Haunted House" concerns the heirs of a deceased eccentric millionaire searching for a hidden fortune in bonds within the confines of a stately yet somewhat derelict Connecticut summer cottage (of the twenty room, multi-floored variety) on the proverbial dark and stormy night. Their search is alternately hampered and aided by the presence of an insane doctor, weird apparitions in the form of a beautiful sleepwalking girl and other figures from the shadow world, a forbidding caretaker and all manner of puzzling cypher based clues and mechanical devices that need to be solved or avoided. At this point in the sad history of this film a "spoiler" is quite beside the point, so I'll venture a guess that little is lost by adding that, as it turns out, the deceased eccentric millionaire is quite alive and that he brilliantly arranged everything (including actors posing as the house's residents) to discover the true nature, worth and value of his would-be heirs.

By all indication, the film performed well for First National during it's release in late October of 1928, where it was a natural Halloween Week choice for many theaters and advertised as such. Interestingly, while "The Haunted House" was being seen and heard in theaters across the country, there were also countless amateur theatrical productions of the same play being performed in schools, lodges and even churches --- with these productions often being advertised on the same page as print-ads for the film! Apparently, neither screen nor stage counterpart seemingly did one another much harm in ticket sales.

By late 1929, all-talkie productions had cut such a huge swath and technical leap forward that a synchronized yet silent film such as "The Haunted House" would normally thought to be as quaint a relic as the earliest of Edison's film experiments. Yet, I've found that as late as March of 1930, "The Haunted House" was still being booked into smaller theaters on a limited run basis, accompanied by a serial chapter and a two-reel comedy. Clearly, the film still had "legs" enough to prompt it's revival --- which suggests "The Haunted House" promised what it delivered: "Fine ingredients for a mystery film." Perhaps one day, when we least expect it, we'll be able to see and hear for ourselves. Let's hope.

Now then, if you were crowded into the lobby of a theater in October of 1928, awaiting the next complete showing of "The Haunted House," and the heavy padded doors to the auditorium were to swing open every now and again, you couldn't help but experience an aural preview of what you'd soon be seeing. Our wait might well last a lifetime --- or maybe just a few years, but while we can, let's listen and imagine... via these three brief audio excerpts:

Audio Excerpt #1 - Main titles and introductory sequence, replete with a clock striking midnight and mournful wailing winds --- a sound effect which would prevail throughout much of the film, and accomplished by a mechanical siren being manually turned --- very slowly, according to a mid-1928 publicity placement.

"Haunted House" - Excerpt 1

Audio Excerpt #2 - As the heirs gather in the gloomy house's main room, the sound of wailing wind is momentarily broken by a ghostly voice singing "Love's Old Sweet Song," which is accompanied by not only the appearance of a sleepwalking damsel slowly descending the stairway, but the wild yowling of a nearby dog. The terrifying specter seemingly vanishes into a wall and the group rushes to discover where she went, tapping the wall panels in hopes of revealing a secret panel. Suddenly, one springs open!

"Haunted House" - Excerpt 2

Audio Excerpt #3 - In a sequence cited as especially effective by some contemporary reviews, Chester Conklin is called upon to aid in deciphering a musical clue which, when performed on an instrument in a particular way, would cause a much anticipated development in the film's plot. Here, Conklin plays a piano and a violin, then experiments at plucking the strings of the latter instrument --- which accomplishes the feat when a string breaks with an audible "pop" --- something which, by combination of image and carefully synchronized sound, worked to create a trill of pleasurable excitement among audiences in 1928.

"Haunted House" - Excerpt 3

Lastly, although "The Haunted House" escaped having a theme song or love theme, the frequent use of "Love's Old Sweet Song" as a vocal and leitmotif in the film's score largely qualifies it as one. I'll leave you with the option to listen to a stirring vocal duet performance of the timeless melody, as recorded in July of 1929 and released commercially on 78rpm.

"Love's Old Sweet Song" (1929)

Left: Eve (Ann) Sothern, as the sleepwalking, vocalizing and vanishing damsel, with co-star Thelma Todd.

Right: Lobby Card (Flora Finch, Barbara Bedford.)

Neither Here Nor There, But...

Opinions of the Warner Bros. 1929 musical revue THE SHOW OF SHOWS typically teeter between those who admire and enjoy the production, and those who are nearly moved to violence by it's mere mention.

While unlikely to change any one's allegiance, it's worth mentioning in these pages that the commonly seen print, while largely complete (save for overture, intermission and exit music) and intact (until Technicolor material surfaces for portions now seen only in monochrome), is missing a bit of footage that even the most devoted viewers --- and surely there's a few out there --- may be unaware of.

The fourth reel of this fifteen reel film, features former boxer and Light Heavyweight Champion, Georges Carpentier, in a musical production number titled "If I Could Learn To Love (As Well As I Fight)." In most if not all surviving prints, the reel begins with the musical number itself.

Originally, the entire sequence was introduced by the film's Master of Ceremonies, Frank Fay. What follows is a transcript of this missing sequence, as captured at a screening of the original print in 1929.

(Introductory Music)

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is really a pleasure and a delight to announce the next star. This artist is a great fighter and the most colorful of all fighters, both in the ring and the field of honor. Mr. Georges Carpentier.

Carpentier, during this performance will fight six rounds. This will not be an ordinary exhibition and he will be seconded by two very famous ladies of the screen, Miss Patsy Ruth Miller and Miss Alice White.

I would like to say, ladies and gentlemen, that it is not a... (here, Carpentier apparently begins to tap Fay with one or both of his formidable hands)... please... this is... ah, don't! This is not an ordinary.... You're hurting me! This is not an ordinary fight. You're too powerful. It will be a fight to the finish and the man that Mr. Carpentier is fighting is a pretty tough guy himself. I mean, he can take care of himself. (Fay weakly laughs.)

And you will... (pause, as Fay gathers himself.) Those who are at all shy of blood in the audience, I will ask you to leave the theatre, because this will be the fight of the year and Mr. Carpentier will positively appear and will fight... (hastily starts to exit)... but not with Fay."

And here, the missing sequence ends, and the film resumes as we've come to know it... for better or worse.

Note: An excellent and continually evolving page exists for "The Show of Shows" on the Wikipedia site.

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Say It With Songs (Except For One)

Al Jolson's 1929 film "Say It With Songs" is often overlooked in the usual rush to explore "The Jazz Singer," to generally ignore the magnificent "The Singing Fool" (1928), and to condemn "Mammy!" and "Big Boy" (1930) for crimes that, when you get right down to it, primarily exist only within the minds of the present day viewer.

While I'm not overly keen on Mr. Jolson's output, which can often be akin to the experience of being repeatedly poked in the shoulder by a loud, over-bearing boisterous fellow puffing a cheap cigar, try as you might there's no way to ignore the historical importance of his early films nor to admit, even reluctantly, that they were all wildly popular with audiences of the day.

Although "Say It With Songs" didn't perform as well for Warner Bros. as hoped, what film that was to follow "The Singing Fool," box-office behemoth that it was, possibly could? Lacking the novelty impact that his first two Vitaphone films had, and without the addition of two-strip Technicolor sequences that "Mammy!" would feature, "Say It With Songs" didn't create much of a ripple upon release during a period when audiences and critics alike were saturated with musicals. Then too, without a single black face moment, there's nothing worthwhile in the film for those today seeking to pick Jolson apart, fashionable though that has become.

Indeed, the entire uncomfortable black face aspect is likely the only reason his films have yet to receive the DVD presentation they're certainly due, and that the recent glorious Technicolor restoration of "Mammy!" is curiously absent from TCM as are most of Jolson's films. The problem isn't within the films, it's within ourselves --- and if so, how disgraceful then that plans for an 80th Anniversary DVD edition of "The Jazz Singer" fell victim to a woeful lack of common sense and backbone.

When "Say It With Songs" does manage to surface, what we see is a surprisingly small, somewhat improbable melodramatic production interspersed with songs as performed by the lead character, a radio singer. No production numbers, dancing girls, night-club scenes. The film never "opens up" in the way his earlier films do, and seems almost claustrophobic by comparison. Without Jolson's presence, and the few melodies the film contains, it's really little different from similar products being churned out by Warners and other studios of the day --- and precisely the same sort of plot that could have formed a vehicle for Richard Barthelmess (had not he already trod much the same territory in 1929's part-talkie "Weary River") or nearly any other screen name of the period you can think of, save perhaps for Joe E. Brown or El Brendel.

Despite the film's shortcomings --- chief among them a basically absurd plot and the negligible contributions of child actor Davey Lee (who's dialogue, especially during a critical court-room scene, is largely unintelligible), there's many a pleasure to be found within "Say It With Songs." From the clever opening montage of various radio performers, to the always delightfully velvet yet undeniably oily tones of actor Kenneth Thomson, the serenely lovely (and vastly under-utilized) Marion Nixon, and Jolson himself --- as relaxed, low-key, unfailingly good humored and naturalistic an Al Jolson as you're likely to see in any of his films. So then, if you're already a fan of Jolson you don't need any further selling --- and if you've never encountered him, then this is probably the least jarring vehicle with which to do so.

Careful viewing of the film reveals that one sequence, from early on in the film, lasting approximately seven minutes, is absent from seemingly all circulating prints. The tune "I'm Ka-Razy For You" is the root of the trouble here, and as I'm unsure as to why it became the focus of what appears to have been a legal battle of some sort, I'd rather not speculate. In the end, not only was the entire performance removed, but as the film's incidental background music also utilized the melody, the dialogue scene that directly followed the song had to be clipped out too --- all causing a fairly subtle but noticeable continuity jump in the prints available today. The fact that the missing song wasn't included in the otherwise exhaustive "Al Jolson at Warner Brothers" CD set of a few years back suggests that either a dusty old legal agreement still holds fast, or that the deletion isn't common knowledge any longer, or that nobody took the trouble to seek out pre-deletion audio material.

Here then, is the entire missing sequence in question. Radio station manager Kenneth Thomson introduces two representatives of the Excelsior Motorcar Company who are contemplating a sponsorship to Jolson as he concludes a rehearsal of "Back In Your Own Backyard." Jolson gleefully kids the clueless gents and their product, but then wins them over with what would become a troublesome tune, "I'm Ka-Razy For You." This is immediately followed by a brief sequence depicting Jolson's wife (Marion Nixon) entering the radio station building and taking an elevator upstairs, where she encounters Thomson --- who has, shall we say, certain "plans" for her that don't necessarily include her husband.

Missing Sequence

Lastly, to round out this post, and to hopefully leave you with a clearer, brighter impression of "Say It With Songs" than I could ever hope to, a medley of tunes from the film as performed by Bidgood's Symphonic Dance Band for the British label "Broadcast" in 1929. You'll notice that "I'm Ka-Razy For You" isn't present here either!

Selections from "Say It With Songs" (1929)

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A Castle in the Air

Songs and entire musical productions of another day can be revived --- as indeed they often are, but what can never be replicated is the one element that always and forever adheres these shows to a fixed point in time --- and that's, quite simply, the time in which they first appeared.

Audiences who first attended the "Ziegfeld Follies of 1927" in late Summer of that year, and carried away the melodies they heard with them, can never be duplicated again. The way they interpreted (and embraced) the music and performances of that production is something beyond our understanding today, try though we might.

How can we begin to understand how or why a particular song or performance moved an audience of 1927? What did it remind them of in their daily lives? What feelings did it produce that, when related to friends or relatives or family members, caused audiences to continue to buy tickets for a production that would run for a highly respectable 167 performances?

That's only part of the reason that something like the various editions Ziegfeld's "Follies" have refused to succumb to revival --- even by the showman's own hand. The performances and melodies are locked into a moment in time that, when
revived, can't help but appear inane, silly or grotesque --- or all three. It doesn't help either that all too often, modern interpretation of any Twenties material seems to include the notion that performers must be shrill, overly animated and all sound like Betty Boop. Perhaps this is how the current public consciousness perceives that long ago decade --- I don't really know, but it was obviously a larger-than-life period of time that was already being parodied before the decade that followed it even closed. To be fair, I suppose that's the way it always was and always will be --- in that the present generation always believes itself the height of sophistication and that anything which preceded it is laughably quaint and naive. Ah well.

Rather than further analyze questions for which there are no answers, let's instead lift back the veil of time for a moment on "The Ziegfeld Follies of 1927," as it appeared in the waning months of that year. Billed as a "Musical Revue in Two Acts," the production --- with music by Irving Berlin, featured (among others) the likes of vocalist Franklyn Baur, the Brox Sisters, Eddie Cantor, Irene Delroy, Ruth Etting, Al Jolson, Claire Luce and the Albertina Rasch Dancers.

So, for a few moments, slip off the hot streets of New York City and into the air cooled confines of the New Amsterdam Theater --- where all those voices, and countless others, still surely reverberate even today somewhere from deep within. But only if you listen for them. Really Listen...

Medley from "The Ziegfeld Follies of 1927" (In Two Parts)

Performed by Franklyn Baur, The Brox Sisters, Arden & Ohman and the Victor Orchestra

Under the Direction of Nathaniel Shilkret

Recorded September 14th, 1927

"Ziegfeld Follies of 1927" (Medley) - Part 1

"Ziegfeld Follies of 1927" (Medley) - Part 2

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Happy Go Lucky Days

I can't say I'm entirely surprised that the earlier Duncan Sisters post ("The Curse of the Mean Cicero Blues") proved so popular, as the team is so entirely unique a joint personality and yet so little appears to have been written of them from a modern standpoint, aside from a beautifully detailed exploration of their "Topsy and Eva" characters developed for a stage production of "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

Despite their tangled, somewhat shadowy personal lives and involvements, The Duncan Sisters are all about music --- then as now. Extraordinarily prolific in the recording field, we're lucky enough to have a wide cross-section of extant material that stretches from the early acoustic 78rpm period to modern day 45rpm and LP recordings, although it's best to focus on output from their prime period of the 1920's and early 1930's.

From their 1926 musical stage production, "Topsy & Eva," here's one of the featured songs, "Happy Go Lucky Days," with the Duncans in character, an electrical recording from February of that year.

"Happy Go Lucky Days" (1926)

Moving ahead to September of 1927, comes the tune "Black and Blue Blues," and one that might raise more than a few eyebrows or furrow them today --- but it's all innocent fun when listened to in the context of it's day of origin. The Duncans are in character here too, but they'd often revert to their Topsy and Eva persona's long, long after the production ceased to be either topical or even remembered, for that matter.

"Black and Blue Blues" (1927)

Recorded during a successful tour of the United Kingdom in late 1928 and early 1929, the following two sentimental melodies are unusual for the Duncans in that they're performed absolutely straight and and have a sound unique among their recordings provided by a piano and Hawaiian guitar. Given the January 1st recording date for both, it's assumed their New Year's Eve festivities were minimal at best!

"Hula Hula Lullabye" (1929)

"Just Give the South Land To Me" (1929)

Lastly, two melodies that were featured in their 1929 starring vehicle, "It's A Great Life" (MGM) which were recorded in early January of 1930. The first, "It Must Be an Old Spanish Custom" is pure comic vaudeville --- and one of the brightest spots in the film, where it was performed almost identically to the version heard here --- although the comedic visuals (and Rosetta's wild mugging) are lacking of course, somewhat lessening the effect here.

"It Must Be an Old Spanish Custom" (1930)

The second tune, "I'm Following You," has long outlived both the Duncans and the film itself, to the point where a version was recorded in Germany in the late 1950's as a pseudo pop tune! The Duncans version however, is a timeless melodic ethereal beauty that transcends time and musical fashion.

"I'm Following You" (1930)

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A Woman Undisputed

At this late date, at least for me, one of the most memorable elements of director Cecil B. DeMille's first two talkies, "Dynamite" (1929) and "Madam Satan" (1930), is one that typically passes with scant mention --- that of the presence and memorable contribution of actress Kay Johnson (1904-1975.)

Placid, studied, intelligent, sensitive, delicate --- and so much at odds with the bizarre raucous world and those who populated it that were created within these two films, Johnson somehow managed to survive both epics critically unscathed and then simply moved on to smaller roles --- almost cameos in some cases, seemingly hand picked in others (the 1934 "Of Human Bondage," especially) that became fewer and fewer apart throughout the 1930's until she eventually retired from the screen in the mid 40's.

Johnson surely had one of the loveliest speaking voices to be heard on the early talking screen --- the type that when, once heard, is instantly identifiable thereafter. Depending upon how you look at it, it's either fortunate (or not) that Johnson's vocal abilities weren't called upon to warble either of the theme songs from her two DeMille films.

The first, "How Am I To Know?" from DYNAMITE (1929), managed to become a pop standard and ultimately freed itself entirely from it's film roots to the point where it could be heard, somewhat disconcertingly, in television banking commercials.

The second, "Live and Love Today" from MADAM SATAN (1930) was seemingly forgotten by the time the film's run ended, a fact helped along by the fact that it wasn't widely recorded --- and, while pleasant, painless and immediately familiar to anyone who's seen the film, the tune's pedigree is clearly second rate.

But, just to illustrate a point of just how awful an early talkie era theme song could be, and perhaps to elevate "Live and Love Today" a few pegs --- here's an excerpt from the theme song of the 1928 synchronized Norma Talmadge film, THE WOMAN DISPUTED that defies description.

Audio Addendum:

"How Am I To Know? from DYNAMITE (1929)

Vocal (Gene Austin) with Orchestra

Recorded on September 19th of 1929

"How Am I To Know?" (1929)
~

"Live and Love Today" from MADAM SATAN (1930)

Sam Lanin & His Orchestra, Vocal by Irving Kaufman & Male Trio

"Live and Love Today" (1930)
~

"Woman Disputed (I Love You)" from THE WOMAN DISPUTED (1928)

The Gennett Concert Orchestra, with Male Vocal

(Excerpt Only - Damaged Disc)

"Woman Disputed" (1928)

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