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image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_(1929_film)
Date of Release: Nov 7, 1929
Studio: First National Pictures
Director: Clarence Badger
Screenplay: Hope Loring
Music: Al Bryan, Edgar Leslie, Horatio Nicholls, Eddie Ward
Choreographer: Larry Ceballos (dance director)
Leading Actors: Irene Bordini, Jack Buchanan, Louise Closser Hale, Jason Robards, ZaSu Pitts, Margaret Fielding
Based on the Martin Brown Broadway musical of the same name, Paris is the story of an American art student living in Paris who falls in love with a French actress. She agrees to marry him, but only with his mother’s blessing.
The plot initially sounds like An American in Paris, and interestingly, the original Gershwin symphonic poem was composed in the same year as Brown’s play premiered on Broadway, 1928. It seems stories about American artists falling in love in Paris were very much in vogue in the late 1920s!
Unfortunately, we cannot compare the two films as Paris only survives in fragmentary sound reels at the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
Paris was produced by First National Pictures, an independent movie studio that merged with Warner Bros in 1928. The movie was filmed in black and white with two technicolor (and by most accounts, extravagant and unnecessary), revue scenes. Paris received mixed reviews and was considered a moderate success, playing better overseas where its leading lady, French actress Irene Bordini, was more well known.
Like many other stage to screen adaptations of the period, the Broadway score was largely replaced for the film version. A great shame, as the Broadway show featured songs by Cole Porter including “Let’s Fall in Love”.
The Vitaphone Varieties blog has a fascinating, and incredibly detailed, history of Paris. The post includes beautiful stills of the technicolor sequences, and transcripts of the remaining sound reels.
What is fascinating to me about Paris is that it features something I have not yet come across in this project: a female screenwriter. Hope Loring was a prolific screenwriter in Hollywood, often working in partnership with her husband Louis "Buddy" Lighton. You can read more about her here.
Final tidbit, in researching this post I discovered that director Clarence Badger retired to Sydney, Australia (where I grew up), and Hope Loring retired to Mallorca, Spain (where some of my ancestors hail from)! Small world.
Studio: First National Pictures
Director: Clarence Badger
Screenplay: Hope Loring
Music: Al Bryan, Edgar Leslie, Horatio Nicholls, Eddie Ward
Choreographer: Larry Ceballos (dance director)
Leading Actors: Irene Bordini, Jack Buchanan, Louise Closser Hale, Jason Robards, ZaSu Pitts, Margaret Fielding
Based on the Martin Brown Broadway musical of the same name, Paris is the story of an American art student living in Paris who falls in love with a French actress. She agrees to marry him, but only with his mother’s blessing.
The plot initially sounds like An American in Paris, and interestingly, the original Gershwin symphonic poem was composed in the same year as Brown’s play premiered on Broadway, 1928. It seems stories about American artists falling in love in Paris were very much in vogue in the late 1920s!
Unfortunately, we cannot compare the two films as Paris only survives in fragmentary sound reels at the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
Paris was produced by First National Pictures, an independent movie studio that merged with Warner Bros in 1928. The movie was filmed in black and white with two technicolor (and by most accounts, extravagant and unnecessary), revue scenes. Paris received mixed reviews and was considered a moderate success, playing better overseas where its leading lady, French actress Irene Bordini, was more well known.
Like many other stage to screen adaptations of the period, the Broadway score was largely replaced for the film version. A great shame, as the Broadway show featured songs by Cole Porter including “Let’s Fall in Love”.
The Vitaphone Varieties blog has a fascinating, and incredibly detailed, history of Paris. The post includes beautiful stills of the technicolor sequences, and transcripts of the remaining sound reels.
What is fascinating to me about Paris is that it features something I have not yet come across in this project: a female screenwriter. Hope Loring was a prolific screenwriter in Hollywood, often working in partnership with her husband Louis "Buddy" Lighton. You can read more about her here.
Final tidbit, in researching this post I discovered that director Clarence Badger retired to Sydney, Australia (where I grew up), and Hope Loring retired to Mallorca, Spain (where some of my ancestors hail from)! Small world.
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