Date of Release: Oct 26, 1929 
Studio: MGM 
Director: Nick Grinde
Leading Actors: Benny Rubin, Patricia Brox, Pietro Gentile, Myrtle McLaughlin  

Apart from the AFI Catalogue listing, there is very little information currently available on The General. A different film from the 1926 Buster Keaton silent flick, The General appears to be a short, or “junior feature”, with a listed film length of just fifteen minutes. 

Director Nick Grinde barely rates a mention in Barrios’ excellent history of early musical films A Song in the Dark, and the film is absent completely from the book. Grinde went on to direct 58 films, including Ronald Regan’s first film The Man they Could Not Hang. He was the co-writer on Laurel and Hardy’s Babes in Toyland.

The General may be a victim to MGM’s abysmal historical record. Over the years, MGM has literally thrown away files, film reels, props, and costumes. According to David J Hogan in his 2014 book on The Wizard of Oz, MGM hired people to “clean away the clutter”. If original set pieces from the land of Oz weren’t precious, then a 15 minute obscure short had zero chance of survival. In the 1970s, MGM auctioned off much of the costume store, and during MGM’s takeover by Turner in the late 1980s, miscommunication and thoughtless record keeping led to warehouses of archival material being discarded or destroyed. Even today, MGM does not have a fully centralized or comprehensive archive, though content is available at various libraries in the United States. For the studio most closely associated with movie musicals, this is utterly devastating. 

It is believed that of all films made before 1950, over half are irretrievably lost. Just within the last five years, more and more efforts have been made to not only preserve what is left of early films, but to make them accessible to a wide audience. Warner Bros has a particularly impressive catalogue available to the public, and YouTube abounds in clips posted by vitaphone and talkie fans. 

History is a fascinating and fickle thing. Without records, or access to verbal history, whole stories, and in this case, films are lost forever. For a whole host of reasons, including education, entertainment, and understanding, it’s up to us to preserve our past. In the meantime, I will be yelling like Leo the Lion (pictured above) at the tragedy of MGM's lost past.  

Date of Release: Oct 20, 1929
Studio: Fox 
Director: Raoul Walsh 
Music: John Philip Sousa, George M. Cohan, James Caddigan, Joseph A. Brennan,  Geoffrey O’Hara, Al Dubin, Irving Mills, Jimmy McHugh, Irwin Dash, Sidney Mitchell, Archie Gottler, Con Conrad, Lew Brown, B. G. DeSylva, Ray Henderson, Lew Clare and Sidney Pollack 
Leading Actors: Victor McLaglen, Edmund Lowe, Lily Damita, Lelia Karnelly, El Brendel, Bob Burns, Jeanette Dagna, Joe Brown, Stuart Erwin, Ivan Lino, Jean Bary, Soledad Jiménez, Albert Dresden, Joe Rochay

The Cock-Eyed World is a sequel based on a silent film which had been based on a Broadway play, which had been turned into a talkie. The original silent film, What Price is Glory? was released in 1926, and re-issued as a synchronized sound short a year later. What Price is Glory? was the first outing of Fox’s synchronized sound system (Movietone Sound), and is famous for its use of profanity, only noticeable by lip-reading the actor’s mouths. I decided not to watch the first film after reading one modern day review which stated, “Glorification of war, amazing objectification of women, exploitation controversy and lots of sequels, oh boy!”. Unfortunately, the same statement could be applied to The Cock-Eyed World.

Although family friendly by today’s standards, as described by Butters in his book on film censorship, The Cock-Eyed World was considered “loud, crude, tough, loutish and decidedly vulgar in spots.” A complaint about the film decried, “It is misnamed… a more appropriate name would be the ‘sex life of the marines’.” Despite the complaints, The Cock-Eyed World was one of Film Daily’s 10 best films of 1929, and the ninth most profitable film of that year.

The film divides critics into two camps. Some feel it’s a fast-paced hilarious riot. Others find it tedious with terrible use of sound. Film historian Richard Barrios describes The Cock-Eyed World as “Unquestionably one of 1929’s most fluid productions, it demonstrated how a strong director could make sound film pay off. It’s also, today, a coarse and wearisome gust of Walshian misogyny and empty heroics, which no amount of technique could make palatable.” 

The film follows two marines, Flagg and Quirt as they travel around the world on duty, and compete for women. From Vladivostok to Coney Island to South America, each locale provides a pretty, silly, girl for the men to fight over. The plot repeats itself in each new location, capped off with a battle scene towards the film’s conclusion. 

The racist and sexist overtones are impossible to ignore. With lines like “she’s fat but nice,” “oh you’re still working from the back,” and “come here sweet stuff,” the humour does not stand up well after 86 years. Women exist solely for the pleasure of men. They are silly, speak in artificial high pitched voices, and interactions with other women are for the purpose of arguing over the men. The Spanish South American women (we’re never told where we are exactly, somewhere in “the tropics”) perpetually swish their skirts and hold their hands as though they are about to dance the flamenco. They speak in such a fast high-pitched way, that I’m fairly convinced they’re speaking gibberish that sounds vaguely like Spanish. Even with the limited material and terrible stereotypes, Lili Damita as Mariana is an excellent comic, though her role makes her painful to watch. 

There are some eloquent moments about the futility of war and nature of the war machine, like the early line spoken by a soldier, “I ain’t got no home. I’m just roamin’ and fightin’ and preventin’ fightin’ to protect other homes.” But these small significant moments are lost in the middle of the womanizing and lame duck humor. The soldiers have nothing to redeem them, no charisma, no charm, just lots of bravado. It’s hard to imagine Flagg and Quirt were so popular that four films were made to feature them. As Richard Barrios writes, “…then as now, worthy intentions mean far less at the box office than lusty posturing.”

The Cock-Eyed World should not be classified as a musical, but as a “comedy with songs”. A few scenes feature dancing in a club, but there is certainly no organized dance or story-telling through dance to speak of. Despite a long list of credited composers, there is barely any music in the film. The first song occurs a good fifteen minutes into the film. In Vladivostok, the marines are joking around and getting ready for bed. The jocular mood is accompanied by a group musicians who are set up in the next room, (according to David Parkinson, during this period, producers were concerned that viewers could only “understand” musicals if they could see the source of the music on screen), playing an instrumental jig. Sergeant Flagg enters the room, and of course, his friends call for him to “give us a song boy!”. After 15 minutes of girl getting bravado and “sez you, sez me” humor, Flagg breaks out into a completely incongruous tenor ballad “So Dear to Me”. 

“Over There” and “So Long” provide two all-too-short musical moments with wonderful chorus arrangements. The songs are played over scenes of the marines getting ready to deploy, and ships sailing into port, and help to set the scene and mood rather than advance the plot or give insight into characters’ feelings. 

The Cock-Eyed World is made well-enough, with high production values and a coherent, if too long and slightly repetitive, script. The film suffers from poor restoration - the image is not always clear, and in the last half hour, the heads of the characters are cut off from the frame. Overall, the use of synchronized sound is advanced in comparison to its predecessors, and some of the visuals, particularly in the battle scene with aerial shots of bombs dropping away, are well done. The Cock-Eyed World is a good example of the desire of early filmmakers to capitalize on synchronized sound and draw in the pundits, but it’s not a movie musical. 

Up next, The General! 

Date of Release: 16 Oct 1929 
Studio: Warner Bros. 
Director: Lloyd Bacon
Music: Harry Akst, Earl Carroll, Sidney Clare, Grant Clarke, Peter DeRose, Charles Tobias
Writers: Robert Lord, Arthur Caesar, De Leon Anthony 
Leading Actors: Charlotte Greenwood, Patsy Ruth Miller, Claude Gillingwater, Grant Withers, Harry Gribbon, Hallam Cooley, Marion Byron, Bert Roach, Helen Foster, Lloyd Ingraham, Jack Grey 

I had high hopes for this film. Directed by Lloyd Bacon, director of the watchable The Singing Fool, and starring acclaimed Broadway actress Charlotte Greenwood, So Long Letty promised to be a highlight of early movie musical fare. It was awful. After such clunky films as this, it’s a wonder movie musicals ever took off. 

Based on the 1916 Broadway musical of the same name, though with an entirely new score save for the title song, So Long Letty is a musical about wife swapping, a premise that was considered dated even at the time of its release. The New York Times review  stated “The picture itself goes almost insane at times, for it possesses so many irrational moments thats it logical points seem strangely out of place.” 

Of the film’s five songs, four occur in the last twenty minutes of the film. Each song sits oddly within the plot, and does not advance the story or characters in any way. The songs are used to highlight Greenwood’s gutsy alto voice, but instead of coming across as endearing or fun, her character is painful and annoying. The film comes to a merciful end with a speak-song that wraps up the plot in less than thirty seconds.

Women are portrayed in limited roles, obsessed with fame, cooking, or men. The two lead women, crass beauty shop parlour employee, Letty, played by Charlotte Greenwood, and the “nice little domestic girl” housewife, Grace, played by Patsy Ruth Miller, are both unlikeable. They are not helped by bizarre costuming choices, where Greenwood often looks like she’s dressed in a shiny sack, and Miller is too fashionably dressed for her diminutive housewife character. 

The women are not helped by their male co-stars. Bert Roach is amusing as Letty’s husband, but his character is ungrateful and rude. The same can be said of Grant Withers as Harry Miller, who has a quick song at the end of the film featuring an appalling attempt at scat singing. Finally, the grouchy rich old white male of film, Uncle  Claude, played by Claude Gillingwater, has no reason to be so awful and judgmental, except for the fact he is grouchy, rich, white, and old. 

There is one redeeming, although all-too-short, scene in the film, set at Letty's beauty parlor. Charlotte Greenwood displays her comedic ability, and the visually appealing set makes for a great contrast from the living room and kitchen scenes that take up most of the film. 

It’s not much surprise that So Long Letty was a commercial flop. The film’s humor is cheap, dated, and sexist, and with its ridiculous songs and complete absence of dancing, it barely passes as a musical. So Long Letty, and good riddance! 

Date of Release: Oct 16, 1929
Director: Charles J. Hunt 
Studio: Rayart Pictures 
Leading Actors: Tommy Christian, Ellalee Ruby, Jack J. Clark, Lucy Ames, Art Barnett
Music: Billy Moll
Choreographer: Jack Clark

The Making Of
Rayart Pictures Corporation, initially a silent film company, filmed various musical shorts at one of several east coast studios, Metropolitan Sound Studios, in New Jersey. One of those films, Howdy Broadway was not widely released and was a monumental flop. It is now available on DVD through Alpha Home Entertainment. 

Plot 
A backstage comedy centered on college students. 

What The Critics Said 
The NY Times described Howdy Broadway as “amateurish”, and a “barely released embarrassment that didn’t further the careers of anyone involved”. The film receives similarly harsh reviews from modern day viewers. 

Richard Koszarski, in his book Hollywood on the Hudson, describes Hunt’s direction of the film as “incompetent and listless”. He states that Howdy Broadway “offers nothing to suggest any degree of pride, interest or imagination on the part of those who made it.”

According to Edwin M. Bradley, Howdy Broadway was “made to capitlize on the modest following of bandleader-saxophonist-composer Tommy Christian and his band the Collegians”. The production company, Rayart Pictures, folded shortly after the advent of talkies. It’s easy to see why. 

Modern Day Viewing
The best thing about this film is that it is only 47 minutes long. The script, direction, and editing are so woeful, it’s comedic. It’s easy to see where the Singin’ In the Rain creative team later drew their inspiration. 

The script, by director Charles J. Hunt, is undeveloped and full of terrible dialogue. Centered around a group of jocks who inexplicably become Broadway performers, we learn nothing about the characters, nor do we particularly care for them. 

The direction is similarly inadequate. Each scene is blocked as if for a stage play. The ensemble stands awkwardly in the background, watching the action with their best “listening” faces on. Random musicians, the real life Collegians, are inexplicably poised at the ready to play in almost every scene. Two ensemble members each have a line, but the microphones don’t pick them up. 

The acting is mostly suitable for silent films, hammy and over-the-top. In an early number, the actor spends the entire song looking away from the camera to an unseen audience, stage left. In the next scene, an irate police officer delivers his entire speech upstage, with his back to the camera.

The editing is also amateurish. Scenes take too long to end, with actors standing still, as if waiting for “cut” to be called. Cuts between different shots within one scene make the actors appear to switch positions although they are standing still, and the sound is often not synchronized with the image. 

Women appear in the film as the sweet love interest, the scheming performer, and the scantily clad chorus girls. The lead female, Lucy Ames, is a nice enough soprano, but her lack of depth or desires beyond her beau make her uninteresting. Lyrics such as “Anything you say, anything you need, I’ll agree. You can always count on me” make her even less endearing. Her costume, a pretty dress with a giant white corsage that covers her entire shoulder, is so distracting that even her male counterpart has no choice but to play with it while she sings. 

Sweet though forgettable songs, with a good balance of ballads and jaunty up-tempo numbers, at least keep the film rolling at a reasonable pace. The orchestrations are simple, predominantly making use of piano, guitar, a violin or two, and an alto sax. Two songs occur as an expression of a character’s feelings, however most of the song and dance numbers are performed as a show within a show.

The choreography is basic, and at times hilarious. One number features a solo male dancer doing some impressive high kicks, while another features chorus girls tap dancing. Most of the dancing is filmed with the whole body in the frame, though one solo number cuts to close-ups of the male dancer’s “fancy” footwork. 

Howdy Broadway is amusing to watch today, thanks to how utterly awful it is. As a musical, it is completely forgettable. As a piece of film history, it is fascinating to see how far we still have to go before the “glory days” of the Hollywood musical.