A lighthearted comedy featuring an excellent cast. 

Date of Release: Aug 25, 1929
Studio: Fox
Director: Raymond Cannon
Screenplay: Robert S. Carr, Walter Catlett
Music : Sidney Mitchell, Con Conrad, Archie Gottler, Dave Stamper, Harlan Thompson
Choreographer: Fanchon and Marco
Leading Actors: Sue Carol (Mary), Nick Stuart (Dick), Dixie Lee (Billie), Jean Bary (Jackie), Richard Keene (José), David Rollins (Oscar), Jed Prouty (George), Walter Catlett (Elmer), Gordon De Main (Roy), Ilka Chase (Ethel), Dot Farley (Susan), Laura Hamilton (Maude)
 
Why Leave Home was a film adaptation of the hit Broadway play Cradle Snatchers. Written by Russel G. Medcraft and Norma Mitchell, the play opened at the Music Box Theatre on Sept 7, 1925 and ran for 485 performances. The play starred a young Humphrey Bogart and was described as “unquestionably the funniest play in town.”
 
The play was revived at the Liberty Theatre in 1932. Another musical adaptation Let’s Face It opened in 1941. The new adaptation starred Danny Kaye with a book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields, and music and lyrics by Cole Porter.
 
Fox had made a silent film version of the play titled The Cradle Snatchers in 1927. Actor Nick Stuart made his screen debut in the silent version, and Why Leave Home marked his first talkie.
 
Motion Picture News (Aug 31, 1929) reported that Why Leave Home would be released on the west coast under the title Imagine My Embarrassment. The title was changed due a suggestion by the President of Fox West Coast Theatres, though a reason was not given. Variety (Aug 21, 1929) ran a similar story and suggested the name change was considered for national release.
 
Why Leave Home opened to lukewarm reviews and solid houses in August 1929. The reviewers generally agreed the stage show was better, and dismissed the “flimsy” plot about six different couples trying to show up their significant others. The Educational Screen (October 1929), always reliable for a snarky review, described Why Leave Home as “So farcical as to be both harmless and inane.”

Several reviewers made mention of Sue Carol and David Rollins. Sue Carol was an heiress, but not substantially well off. She reportedly told a security guard she had three fur coats, which didn’t mean much in Chicago, but translated to luxurious wealth in Hollywood. The studio used the story of an heiress abandoning her fortune to seek fame in Hollywood as a publicity stunt, and it worked.
 
Carol was also featured in the press for her real life relationship with Nick Stuart. Stories like the one below ran in Photoplay.
 
“Every Sunday morning, rain or shine and hot or cold, Nick Stuart drives over to Sue Carol’s tepee for breakfast. Sue shows her love for Nick by dishing up a big mess of hot cakes. And Nick shows his love for Sue by eating them. Greater love hath no handsome leading man with dimples!”

David Rollins was an actor whose film career was short-lived. He appeared in Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 (1929), Happy Days (1930), The Big Trail (1930) and The Phantom Express (1932). He was interviewed for the book Broken Silence: Conversations with 23 Silent Film Stars. 
 
The reviewer for the The Film Daily (Sept 22, 1929) wrote “The cast is uniformly good.” Many of the cast members were experienced Broadway and vaudeville performers, and most continued on to successful film careers.
 
Austro-Hungarian born Nick Stuart was an actor and singer who appeared in over fifty films. He later ran his own talent agency, directed a band, and ran a clothing store. Credits include Happy Days (1930), Rio Grande Romance (1936), Mr Muggs Steps Out (1940), and The Lost Planet (1953). He and Sue Carol married at the end of 1929, though the marriage only lasted five years.
 
Dixie Lee is now remembered as Bing Crosby's wife, however she was very much a celebrated star in her own right (even if she was adored for her good looks rather than any remarkable acting abilities). After starting out on Broadway, a young Lee was signed with Fox. Her film credits include Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 (1929), Happy Days (1930), Cheer Up and Smile (1930), Manhattan Love Song (1934) and Redheads on Parade (1935). Lee made well received recordings of "A Fine Romance" and "The Way You Look Tonight." Sadly, Lee suffered from alcoholism and died from cancer at just 41.
 
Jed Prouty started out in vaudeville and Broadway before being signed by Fox. He went onto appear in over one hundred films, usually playing a comic character. His credits include The Girl in the Show (1929), The Floradora Girl (1930), The Big Bluff (1933), Black Sheep (1935), Happy Go Lucky (1936), A Star is Born (1937), Pot O’ Gold (1941), and Mug Town (1942).
 
Walter Catlett started out as a stage actor and singer in vaudeville and on Broadway before transitioning to film. He appeared in over 150 films, often playing unscrupulous characters. Some of his credits include Married in Hollywood (1929), Why Leave Home (1929), Happy Days (1930), Her Golden Calf (1930), The Floradora Girl (1930), Big City Blues (1932), The Captain Hates the Sea (1934), Pinocchio (1940), and Davy Crockett and the River Pirates (1955).
 
Ilka Chase was a highly educated and driven woman with a fascinating life story. The New York Times wrote in her obituary, “As an actress, radio and television personality, playwright, novelist, and urban sophisticate, Ilka Chase greatly brightened her times.” The daughter of Edna Woolman Chase, the editor-in-chief of Vogue for nearly forty years, Chase was born in New York and went to school in France. She appeared on Broadway in twenty different productions, and in over forty films and television shows. She ran her own radio program, wrote plays, novels, and a cookbook, and also was active in wildlife preservation and various charities.
 
Dot Farley was a prominent early film actress, writer, and director. She appeared in over 300 films, though most were comedic shorts. The Women Film Pioneers Project suggests that Farley’s writing credentials were not taken seriously, or properly documented, owing to her fame in comedies.

​Although Why Leave Home performed well at the box office, it was quickly overshadowed by The Cock-Eyed World. 
 
The film is now believed lost. 

We jump back briefly to 1928 to take a look at a film considered long lost. 

Date of Release: Sept 23, 1928
Studio: First National
Director: Alfred Santell
Writer: James T. O'Donohue, George Marion
Costumes: Max Rée
Music: Irving Caesar, Edward Grossman, Joseph Meyer, Ted Ward
Choreography: Seymour Felix
Cast: Alice White (Dixie Dugan), Donald Reed (Álvarez Romano), Lee Moran (Denny), Charles Delaney (Jimmy), Richard Tucker (Milton), Gwen Lee (Nita Dugan), James Finlayson (Mr. Dugan) Kate Price (Mrs. Dugan), Hugh Roman (Eppus), Bernard Randall (Kibbitzer)

This film represents yet another musical missing from the AFI catalog of movie musicals, and yet was an early piece of work for many important industry players. 

Show Girl was based on Joseph Patrick McEvoy’s best-selling novel of the same name. The novel was also the basis for the Dixie Dugan comic strip, a popular series which chronicled the life of a Hollywood showgirl. 

The novel was heavily employed in promoting the film, with the serialized version of the novel re-released in local newspapers, and copies of the book distributed to theatre managers. Screenland (Nov 1928) also featured an article by the film’s star, Alice White, extolling the novel’s comedic value.

Long considered a lost film, a silent version was found in Milan and screened at the Italian Podenone Silent Film Festival (Giornate del Cinema Muto) in 2015. The sound version is scheduled to play at this year’s festival and if anyone wants to spot me a ticket to the festival (and a plane ticket to Italy), I’ll happily accept! 

Reading the plot notes and advertising for Show Girl, I had dismissed it as another fluffy backstage musical comedy. After reading through Podenone’s program notes however, I really want to see this film. 

The notes describe Show Girl as “socially historic and deliciously cynical” and “exemplary for its pace and economy.”  The protagonist, Dixie Dugan is characterized as “the new “New Woman” – the post-Flapper, symbolizing the final days of the Roaring Twenties… while her predecessors were “smoking, drinking, never thinking…” Dixie calculates, cooly. She has big ambitions and knows how to use her looks and her sexuality to achieve them.” It would be so refreshing to see a film from this era where at least one woman has agency in her world! 

A second film based on the same material, Show Girl in Hollywood, was released in 1930.

The next post will be back to 1929, and in the meantime I’ll be keeping my eyes and ears open for a New York screening. ​​​

Remember last week when I said there were three musicals about college football in 1929? I lied. There were four. They all had similar plots, featured footage from actual games, and weren't particularly musical. Warner Bros' offering was The Time, the Place, and the Girl. 

Date of Release: July 6, 1929
Studio: Warner Bros. 
Director: Howard Bretherton 
Screenplay: Robert Lord, De Leon Anthony 
Music: Frank Adams, Irving Berlin, Nat Bonx, J. Fred Coots, Sam Coslow, Herman Darewski, Dorothy Fields, Jack Glogau, E. Ray Goetz, Will Hough, Joseph E. Howard, Moe Jaffe, Robert King, Ray Klages, Herb Magidson, Jimmy McHugh, Al Sherman, Larry Spier, Arthur Wimperis
Leading Actors: Grant Withers (Jim Crane), Betty Compson (Doris Ward), Gertrude Olmstead (Mae Ellis), James Kirkwood (Professor), Vivian Oakland (Mrs. Davis), Gretchen Hartman (Mrs. Winter), Irene Haisman (Mrs. Parks), John Davidson (Ward), Gerald King (Radio announcer), Bert Roach (Butter & egg man)

​Based on the play of the same name by Frank R. Adams, Joseph E. Howard and Will Hough (New York, 5 Aug 1907), The Time, the Place, and the Girl is now a lost film. According to a review in the Exhibitors Herald World (June 22, 1929), the “gags were updated” for the film, and the score was completely re-written — with the exception of the original song “Honeymoon.” 

Production began in January 1929, and was finished just two months later. The film received little print advertising as Warner Bros was in the middle of production for fourteen Vitaphone films, including On With the Show andThe Desert Song. During production, The Film Daily shared that parts of the Vitaphone sequences would be filmed outside, along with casting announcements. 

Although little print advertising can be found in the trade magazines, Warner Bros used other gimmicks to get the audiences into the theatre. Film Daily (Oct 7, 1929) reported that in Colorado, the studio had “Distributed three different kinds of cards, 500 of them reading “The Time”; 500 more reading, “The Place”, and only 50 reading “The Girl.” The game was that if a person turned up to the theatre with a complete set, they would be given three free tickets to the film. 

Another gimmick was a kind of film festival. Exhibitors Herald World (July 27, 1929) reported that the film was screened during “The Big 6” at the Minnesota theatre in Minneapolis, a six-week talkie extravaganza to try and lure audiences back into the theatre “after the novelty” of talkies had worn off. The event was advertised “with every possible medium,” including “Billboards, tack cards, programs and the screen.” Each week the theater screened a different film, and audiences were encouraged to come back each week and compare the films.

According to reports in Motion Picture News and Variety, although the film started very well at the box office, it took a nosedive within a couple of weeks. 

The reviews were mixed, and critics either loved or hated the film. Motion Picture News (May 4, 1929) declared it “by far one of the best all-talkers that have come from Warners” and praised the “excellent” cast and “humorous, wise-cracking” dialogue.  

A critic who had seen the original stage show (though they confessed it had been quite some time between viewings), gushed in the Exhibitors Herald World (June 22, 1929), “It’s a smart, swift, amusing, clever and altogether excellent talking-picture… The new version is better than the old one ever was or could be. It’s great.”  

Meanwhile, the critic at The Educational Screen (June, 1929) declared “Another hero with colossal ego, blatant conceit supposed to be funny. Crude voices, diction and dialog. Perfect illustration of ignorance and bad taste in production.” The journal’s hilariously condescending rating guide, divided into three groups “For Intelligent Adults,” “For Youth (15-20)” and “For Children (Under 15),” rated the film as “Stupid,” “Doubtful,” and “No” for each category respectively.

A later review in Exhibitors Herald World (Nov 16, 1929) stated, “Not much to this, no plot or story. Pulled them in fair but failed to satisfy.” Conversely, in the same publication a week later, another critic wrote, “Interesting story, very entertaining… Good satisfaction here.”

Unlike other musical films, none of the reviews make any mention of the music. This supports Jeff Cohen’s (author of the excellent Vitaphone Varieties blog), statement that the music in the film is mostly underscoring, with just one song, the aforementioned “Honeymoon.”

If this is the case, it is puzzling as to why the AFI catalogue lists a massive 19 composers (many of whom went on to highly successful musical careers) and the following songs, “How Many Times,” "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now," “Collegiate," “Collegiana," "Doin' the Raccoon,” "Fashionette," "Jack and Jill,” "Everything I Do I Do for You,” and "If You Could Care.”

The cast and creatives on the film were, for the most part, successful in their Hollywood careers. I've chosen not to include information on the composers here, as I cannot verify if their music was actually used in the film. 

The Film Daily (Dec 10, 1929) reported that in 1929 alone, Howard Bretherton directed four feature films and 10 Vitaphone Varieties (short talkies). By the end of his three decade career, Bretherton had directed over 100 films, mostly B grade westerns, often also assuming the role of editor.

Robert Lord wrote, or provided the story, for over 70 films between 1925 and 1957. These included several musicals such as My Man, So Long Letty, and Gold Diggers of Broadway. He won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for One Way Passage (1932), and was nominated for Black Legion (1937). 

De Leon Anthony was a writer and editor. 

Date of Release: July 7, 1929 
Studio: Universal 
Director: Nat Ross 
Screenplay: John B. Clymer, Pierre Couderc, Leonard Fields, Albert De Mond
Music: Dave Silverstein, Lee Zahler 
Leading Actors: George Lewis (Bob Wilson), Eddie Phillips (“Flash" Thomas), Dorothy Gulliver (Dorothy May), Churchill Ross (Jimmie Reed), Hayden Stevenson (Coach Jones), Sumner Getchell (Fat)

College Love was the first of three “college film musicals” released in 1929 (the other two were Paramount’s Sweetie, and MGM’s So This is College). The film was a feature length, all-talking version of a series of popular silent shorts released by Universal, The Collegians. The film sought to capitalize on the popularity of the series, talkie fever, and what film historian Edwin M. Bradley states was the national obsession with collegiate football in the 1920s.

It was difficult to decide whether or not to include this film in the list. None of the online databases (AFI, IMDb) list it as a musical, but it receives a line of mention in both Barrios’ A Song in the Dark and Bradley’s The First Hollywood Musicals. Unlike other films of the day, it was not heavily promoted in the trade magazines, however the ads that do exist make heavy use of images of music and dance, suggesting that, even if the movie was low on song and dance, marketing it as "all singing and all dancing" had perceived appeal. ​

Universal's focus in the summer of 1929 was on Show Boat, and as a result, College Life was not heavily promoted in print media. It is often only advertised as part of Universal’s catalogue, and very few pictorial adverts can be found in the trade magazines. 

The pictorial adverts that do exist heavily promote the musical aspects of the film, with cartoon images of musicians playing saxophones and drums, and people dancing. An ad in the Exhibitor’s Herald World (Aug 10, 1929), describes College Love as "the 100% singing and talking sensation!” In a herald from the Wellington Talkies (currently available on Ebay), the film is advertised with the words “Youth! Beauty! Jazz!” 

While print adverts were few in number, Universal did attempt some unusual forms of advertising. The Exhibitors Herald World (Aug 10, 1929) reported that Universal had bought several radio stations to broadcast music and dialogue from new films. The first was Station KRLD in Dallas, Texas, which was scheduled to broadcast the score and dialogue of College Love in its entirety. As College Love is a lost film, it would be interesting to see if any of the stations bought by Universal still hold archival copies of the sound discs. 

Another form of advertising were "ballyhoo stunts," events in towns and cities designed to attract attention and promote upcoming features. Exhibitors Herald World (Aug 10, 1929) reported that a car decked out with signage for College Love drove around Milwaukee for two days and "attracted a lot of attention." The stunt seems to have worked, as the Hollywood Filmograph reported that the film broke "house records in Milwaukee theaters." 

A second event occurred in Oregon, with Exhibitors Herald World (Sept 28, 1929) reporting that in Grants Pass the picture house had run a "flivver parade" (slang term for a small car, imagine what we call a "vintage car" today) sponsored by Ford Motors and other local businesses. The parade "was a wow, with resulting good business at the Rivoli." ​

The stunts were not quite enough however, and the film flopped at the box office, often closing within a week or two wherever it opened.

The overwhelming consensus among the reviewers was that College Love was utterly inane. The critics derided the acting as mediocre, the sound as lackluster, and the plot ridiculous. Despite all this, nearly every critic noted that College Love was good fun, and worth it for the football scenes alone (the use of real life footage from a college football game was highly praised, and used in the same way in So This Is College​). Film magazine The Education Screen (October 1929) had an amusing review system which rated College Love as "stupid" for "intelligent adults," and "harmless" for "youth (aged 15-20).”​

College Love appears to be an example of a silent film that couldn’t make the leap to talkies. Just about all of its creative team, with the exception of Leonard Fields (who went on to write, produce, and direct several films throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, including King Kelly of the U.S.A (1934), and Manhattan Love Song (1934)), were active in Hollywood only during the silent era. 

The music occasionally rated a positive review, but no hit songs were generated from the film. It was the first film marking a partnership with Shapiro Bernstein Inc. and Universal, where Shapiro Bernstein Inc. would write and publish music for all upcoming Universal films. Songs for College Love, written by Lee Zahler and Dave Silverstein, included "It's You," "Oh, How We Love Our College," and "Crazy Medley.” 

The music team had more enduring success than the other creatives on College Love. 
Lee Zahler was a tremendously prolific composer, and music director, whose career spanned over thirty years. He wrote the music for Columbia's Batman and Phantom serials in the 1940s, and was the director of music at Columbia for almost ten years. Composer and writer Dave Silverstein eventually became a staff writer for Fox.

College Love is considered a lost film. Based on the reviews, and lackluster creative team, it seems we are better off enjoying the other 1929 college football musicals, Sweetie or So This Is College instead!

Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 is a lost film. According to Vitaphone Varieties, the only known surviving copy of the film was lost in a catastrophic fire in 1937. There is a listing for the film at the Library of Congress, however it is only for a record as listed in Jack Raymond’s Show Music on Record (a listing of recordings from American shows). After contacting the Library of Congress, I discovered that they do hold 35mm nitrate of censor cuts from the film, however nitrate elements are not available for viewing.

DIRECTOR TROUBLE 
Fox Movietone Follies was initially directed by Marcel Silver, who also directed Married in Hollywood, another lost film from 1929. In the late 1920s, he directed many of Fox’s “Varieties,” sound shorts featuring vaudeville acts filmed in Hollywood. ​

After Fox executives began to panic at the escalating production costs, lack of plot, and lengthy production period, director David Butler was bought in to finish the film. He did so in a matter of weeks. Raised in a show business family, Butler directed over eighty films and television shows in a career spanning over fifty years, including the delightful Sunny Side Up, (1929), The Little Colonel (1935), Calamity Jane (1953), and Leave it to Beaver (1957).

CATCHY MUSIC
The reviews unanimously declared that the music was catchy and fun, and bound to get the audience dancing. Several songs from the film including “That’s You, Baby,” “Breakaway,” “Walking with Susie,” “Big City Blues” became best-selling hits. Photoplay wrote, in its new record review section, “you can dance to this!”

The music team were all highly successful and prolific composers. Working primarily for Fox in the 1930s and 1940s, Sidney Mitchell had a successful partnership with Lew Pollack. Mitchell wrote the lyrics for "At the Codfish Ball," "Sugar," and the Oscar nominated "A Melody from the Sky."

Starting out as a piano accompanist for silent film, Conrad went on to perform, write, and produce for the Broadway stage. His songs were recorded by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Eddie Cantor, and Eubie Blake, and went on to become huge hits. Conrad eventually moved to Hollywood, and continued to write hit songs for the budding talkie industry. He won the first Oscar for Best Song for "The Continental," featured in The Gay Divorcee (1934), and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. Conrad's music continues to be featured in film and television, including "Palesteena,” You Call It Madness (But I Call It Love)," and "Ma, She's Making Eyes at Me."​

Another silent film accompanist, Archie Gottler went on to write for the Ziegfeld Follies and Broadway Brevities in the 1920s. After composing innovative scores for silent films, he continued working in Hollywood as a successful composer and director. As a director. Gottler is best known for Woman Haters, the first of the Three Stooges comedies. His famous songs include “America, I Love You,” “Easter Sunday on Parade," and “Wine, Women and Song.”

MULTICOLOR DANCES! 
Despite the song and dance routines being filmed in groundbreaking multicolor, which according to historian Richard Barrios “was based on shades of red-orange and blue, which gave it a softer and cooler look than its rival,” the choreography did not receive much mention in any of the reviews. 

Unusually for this period, the choreographers are credited in Fox Movietone Follies. For this film, the musical numbers were staged by brother and sister team, Fanchon and Marco. Fanchon & Marco Inc, also known as F&M, was a highly successful family-run production company and talent school based in LA. The company created elaborate stage shows and film segments featuring large numbers of talented chorus girls. According to the Fanchon and Marco website, notable students who trained with Miss Fanchon and her brother, Marco Fanchon, include “Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Shirley Temple, Ginger Rogers, Dorothy Lamour, Cyd Charisse, Betty Grable, Joan Crawford, Will Rogers and May West.” The site is well worth checking out for production shots of F&M’s elaborate sets and staging. 

Even with the use of multicolor, the critics failed to be impressed by the elaborate numbers. Barrios states that “Trick photography was used on an energetic group of black singers/dancers performing “Walking with Susie”; and a faux undersea ballet, “Pearl of Old Japan”... yet neither was terribly dazzling.” 

LACK OF STARS
Variety lamented the lack of stars in the cast. With a few notable exceptions (listed below), very few of the credited cast members went on to any sort of performance career beyond a few film appearances.

Along with her sisters, Lola Lane was one of the leading ladies of the 1930s. Born Dorothy Mullican, Lane started out playing piano for silent films. After reportedly being discovered singing in a flower shop, Lane toured the vaudeville circuit and eventually moved to New York where she starred in revues alongside George Jessel. Lane was spotted by a talent scout and moved to Hollywood in 1929. She appeared in over forty films, usually playing tough women. Lane was the inspiration behind the Superman character, Lois Lane.

Stepin Fetchit, or Lincoln Perry, was a highly successful, and controversial, comedian and actor. He was the first African American actor to receive a featured screen credit, and the first to become a millionaire. Although widely criticized for his derogatory portrayals of "lazy" African American characters, Perry was later celebrated for opening the doors in Hollywood to African American actors. An excellent bio and breakdown of his career and legacy can be found here and here.

Sue Carol was a successful actress for over 10 years before starting her own talent agency, the Sue Carol Agency. The critics loved her in Fox Movietone Follies, and she received universally favorable reviews.

Dixie Lee is now known as Bing Crosby's wife, however she was very much a celebrated star in her own right, even if she was adored for her good looks rather than any remarkable acting abilities. Lee appeared on recordings "A Fine Romance" and "The Way You Look Tonight."
Paula Langlen was a stage actress who also went by the nickname of "Skipit," reportedly due to her flighty demeanor during her first Broadway audition. She appeared in Gilbert and Sullivan productions on Broadway, and in several films. One critic described her as "sprite-like" and "charming."

Carolynne Snowden was a highly acclaimed African American dancer who appeared in over twenty films, mostly during the silent era. She was a headliner at the Cotton Club in Harlem, and toured the US with her own troupe. At the height of her success in Hollywood, she had her own dressing room on the MGM lot, and a five-year contract. Snowden often appeared opposite Lincoln Perry, and appeared in The Jazz Singer as a maid. She is credited as being one of the first successful African American film actresses who paved the way for actresses of color on the big screen.

Frank Richardson was a child performer who was known as "The Wonder Boy Tenor". He had success as a black-face performer in vaudeville, and his act, "The Joy Boy of Song," was filmed as a short for Vitaphone. He appeared in Sunny Side Up and "Happy Days" (1929). A detailed biography can be found here.

Date of Release: 12 May 1929
Studio: Pathé
Director: Bradley Barker
Screenplay: Gene Markey 
Music: Will Collins, Bud Green, James F. Hanley, Sam H. Stept     
Leading Actors: Morton Downey, Beryl Mercer, John T. Doyle, Brian Donlevy, Helen Chandler, Osgood Perkins, Lorin Raker, Barbara Bennett, Jennie Moskowitz, Jacob Frank, Louis Sorin, Robert Gleckler, Tyrell Davis, Allen Vincent, Leslie Stowe    

Mother’s Boy appears to be a lost film, as it is not held at the Library of Congress or the UCLA Film and TV Archive. 

If the reviews are anything to go by, Mother's Boy, described by Photoplay as “Just another Jolson plot, only this time the singer is an Irishman,” is not a film that history is sad to have lost.

Motion Picture News wrote, 

Mordaunt Hall, in his NY Times Review, found Mother’s Boy overly sentimental, “lachrymose,” with poor sound quality. He stated that “there are some good touches of comedy,” but that the dialogue was “really beneath consideration.”

The Post described the film as “a dull, uneventful and sentimental debauch,” and film historian Edwin M. Bradley called it “wretched.” 

Given the wealth of talent behind the scenes, and on screen, it is surprising that Mother's Boy was so universally panned. 
​
DIRECTOR
Perhaps the blame lies with director Bradley Barker, who was more well-known as a silent film actor, appearing in over 70 films over the course of his fifteen year career. He directed a total of seven films, most of which were silent.

WRITER
Writer Gene Markey also wrote Syncopation and Close Harmony. He was well-liked in Hollywood (and was considered quite a ladies’ man). Markey was a prolific and popular novelist who wrote about the jazz age. He later worked as a producer, and, after leaving Hollywood, was heavily involved in horse racing.​

MUSIC
Austrian born Bud Green was a prolific and immensely successful writer who started out in vaudeville, and made his way west in the 1920s to become a staff writer in Hollywood. He wrote hundreds of songs, including “Sentimental Journey,” Oh, Boy, What a Girl,” and “Alabamy Bound.” He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1975.
James F. Hanley was another prolific Broadway composer who wrote a string of hits including “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart” and “I’m a Lonesome Little Raindrop.” He contributed to dozens of films, including Glorifying the American Girl (1929), Me and My Gal (1932), and Rose of Washington Square (1939). He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. 
Russian born Sammy Stept, later known as Sam Stept, was a highly prolific composer and jazz pianist. He wrote hundreds of songs, including “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me),” “Johnny Get Your Gun,” and “I’ll Always Be in Love With You”. His music appeared on stage and in film, and his songs have been covered by artists such as The Andrews Sisters, the Beatles, Eartha Kitt, Frank Sinatra, and many more. 

CAST
The cast featured a roll call of prominent (or soon-to-be-prominent) stage and screen stars, but it seems their talents were not enough to save the film. 

Nicknamed “The Irish Nightingale,” tenor Morton Downey was a popular singer and actor. Listed as “a face to watch” in the November 1929 edition of Photoplay, Downey appeared in several films throughout his career. He went on to host radio programs, and later, television shows. He was married to fellow actor Barbara Bennett, and was the father of television personality Morton Downey Jr. 

At 4’11”, Beryl Mercer was often typecast in motherly roles. Born in Spain to English parents, Mercer worked as a child actor in London before eventually moving to New York. After performing on Broadway, Mercer moved to Hollywood and appeared in over fifty films including All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Jane Eyre (1934), and The Little Princess (1939). 

John T. Doyle appeared in three films, and died in 1935. 

Brian Donlevy appeared in over one hundred films over the course of his forty year career in Hollywood. He became famous for playing rough characters with a soft side, and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Sergeant Markoff in Beau Geste (1939). 

By her early twenties, Helen Chandler was already an established stage actress who had performed with stars such as John and Lionel Barrymore. She appeared in nearly thirty films, but was plagued by drug and alcohol addiction, and was not as successful on screen as she had been on the legitimate stage. 

Osgood Perkins was an established stage actor who appeared as a character actor in several films, and was the grandfather of actor and writer Oz Perkins.
Lorin Raker worked on Broadway for over fifteen years before transitioning to film. He worked in Hollywood in film and television until the 1950s, however most of his roles appear to be uncredited. 

Barbara Bennett was the middle child of a highly theatrical family, and despite early success as a dancer, she was not as successful or well-known as her two sisters, Constance and Joan Bennett. Barbara appeared in several Broadway shows, and a few unsuccessful Hollywood musicals including Mother’s Boy, and Love Among the Millionaires.

Mother’s Boy is one of just two screen appearances for Jennie Moskowitz, however she was a very well regarded and prominent stage actress. Romanian born, Moskowitz made her stage debut at age thirteen, and was taken under the wing of Sarah Bernhardt. After being bought to New York with a theatre troupe at just eighteen years old, Moskowitz became a well-known feature of the New York stage, appearing in Yiddish and English-speaking theaters. A review of Potash and Perlmutter in 1917 described Moskowitz’s performance as “lovable and most convincing.”  

There is scant information about Jacob Frank available online. He also appeared in two films, Mother’s Boy and Zein Weib's Lubovnick.

Louis Sorin was a prominent character actor on stage, screen, and radio, whose career spanned over forty years. He is best remembered for his role in both the stage and screen versions of The Marx Brothers classic, Animal Crackers. 
Robert Gleckler was a successful stage and screen actor who appeared in over fifty films including Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938) and Gangs of New York (1938). Just before his death, he began filming for the classic Gone With the Wind, playing the role of the Yankee overseer. 

Tyrell Davis was a British actor who appeared in over 30 films. 

Allen Vincent was an actor and writer. He was nominated for the Best Writing (Screenplay) Oscar in 1949, and he appeared in over twenty films. 

​Leslie Stowe was a stage actor who appeared in several silent films. He retired from Hollywood shortly after the advent of talking pictures. 

Date of Release: Dec 15, 1928
Studio: Warner Bros 
Director: Archie Mayo 
Screenplay: Robert Lord, Mark Canfield, Joe Jackson, James A. Starr
Music: James Hanley, Harry Carroll, Grant Clarke, Mort Dixon, Leo Edwards, Fred Fisher, Oscar Levant, Ballard MacDonald, Blanche Merrill, Channing Pollock, Billy Rose
Leading Actors: Fanny Brice, Guinn Williams, Edna Murphy, Andrés de Segurola, Richard Tucker, Billy Seay, Arthur Hoyt, Ann Brody, Clarissa Selwynn

The Internet Is Really Great 
As I near the end of films released in 1929, I’m catching up on a few films I’ve missed from the list. When I first started this project (way back when in 2010), I skipped over films that were lost, or weren’t publicly available. It’s remarkable how much information has been digitized and made available through the internet in the intervening five years. 

The Internet Archive is a particularly fascinating place. With a little searching, old issues of film trade mags such as Variety, Film Daily, and PhotoPlay are all available freely online. Even more astonishingly, entire soundtracks of lost films such as My Man have been made available. 

A Lost Film
My Man is famously considered a lost film. Wikipedia and IMDB claim, without references, that three of eleven reels still exist at the Associated Artists Productions (AAP) library, however no such library seems to exist. AAP and Warner Bros are now owned by Time Warner (not to be confused with Time Warner Cable), and I have been unable to find information on where or how to access their archives.

The UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Library of Congress, the two largest moving image archives in the USA, do not hold copies of the existing reels.

As My Man was released by Warner Bros, I attempted to track down the reels through them. The Warner Bros. Archives are held at the University of Southern California, but are primarily paper archives, and no film reels are kept in the collection. 

Warner Bros now offers Warner Archive Instant, an online subscription-based streaming service for “classic TV and hard-to-find movies” that works similarly to Netflix or HBOGo. My best guess is that Time Warner (who also own Turner Classics and HBO) are holding the entire collection privately in order to be able to release films on their streaming services at a profit. While streaming makes content available to the wider public, not all films are available, and some are only available for a limited time. 

Fragments and Sound Reels
Although the films reels are lost, stills and Vitaphone disks have survived. The English version of Photoplay released a photographic special feature to coincide with the film's release in England. It contains stills from the film, and copies of the book are available from the Fanny Brice Collection, Ebay and Abe Books. 

One amazing soul has made the soundtrack available on the Internet Archive. It is not easy to ascertain where this person uploaded the soundtrack from (or with what permissions), but I'm so glad they have. With its awful dialogue and pleasant underscore, the soundtrack is quite amusing to listen to. For the most part, the stilted dialogue segues unnaturally into songs with lines like, “Hey Fanny! Sing us that song you did yesterday!” repeated before every song. 

Leading Lady - Fanny Brice
My Man was a star vehicle for Broadway star Fanny Brice. She was already well known for her performances in the Ziegfeld Follies, and her signature songs, including “My Man,” “I’d Rather Be Blue Over You,” and “Second-Hand Rosie” all appeared in the film. Although clearly enamored with Fanny Brice’s comedic and singing talent, both Variety and The New York Times were critical of her “Jewishness.” This didn’t stop Brice from being one of the biggest stage stars of her day, and her life was later portrayed in the Barbara Streisand star vehicles, Funny Girl and Funny Lady. A hauntingly beautiful recording of the title song, recorded in 1921 is available at the Library of Congress, and on YouTube. Unfortunately, the film version is not quite as touching as this rendition.

Cast and Crew
Apart from Guinn Williams, who went on to a healthy career in westerns, the rest of the cast faded from Hollywood as talkies gained momentum. Director Archie Mayo and screenwriter Robert Lord, continued to work extensively in Hollywood in genres other than musicals. 

Most note-worthy from the cast and crew, apart from Fanny Brice, was screenwriter Mark Canfield, better known as Darryl F. Zanuck. Zanuck left Warner Bros in 1933, co-founded 20th Century Pictures and went on to become one of the greatest producers in Hollywood with over 200 movies to his name.  

Music
The musical numbers received universal praise from the critics. Despite the song “I’m an Indian,” a painful reminder of America’s overtly racist past, the music throughout is light-hearted and fun. It’s easy to see why the songs were already audience favorites, and the film’s advertising plays on the their popularity. The score was composed by a large team of established musicians who all went on to become highly successful songwriters for stage and screen. Most of the My Man composers were eventually inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Critical Reception
Although My Man claimed to be a “tense drama, full of tragedy and comedy,” Brice was clearly its only drawcard. Even then, some advertisements encouraged audiences to see the film even if their cinema was not yet equipped for sound. In January 1929, Variety reported that the censors had cut whole sections of dialogue from the film, but “titles bridged the gaps with a certain measure of success, few any the wiser.” 

Produced during the awkward transition between silent films and talkies, My Man was not a strong example of the early movie musical. The film was criticized for being too long, and the predictable plot, centered around the trials and tribulations of an aspiring actress working in a costume house, was derided as inane. 

The NY Times was critical of the clunky use of sound, and the film’s long length (though at 99 minutes, I wonder what those poor critics would have thought of later musicals which run for over three hours). 

Variety called My Man technically “good and smart,” but also lamented its length, and the poor execution of technical elements including sound, scenic composition, and the fact that Brice was likely to only be a “one picture star.” 

Finale
Despite the lukewarm critical praise, My Man turned a profit for Warner Bros, and ensured the studio would continue to invest in talking pictures. 

Date of Release: Nov 10, 1929 
Studio: Columbia Pictures 
Director: George Archainbaud, James Seymour, Rufus Le Maire
Screenplay: Gladys Lehman
Music: James Hanley, Sidney Clare, Sam Coslow, Charles Daniels, Dave Dreyer, David Franklin, Jack Stern, Jack Stone, Fred Thompson, Joe Trent
Lead Actors: Sally O’Neil, Jack Egan, Carmel Myers, Tom O’Brien, J. Barney Sherry, John Hyams, Charles Wilson, Doris Dawson, Gordon Elliott

Broadway Scalndals is considered a lost film, though the 9th of 9 sound reels still exists somewhere in Australia. Critics of the day agreed the film was well made, but it was too similar to all the other singing and dancing backstage comedies from 1929 to stand out. 

Columbia was not yet a major player in the film industry. Over the next few years it would establish itself through a succession of well received screwball comedies. 

Although Broadway Scandals was not a hit, most of the creative team went on to successes within in the film industry. French-born George Archainbaud directed over 100 feature films over the course of his career. He was most well-known for westerns, particularly the Hopalong Cassidy series. Credited as a “stage director”, James Seymour went on to find success as a screenwriter with hits such as 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933. 

The music was composed by a group of writers who were part of the small army of artists who worked in vaudeville and Hollywood churning out great volumes of songs, many of which became well-known hits. 

Although their names have largely been forgotten by the general public, we are still humming many of these songwriters' tunes. Composer James Hanley wrote mostly for the stage, and is most famously remembered for composing “Zing Went the Strings of My Heart”. Sidney Clare was a prolific movie musical songwriter. His hits include “Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me,” “I’d Climb the Highest Mountain,” “Polly Wolly Doodle,”  and “On the Good Ship Lollypop” (the last a collaboration with Sweetie’s composer Richard A. Whiting). Dave Franklin composed “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down,” which later became famous as The Looney Tunes theme song. Fred Thompson was a British-American librettist who penned over fifty musical librettos, and found success in the both the West End and on Broadway. His hits include Rio Rita, Funny Face, and Follow the Girls. His later hit, Maygar Melody was the first musical to be broadcast live on television.

The actors of Broadway Scandals were not as fortunate as their creative counterparts. Even though they had been well-known silent film stars, most of the cast did not survive in Hollywood following the advent of talking pictures. 

Charles Wilson continued to work prolifically, most notably appearing as a supporting character in several Frank Capra films. He was also a one time director with the earlier George Jessel movie musical, Lucky Boy. Gordon Elliott went on to become famous for westerns, and became known as “Wild Bill Elliott”

All three female leads, Sally O'Neill, Doris Dawson, and Carmel Meyers, had been picked as “WAMPAS Baby Stars”, the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers campaign that selected up-and-coming Hollywood contract players. Dawson and Meyers continued to work in Hollywood after 1930, though mostly in small supporting, or uncredited, roles. 

The New York screening of Broadway Scandals was preceded by three shorts, one of which was a Disney “silly symphony,” Springtime. NY Times film critic Morduant Hall described it as “humorously conceived”. 

Given the lack of information about the film, and its cast and crew, it seems that Broadway Scandals was a largely forgettable movie. It may have had more impact with audiences had it been released earlier, but by the end of 1929, audiences had seen plenty of well executed backstage singing and dancing comedies. Not every lost film is treasure waiting to be unearthed.  

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. 

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.