Date of Release: Nov 8, 1929
Studio: MGM 
Director: Sam Wood
Screenplay: Al Boasberg, Delmer Daves 
Music: Al Boasberg, Martin Broones, Fred Fisher, Charlotte Greenwood, Jesse Greer, Raymond Klages
Leading Actors: Elliott Nugent, Robert Montgomery, Cliff Edwards, Sally Starr, Phyllis Crane, Dorothy Dehn, Max Davidson, Ann Brody, Oscar Rudolph, Gene Stone, Polly Moran, Lee Shumway

So This is College, along with Sweetie (Paramount’s contribution to the college movie musical genre), was one of the more profitable films of 1929. Although an MGM production, the film has been made available on DVD through the Warner Bros Archive. It is a fun comedy that, apart from pervasive sexism, holds up surprisingly well over time. 

The comedic skills of all involved are evident in So This is College. Boasberg and Daves’ witty script, and deft performances from the whole cast, save what is otherwise a formulaic and predictable plot. The film centers around two University of Southern California (USC) footballers, close friends Biff (Robert Montgomery) and Eddie (Elliot Nugent) who compete for the affections of the same girl, Babs (Sally Starr). Underscored by (an unseen) marching band fanfare, the opening scenes of college students returning to college after summer vacation are boisterous and fun. Particularly noteworthy is a sketch-like scene involving two desperate-to-please freshmen (including a young Oscar Rudolph who later made his name directing The Lone Ranger, Batman, The Donna Reed Show and The Brady Bunch) carrying a trunk up a flight of stairs.

The score is comprised almost entirely of upbeat and lively jazz, composed by a team of Tin Pan Alley writers, (you may recognize Charlotte Greenwood's name from So Long Letty, though So This is College appears to be her only songwriting credit). Although the style and flavor of the music is consistent, there is no through-voice pulling the songs together. As a result, the songs appear inserted into the film for the sake of including popular music, rather than for any story-telling devices. Early in the film, Eddie sings, “I don’t want your kisses, if I can’t have your love,” featuring some (rather unconvincing) scat singing. At the song’s conclusion Babs wittily retorts, “That’s a great song, I’d love to hear somebody sing it.” 

The only ballad occurs in the frat dining hall. The boys are gathered waiting for their evening meal, and sing their house song, “Friends Until the End.” The sobriety of the song is humorously undercut by the playful banter between Biff and Eddie. The song is later reprised to surprising dramatic effect when Biff and Eddie’s friendship is tested and they part ways. This kind of juxtaposition between song and action is used effectively at the school dance during the reprise of “I don’t want your kisses,” with a lovely tender moment between Babs and Eddie. 

A college musical wouldn’t be a college musical without a school dance. Unfortunately So This is College is not nearly as slick as Sweetie in the dance department, though it is certainly as enthusiastic. Exactly like Sweetie, the scene begins with the lead female, Babs, surrounded by boys, singing about the school dance, “Campus Capers." The song leads into a frenzied foxtrot, full of energetic, almost violent, bouncing and waving of arms. The result is amusing, though not particularly noteworthy for its choreography or camera work. The costume design in the dance does nothing to help. While the rest of the cast are in standard 1920s flapper dresses and suits, our eye is continually pulled from the dancing, and drawn to the sparkles of Babs’ uniquely spangly flapper dress.  

The pace drags in the second half, unassisted by several scenes featuring secondary characters. Ann Brody, Max Davidson, and Polly Moran were all well-known vaudeville and silent movie stars and their appearances, though funny, distract from the plot. Brody and Davidson are sweet as the Jewish laundry proprietors, but we have no reason to invest in their characters. Moran, playing the poorly treated house cook, Polly, is a genuinely funny comedic actress. She shines in a late scene listening to the big game on the wireless, tears streaming down her face as she laments for her boys, only to discover she is holding an onion to her cheek. Although the performances are fun to watch, these side characters could be cut from the film and nothing would be lost from the story. 

The same could be said of the final scenes at the big football game. Filmed at an enormous stadium complete with thousands of cheering spectators, the footage is from newsreel of a real football match between USC and Stanford in 1928. Although the editing is quite clever, the newsreel images are grainy, and the sheer scale is inconsistent with the rest of the film. 

What really drags So This is College down is the pervasive sexism. Polly appears in the dining room, and the boys prompt her to say, “Polly wants a…[cracker].” When she relents, the boys gleefully throw fistfuls at crackers at her until she retreats back into the kitchen. Babs is twice referred to as a “lovable little mutt”, and despite making her feelings for Biff clearly known, Eddie continues to make unwanted moves towards her. When Babs finally declares, “I don’t know why I’m letting you get away with this,” we wonder the same thing. 

Despite her sole purpose in the film as a love interest, Babs is not without agency. She gets her own back when we discover she has invited just about every boy on campus to pick her up at 8 o’clock, and that her flings with both Eddie and Biff are just part of a larger scheme. Through her snappy one-liners and knowing wink, we understand that boys and dating is all just a game to her. 

The AFI classifies So This is College as a “comedy with songs”, though it is no more or less a musical than the “musical” Sweetie. Despite this, So This is College is more memorable as a comedy than a musical. 

The film marked the beginning of several successful Hollywood careers, though not in movie musicals. Director Sam Wood became a prolific director, well known off-screen for his conservative politics. Scriptwriter Al Boasberg would go on to become a highly influential comedic writer, script doctor and director. Songwriter Fred Fisher penned many hit songs including “Chicago,” “Come Josephine in my Flying Machine,” “And the band played on,” and “I’m on my way to Mandalay”. Actor Robert Montgomery eventually became an award winning actor and director (and father of Elizabeth Montgomery - Samantha in Bewitched). Cliff Edwards, better known as Ukulele Ike, appeared in over 100 films, and is perhaps best remembered as the voice of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio. Phyllis Crane became famous for her appearances in the Three Stooges comedies. 

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: Nov 2, 1929 
Studio: Paramount 
Director: Frank Tuttle
Music: Richard A. Whiting and George Marion Jr.
Choreographer: Earl Lindsay 
Screenplay: Lloyd Corrigan and George Marion Jr.
Leading Actors: Nancy Carroll , Helen Kane, Stanley Smith, Jack Oakie, William Austin, Stuart Erwin, Wallace MacDonald, Charles Sellon, Aileen Manning

Inspired by the Broadway college football musical smash Good News, Sweetie was one of three “college film musicals” released in 1929. Deftly directed by Frank Tuttle, Paramount’s second talkie offering is a fun film that, except for some dated racist references, holds up well over time.

Aspiring actress Barbara Pelham, (Nancy Carroll), inherits an entire all-boys college, Pelham. Her “sweeter than sweet”, Biff Bentley, (Stanley Smith), is Pelham’s football captain. Jilted by her sweetheart, Barbara arrives at the school seeking revenge, and hijinks ensue, complete with singing and dancing. The story also follows the trials and tribulations of the tomboyish Helen Fry, (Helen Kane) who attends the neighboring Miss Twill’s School for Girls, Barbara’s act partner Tap-Tap Thompson (Jack Oakie), and the unfortunate less-than-bright football jock Axel (Stuart Erwin). 

Nancy Carroll was already a highly popular stage and screen actress with several hits under her belt by the time she filmed Sweetie. I enjoyed Carroll’s earlier performance in Close Harmony, and her performance here is just as charming. The screen time, and most of the songs, however, go to co-star Helen Kane. Kane was the model for Betty Boop, (she was not compensated for the use of her image), and Sweetie was released at the height of her popularity. It’s easy to see why Kane was so adored. She’s mischievous and fun, and, despite her squeaky voice, her character makes from a welcome change from the swooning silly ladies of earlier films. 

Although going on to become well regarded and prolific actors, the lead men pale next to the exuberance of the women. Charles Sellon’s performance as the bumbling, well-meaning professor, Dr Oglethrope, is interesting, if bizarre. As evidenced in the first moments of the film, where he walks over and through a hedge, much of the comedy is overdone or overplayed. 

At times the plot is utterly ridiculous, but throughout the script are some moments of excellent comedy and visual story-telling. Particularly noteworthy is the tongue-in-cheek commentary about the roles of women. The film opens on a beautifully shot group of young ladies learning to pour tea. The composition of the scene, although set in a garden, is intensely theatrical and visually appealing. 

The world of the polite lady is shattered by the appearance of Helen Fry, a gun-popping, tree-climbing, boy-crazy lass who cannot maintain “good posture”, and has “no honor." Her wiles are amusingly showcased in the number “I Think You’ll Like It”, sung to Axel as she surreptitiously undresses him by pulling the thread on his shirt.  

Upon Barbara’s arrival at Pelham, Dr. Oglethrope introduces the boys to their new headmistress - “A woman’s place is in the home, therefore let’s make it feel like home and all shall be well.” Barbara, “who will and does speak for herself,” responds with a hilarious speech about how history is positively littered with examples of women thriving in environments where they surrounded by men, such as Joan of Arc, and for that lady, “everything was quite nice”. The audience knows full well that everything was not quite nice at all for Joan of Arc, and we at once understand that Barbara is doomed as headmistress of Pelham, and impressed that she there at all. 

The music, by George Marion Jr. and Richard A. Whiting, in Sweetie is terrific, and its frequent and cohesive use throughout the film make it stand out from the other films I have watched thus far. Richard A. Whiting is famous for songs such as “Hooray for Hollywood”  and “On the Good Ship Lollipop,” and 1929 was his first year in Hollywood.

The music has an overarching peppy and fun tone that matches the film’s content, and the arrangements are just wonderful. Early in the film we are treated to an a cappella performance of Pelham’s spirit song “Bear Down Pelham”, sung by the football team in the locker room. The song occurs mostly off-camera, providing accompaniment for Biff’s vision of his team’s triumph. A cappella does away with the painful convention during this period to explain the presence of musicians, and fits in with the playful nature of the film.

Unfortunately, a band must appear at some point, and we are forced to sit through an unnecessarily long set-up to learn we are outside the band's rehearsal hall. Barbara is excited to see her sweetheart Biff, and what-d’ya-know, the band starts playing “her song!”. She sings “My Sweeter Than Sweet,” a saccharine ballad, describing her love for the wonderful Biff. The song is repeated, by different characters, and with varying arrangements (including a babershop quartet), to surprisingly good effect several times throughout the film. 

“Alma Mammy” is an upbeat, problematic, song written to showcase the skills of Jack Oakie and parody the hugely famous Al Johnson. The first rendition is fine enough, complete with a throw-away “you ain’t heard nothin’ yet,” referencing Al Johnson's famous line from The Jazz Singer. When the song is reprised as a chorus number at the big game, all the men are wearing minstrel masks. I was confused and disturbed by the use of blackface when Al Johnson did it in The Jazz Singer, and it makes no more sense here. In the world of the film, African American people are completely absent, and there is no other reference to the minstrel tradition. 

Sweetie’s choreography is attributed to “dance director” Earl Lindsay. We get a glimpse of a lovely tap number during rehearsals for Barbara and Tap-Tap’s show, complete with gorgeously designed costumes and proscenium arch. But the dancing is really featured in the lead up to the school dance with “The Prep Step”. The camera cuts between wide shots of the whole room (awkwardly, and inexplicably, framed by two ladders and later two pot plants), mid-shots of the couples dancing, and close ups of the tapping feet. The number is enhanced by the simple yet highly effective costumes, pretty light-colored uniform dresses and suits with black tap shoes. The costumes not only look great in black and white, but draw our attention to the dancers’ feet. The gorgeous dresses at the school dance are equally effective, and it is a shame the costume designer is not credited.

Apart from the glaring racism in “Alma Mammy,” Sweetie is a genuine light-hearted comedy with great music and dance. Unfortunately the restoration to DVD is not great, and the sound quality is often muddied by the whir of the film reel. 

In researching this film, I was reminded that there is no such thing as a definitive movie musical list, or a clear definition of what actually constitutes a movie musical. Film historian Richard Barrios refers to three college musicals released in 1929 - Universal's College Love, MGM's So this is College, and Paramount's Sweetie. Depending on which source you look at, the first two films are often not classified as movie musicals. 

I wrote to the AFI and asked them how they define the categories in their catalogue. Editor of the AFI Catalogue, Bob Birchard, states that categories are based on contemporary trade magazine classifications, and the cataloguer’s discretion. 

So just what is a movie musical? I’ve been trying to answer this question for myself for a while, and it will have it’s own blog post very soon!

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.