Based on the Broadway musical of the same name, Rio Rita has romance, cowboys, pretty chorus girls, outrageous Mexican stereotypes, glorious costumes, color footage, and a sophisticated use of sound that makes this film stand out from the rest by a mile. The Broadway musical, produced by Ziegfeld, ran for just over two years, and the polish of the script and music shows in the film. 

In terms of story-telling and characters breaking out into song, the transposition of Broadway-tested material works well in Rio Rita. The camera work is occasionally stilted, and long scenes are filmed from one front-on angle, as if filming a stage, rather than creating dynamic camera angles that movies require, however the solid material makes up for the lack of clever cinematography. The opening shots of tapping chorus girls, complete with synchronized sound, demonstrate the experience of director and screen writer Luther Reed, and the use of sound effects, both on and off the screen, such as footsteps, gunshots, screams, and dialogue make Rio Rita immensely watchable, despite being nearly 83 years old. 

Comedy duo Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, the only two cast members from the original Broadway production, just about steal the film with their schtick. They went onto to become Hollywood sensations as a comedy duo, and it is easy to see why. Fast paced dialogue, physical comedy, and a quirky dance routine by Wheeler, make them the unofficial stars of the film. Also attention grabbing are the leading lady's, Rio Rita played by Bebe Daniels, progressively outrageous outfits. From the "simple" Mexican siñorita at the beginning of the film, to a lavish bride at the film's conclusion, her earrings, hats, and dresses are sparkling wonders to behold. 

The way in which dance is filmed is interesting to note throughout the film. Women are always filmed with their full bodies in shot, long legs or sumptuous costumes never to be left out of the camera's eye. Woolsey's dance routine meanwhile frames his upper body and the tops of his legs, but cuts off his feet,  and the film is edited to include occasional close-ups of his fancy footwork. One scene features an aerial shot of the chorus girls in a geometric shape, a good few years before Mr Berkley was to arrive in Hollywood. 

The music is delightful, and it is easy to see how composers lyricists like Harry Tierney and Joseph McCarthy were part of the myriad of creative teams laying the groundwork for the "golden age" of Broadway. The ensemble numbers are so much fun, with separate male and female chorus numbers that have all the jocularity of any Rogers and Hammerstein musical. 

Rio Rita was utter fun to watch and, despite some of the material now appearing dated, has stood the test of time well. It is easy to understand why audiences in 1929 enjoyed it so much, and why Broadway musicals became the fodder for Hollywood films. The film is available on DVD through the wonderful, and ever-increasing, Warner Bros Archive collection. 

"Say it with lengthy-dialogue-and-bizzare-script-writing-that-takes-a-really-long-time-to-get-into-the-swing-of-things-and-ends-really-weirdly" might be a more appropriate title for this 1929 feature film portending to be a musical. Richard Barrios writes that early movie musicals are "strange and amusing and often maddening." Say it With Songs is most definitely all of these things. The script writing is strange, the child is amusing, and the film as a whole is utterly maddening. Another star vehicle for Al Jolson, Say It With Songs follows a rather unlikeable singer, Joe Lane, who lies, gambles, lands himself in jail, kidnaps his paralyzed son, and still ends up with the girl. The dialogue is long and stultifying, Jolson is the only actor that sings, and there is zero dancing. 

Watching Say it With Songs I had quite a bit of deja vu... haven't I already seen an Al Jolson film about a devoted dad who is trapped by the demands of show business whose son ends up in hospital? Yep. Say It With Songs was directed by Lloyd Bacon, who also directed The Singing Fool. Even the adorable Davey Lee features again as Joe Lane's tragi-comic son. Unfortunately, Say it With Songs doesn't have nearly half the magic of its predecessor, despite more skill in utilizing this sound gimmick being evident. The entire film is actually spoken, there are no title cards in sight, and there is even a diagetic song moment!  

People often tell me they don't like musicals because people just break out into song (well then, don't watch musicals!). It is immensely amusing to me then, that the first integrated song in the film, (where a character sings because he has no other way of expressing himself, and not because he is performing a show within a show), occurs in a prison. Joe Lane, sitting in the mess hall surrounded by a hundred prisoners, suddenly breaks out into a wistful tune, inspiring his cellmates to imagine life being better despite their current situation. It is utterly bizzare, and out of sync with the rest of the film. Yet, as a modern day viewer yearning for something that looks more like a post-Oklahoma musical (i.e. integrated book and score... oh for the days!), it is strangely satisfying. If not hilarious. 

Spoiler alert (though I truly wonder how many people reading this blog will actually go and watch the film... still. Important to warn the curious!)! The ending. It's happy, and I don't like it. I've just sat through nearly two torturous hours of Joe Lane making one awful decision after the other, destroying lives around him, and finally he walks desolately across the Brooklyn Bridge, superimposed over images of wife and son, (a rather effective piece of editing) and I thought, "Yay! Here's my cathartic and tragic ending!" But no. Suddenly we cut to smiling Joe with wife and son and a new hit single, "7th Heaven". There is no justice. 

After nearly a year off from this self-imposed project (of which you can read about the genesis here), what an apt title to be kicking off proceedings with. I actually watched On With the Show nearly a year ago at the UCLA Archives. Interestingly, in the intervening year, this film has now been digitized, and is available from the Warner Bros Archive store. Historic preservation excitement aside, On With the Show isn't an entirely memorable film. Perhaps the effort of walking across the sprawling UCLA campus, the heat, and a long bus ride back to Hollywood erased my memory. Or it just wasn't that brilliant. 

The film is described on director Alan Crosland's IMDb biography as "creaky", and a "real flop." My year-old notes tend to agree. As the above clip shows, On With the Show features amazingly elaborate sets, stunning costumes, and wonderfully detailed chorus numbers. It really is a shame that despite being Warner Bros' first film to be released in technicolor, no color plates survive, because other than these wonderfully lavish numbers, On With the Show does not have a lot to commend it. The plot, based on a play, centres around the onstage and backstage trials and tribulations of a Broadway Revue, and while song and dance features quite a lot, the numbers are all about the show within a show, not intended to propel the plot forward or give insight to characters' feelings. The intervening dialogue is stilted, lead actors Arthur Lake and Betty Compson are painful to watch (a feeling generally shared by critics), and with continued use of title cards, it all still has the air of a silent film being converted to a talkie.

In his wonderful book, A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film, Richard Barrios states that watching these old films is a long slog with precious little of any interest, and one can sit waiting, waiting. Then, suddenly, there's something unexpected - a performance or song, an exchange of sharp dialogue, some surprising camera work, a fleeting glimmer of improved technique. Then it's possible to gain a sense of why audiences were delighted.That is precisely what sitting through On With the Show is all about. You sit and sit and feel kind of bored. And then you have these deliciously decadent ensemble numbers, or the fabulous Ethel Waters singing "Am I Blue," or some snappy editing showing the juxtaposition of onstage v. backstage antics, and you just feel like it's all going to get better! Richard Barrios believes we need to look at these old films on their own merits. But honestly, as a modern day lass, it is only knowing that these early movie musicals lead to something much more watchable that makes sitting through jumpy footage and patchy writing worthwhile. It is fascinating discovering that the creation of the movie musical genre took time and practise, and it took "creaky" efforts to make movie musical magic happen.

As they say, despite these early painful efforts, the show must go on! 

Close Harmony is another “vaudeville backstage hit”, because while talkies were taking off, it made sense to go to the other “talking” entertainment of the day, vaudeville and Broadway! The stars of the film were the beautiful Nancy Carroll and the dapper Charles “Buddy” Rogers. Both had recently starred in one of Paramount’s most successful silent films, and it was decided to showcase their musical talents in a talkie. Nancy Carroll was an established Broadway actress, and would go onto become a popular film actress. According to the IMDB, she received more fan mail than “any of her Hollywood peers of the same era”. I look forward to actually watching her perform in a later film for 1929, Sweetie. Charles “Buddy” Rogers was already an established film actor, having starred in the 1927 film Wings, the first film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards (of which you can read a modern day review by Matt Foster, an Aussie actor in New York who inspired this project with his blog “Matt vs. The Academy", and his attempt to watch every movie ever nominated for Best Picture). Rogers was also a talented musican, and is reported to have been able to play instruments from all sections of the orchestra!

As talkies really start to take off, and as mentioned in my post about Lucky Boy, we begin to see some artistic merit being displayed in the cinematography. Again according to The First Hollywood Musicals, “Cromwell and Sutherland exhibit some dexterirty with the camera, twice using lenghty shots that move the action from the dressing rooms to the Babylon stage area”. 

Despite being a commercial success, it is possible that the film was not well received critically. The prominent film magazine of the day, Photoplay, claimed that Close Harmony was “the last word in talking pictures”! Oh critics, what do they really know?!

Close Harmony is a Paramount production, and if the musings of the Vitaphone Blog are anything to go by, it perhaps will not be available for public consumption for a while - 

The thing about watching old movies is their availability. The next four films on the AFI List (Close Harmony, Syncopation, Fox Movietone Follies of 1929, and Innocents of Paris) are either lost entirely, or only available on "shrinking" film reels at the UCLA Film and TV Archives. As a history nerd, this worries me. It is a reminder of how fragile our tangible past really is. In this age of Google and YouTube, we presume that just about everything and anything is available on the interweb. Not so! 

Coincidently, the UCLA Film and TV Archives held a symposium this week on this very topic: “Reimagining the Archives: Remapping and Remixing Traditional Models in the Digital Era”. Thanks to the magic of the interwebs in the modern day, I was able to track down some information on the symposium, and my inner history nerd was thrilled and delighted at what is going on in the land of digitising media, and making footage accessible. Rick Prelinger, a prominent archivist, (among many other titles) and founder of the Prelinger Archives (a collection of over 60,000 “ephemeral” films) in his Keynote Address for the symposiusm, discussed the relevance and role of archivists today. According to Prelinger, old collections are slowly but surely being digitised. He points to issues of physical space for housing old footage, costs in maintaining and digitising these old collections, and the traditional closed views of the archivists and their institutions as barriers to open and available moving footage archives. In Prelinger’s view, the archival process needs to be “Social. Public. Transparent. Collaborative and Decentralized.” Here, here! Speaking of the Symposium, I highly recommend having a look at this page of the symposium blog, which shows a very cool way in which technology, archives, and the general public can all interact. 

With all the technology available today, it is exciting to think what can be done to preserve movie history. In terms of movie musical history, which in its early days also preserves on film pieces of  vaudeville and early Broadway history, this is absolutely crucial! 

Coming up next, some research into the next four films! 

The Singing Fool cemented the place of talkies in the entertainment industry. Suddenly all the studios wanted in on talkies. Enter George Jessel. He fits nicely into our history because he was the actor who played the lead in the original Broadway production of The Jazz Singer. Several sources have pointed out that Jessel turned down the film role due to disputes over salary. Upon seeing the successes of his replacement, Al Johnson, Jessel wanted a talkie of his own. 

Produced by Tiffany-Stahl Studios, Lucky Boy does not have the same charm or appeal as the earlier films it is trying so desperately to emulate. It is clearly, and sometimes painfully, a star vehicle for Jessel, summed up by the early line, “I bet if he had a chance he’d be the biggest actor in the world”. Whilst Jessel is a focused and charming actor, he does not have Al Johnson’s charisma, and as a result, the film falls flat. As Jeff Cohen writes on the Vitaphone Varieties blog, if Jessel had indeed starred in The Jazz Singer, “it would have been a very different film, and perhaps so would have film history”. This film’s flatness is furthered by a predictable plot that is almost entirely the same as The Jazz Singer, with a few minor differences, forgettable songs, and a drudgingly slow pace.

The score is comprised mostly of ballads, most notably “My Mother’s Eyes”, which is repeated without effect throughout the film. Like The Singing Fool, the songs attempt to show Georgie’s emotions, however they are not successful in capturing the audience’s heart. Dance is utilised only a few times in the film - once in the opening with scenes of children in the Bronx dancing to a gramophone, and again toward the end of film in the stage show of “Lucky Boy”, where we are treated to a kick line of ladies in pretty dresses. In terms of song and dance, there is nothing particularly noteworthy about this film. We do begin to see some innovative use of sound, such as off-screen sounds to enhance the plot or action (mostly the sound of audience cheers and clapping), and some interesting editing choices that move away from the stilted melodrama one shot set ups of silent films, but these devices are used sparingly, and the effects are lost amidst the slow and stilted overall pace of the film. 

In stark contrast to The Jazz Singer or The Singing Fool, there is little information readily available onLucky Boy, further suggesting that it was not commercially successful. Furthermore, the film has been classified on IMDB as lost, though I was able to obtain a DVD copy through Reel Classic DVD. According to an interview with Mike Wallace in 1957 (which I highly recommend watching, if only for the hilariously obvious product placement and advertising of some cigarettes...), New York Times reviewer Orville Presott described George Jessel as “a vain man, an egoist who loves flattery and fame and the sound of his own name. A sentimental man whose sentimentality reaches saccharine depths.” For me, this nicely sums upLucky Boy. Overall the film is stilted and sentimental, and lacking in the magic that the earlier talkies managed to capture.

[This film is not actually on the AFI List, however it was from an earlier list I compiled when I was feeling adventurous and wanted to watch every movie musical ever made... from the next movie on, it shall be the AFI List only!]