The Hollywood Revue of 1929

After the first big production number, Conrad Nagel appears and soon gets around to "Well, this IS nice. Here's one of my favourites--and I know you like her too. Because she's the personification of youth and beauty and joy and happiness: JOAN CRAWFORD--"

Could there be a remark more evocative of a time so innocent, especially in Hollywood, as to be all but unimaginable if it weren't still on film 75 years later?

The audiences at the late, lamented Theatre 80 St. Marks didn't think so either.

There is no attempt whatever to make this vaudeville-follies extravaganza cinematic--and who cares? Maybe that's why I find it so unique, so altogether touching. Sure, it's full of silliness and cornball nonsense, but there are so many moments of sweet charm that those are all right too.

It's just like being in a big vaudeville barn, and everybody does everything onstage; there is even an overture for the second act that is made of 2 songs from the first act, "Your Mother and My Mother,Too" and Crawford's song-and-dance number "Got a Feelin' for You."

I came to the movie because 3 players from 'The Broadway Melody'--Bessie Love, Charles King and Anita Page--were all reappearing here, and so there is a little variation on some of their numbers and personae from the earlier film. In 'Broadway Melody', Charles King falls in love with Anita Page and declares his love to her in the old classic "You Were Meant for Me." In 'The Hollywood Revue', Conrad Nagel sings it to Miss Page; this makes for a charming echo, and since it is plot less, the fact that Nagel is a real leading man much more than is King doesn't seem totally cruel--and, after all, King had been engaged to Bessie Love, Miss Page's sister in 'Broadway Melody'; maybe that balances the score a little. Bessie Love is made tiny to sit in Jack Benny's hands (a rare moment of "cinema" in the proceedings), and later does some work with Marie Dressler and Polly Moran. Bessie Love is one of my favourites: she was the Bride of Cana in Griffith's 'Intolerance' in 1916, thirteen years before these two musicals; was Vanessa Redgrave's mother in 'Isadora', Jean Seberg's mother in 'Mousey', and in between the last 2 was Aunt Pity-Pat in the London stage production of the musical version of 'Gone With the Wind', which was first made for Japan and has a fine Harold Rome score (although there's nothing in it that even approaches 'Tara's Theme.')

But there's a lot more I like about this movie. The opening number "There'll Be Some New Songs in the Old Town Tonight" and "That Low-Down Rhythm" are both tuneful and fun dance numbers--although the second definitely has a moment when pointe work looks a bit earthbound and leaden when it has gone on a little too long..again, it works nevertheless.

The long "Singin' in the Rain" number is lovely and varied (including 3 girl songbirds all in a single transparent raincoat) and the last number "Orange Blossom Time" is infectiously naive, with parts of it in color and better ballet work this time,as well as Charlie King (who sings the opening of the song) being allowed to prevail after having been somewhat unceremoniously trashed by Nagel earlier on.

The loveliest for me is the first part of the Ziegfeld Follies-style number, which opens the second act, the "Tableau of Jewels," with its exquisite Erte costumes. There is a whole song here, no matter that the short musical introduction is silly, and the actual tableau is followed by absurd pseudo-Arabian music and dancing, culminating in Buster Keaton as a "beauty."

This song is sung so beautifully and pristinely I do wish I could find out who the tenor is (he rolls his r's so marvelously, and sounds like a courtly German), but the lyrics are priceless; there would be 2 more editions of 'The Ziegfeld Follies' on Broadway (in 1934 and 1936), so an exemplary moment of the still-fresh species--the "glorification of the American Girl"--is herein captured for posterity's delectation most sublimely. For a long time, I thought the first line of the song was "I bring to you the joy of beauty rare, my lady fair..." but I should have known that this kind of "realism" would only come later, when Rodgers and Hammerstein would redefine the musical; and that the professionals who made this kind of picture had no need to see any dissonance between the luxury of gems and the stirrings of the true heart. Here are the lyrics in their entirety:

"I bring to you the jewels of beauty rare, my lady fair, A token of my love for you to wear, my lady fair... Each little ray of brilliancy May bring you closer, love, to me.

I say it with these jewels of beauty rare, my lady fair, They're only little jewels to make you fair, to make you care... Let them linger on your breast, on your arms, in your hair.. I'm jealous of each space...they may embrace, my lady fair.

Love is sweet beauty, not passion vain, Beauty comes once and never again..

I bring to you the jewels of beauty rare, my lady fair, Oh, let me be a fool, my love is there, my lady fair... I'd give all the diamonds' art..in the world...one kiss to impart... I bring to you the jewels, for you're the JEWEL OF MY HEART!"

This is the very first of the all-star, no-plot revues that proliferated during 1929 and 1930. Just about every star at Metro is featured, and there are many fun sequences to be savored in this film. The most famous one is probably the Joan Crawford segment, where she sings and dances to "Gotta Feeling For You". Her singing is passable, and her dancing is, well, "energetic". Marion Davies seems quite nervous in her "Tommy Atkins On Parade" number, but Bessie Love is pretty good in her wild acrobatics. Marie Dressler is fun, as always, and you can glimpse Carla Laemmle as the pearl in the oyster during "Tableau Of Jewels", which opens the second half. John Gilbert's speaking voice dosen't sound nearly as bad as had been rumored, even when considering the antiquity of the recording. The "Singin' In The Rain" number is fun, and offers a good contrast to the more famous one in the film of the same name. There are some special effects and two-color Technicolor that must have wowed the audiences back then, and it's been said that during the premiere, the theater put a gallon or so of orange-scented perfume into the ventilators during the "Orange Blossom Time" finale. In all, this film is well worth a look if you are into early sound films of historical value.

....suddenly it was decreed that everyone had to do one? That's what was happening in 1929, except it was naked voices, not naked bodies that were being revealed. No one could hear the stars talk, so they got to imagine what their voices were like. They also got to imagine what they were saying, or read it on the occasional title card. With sound, they heard the voices themselves and also the lines written for them. Conrad Nagel comes out sounding like the elegant gentleman he was. John Gilbert's voice is a little high pitched, (rumor has it that Louie Mayer, who hated him, had the sound track sped up), and effected. In his first film after this, he was asked to say "I love you, love you! about a dozen times during a love scene- a sequence parodied in "Singing in the Rain", and the audience laughed. Clara Bow revealed her thick Brooklynese, which seemed to belie her image as a gay party girl. Greta Garbo had a deep voice with a thick Swedish accent- just like the audience had imagined. Ben Turpin, the cross-eyed comedian, played against his image by playing swash-buckling heroes in the silents. Talkies revealed he sounded like he looked and made his films a little too ridiculous.

When you watch Hollywood Revue of 1929 and other films of that year, you are looking at some very nervous people who's recently minted stardom was threatened with extinction. And few of them made it. Those who did, like Joan Crawford, made it for reason not apparent in this musical review. In the early 30's, a deluge of stage stars like Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Paul Muni, Katherine Hepburn, etc. would sweep them away and provide us with the stars of Hollywood's Golden Age.

Finally got around to seeing this on its recent outing on TCM, and despite the drawbacks - yes, it is slow-paced, yes, it is dated - there is a certain charm to it that makes it very enjoyable. I particularly liked the novelty acts and comedy stuff - Bessie Love, Marie Dressler, Laurel and Hardy and Buster Keaton's Egyptian lady. And the Gilbert/Shearer Romeo and Juliet section is worth sitting through the rest for anyway (despite its washed out colour, which oddly looked better in the little snippet showed in When The Lion Roars). I can't say I was disappointed with any of it - you get mind-boggling acrobats, you get weedy voiced Marion Davies, you get Jack Benny playing his violin and Conrad Nagel singing pretty well, and Charles King singing that hideous song about mothers, and Ukelele Ike, well, playing a ukelele, and Joan Crawford's ungainly dancing ... it's just a real treat, and nice to see from a technical pov that the sound isn't bad at all and despite its advanced age it is still watchable. A respectable 7 out of 10 I think.

This film will not get a good reception from most modern audiences, and certainly much of the film shows its seventy plus years, but this is a delight for some of us who see the '20s as a golden age, and this movie as a small window into it. It is also a humble reminder that in seventy-five years or so, what we consider entertainment will hold little or no interest to mass audiences.

If you are familiar at all with who the people are (Jack Benny, Joan Crawford, Cliff Edwards, Buster Keaton, etc.), the film is worth seeing. All of these people were one of a kind, not to be replicated by big name performers of today (great stars in their own right, but sorry, folks, they just don't have the class!). Just to see Joan Crawford as a young and beautiful woman is worth watching the film!

Technically, of course, the movie is what it says it is--a revue--intended to show audiences that their favorite silent stars can function in the new medium of sound. That purpose fulfilled (more or less), the film now might seem to have no point. The passage of time and the loss of context have made some of the humor corny (a term, by the way, from that period). The editing is clumsy (we have learned from their mistakes), but the personages themselves, and some of the song and dance, are better than anything we have today, and could not be duplicated.

I'd rather watch this than anything on the screen now.