Those Good Old Days

A Warner Bros. Short Subject.

An elderly gentleman tells his granddaughter about THOSE GOOD OLD DAYS of vaudeville.

William T. Orr energetically performs his way through three sprightly musical numbers which illustrate a typical song-and-dance man's routine in the glory days of vaudeville. This pleasant little film was helmed by Jean Negulesco, later a celebrated director.

Notice the mention of television in the script. It greatly threatened the popularity of movies & radio, which had themselves been the cause of the demise of vaudeville. The reference is also ironic in that Mr. Orr would eventually become an important & talented executive producer in the new medium, responsible for many successful TV shows.

***************************

Often overlooked or neglected today, the one and two-reel short subjects were useful to the Studios as important training grounds for new or burgeoning talents, both in front & behind the camera. The dynamics for creating a successful short subject was completely different from that of a feature length film, something akin to writing a topnotch short story rather than a novel. Economical to produce in terms of both budget & schedule and capable of portraying a wide range of material, short subjects were the perfect complement to the Studios' feature films.

William Orr in old-age make-up reminisces to his grand-daughter about his rise in a vaudeville two-act.

It's an elaborate movie from the Warner Brothers' Vitagraph shorts division. Despite the budgets that didn't go as far as they used to, there are lots of chorus girls, moving shots, and odd angles. Chalk it up to director Jean Negulesco, who had started out in the art department, but within a few years would be Oscar-nominated for directing JOHNNY BELINDA.

It does seem to end a bit abruptly. I fancy it was intended as a two-reeler, and then Negulesco blew the budget on what he had shot.

Those Good Old Days (1941)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A grandfather (William T. Orr) is discussing the good old days of vaudeville when his granddaughter asks what those days were like. The pops then tells her three stories, which just happen to center around songs including My Old Shack in D-I-X-I-E, Dixie's Land, Who's Your Honey Lamb?, and Seaside Finale. Once again it's up to director Negulesco to put all these scenes together and get the crowd warmed up for whatever feature was about to follow. Griffith, DeMille and countless other directors have put their stamp on filmmaking but Negulesco has been forgotten to time, although you can look at his IMDb profile and see how many films like this he was turning out each year. He delivers a pretty good mixture of an old man looking bad on his younger days and the music numbers themselves aren't too bad. The film runs a quick 9-minutes so it's well worth watching if you come across it on TCM.

There isn't a lot of plot to "Those Good Old Days". It begins with a couple leaving Gramps and their daughter at home while they go off to watch a television broadcast. The old man then regails his granddaughter about how great Vaudeville was. This consists of a couple singing a few very old fashioned numbers as well as the guy doing essentially a minstrel act without the black-face.

So what did I think? I think these sorts of songs do a lot to dispell the notion that things were better back in the old days! Schmaltzy musical numbers that are difficult to listen to or enjoy don't add up to an enjoyable short. Technically well made...just not something I'd want to see.

By the way, there WERE a few TV broadcasts in 1941. This year signaled CBS and NBC beginning television broadcasts. The lineup was scant and it was assumed the networks would gear up and get into TV sooner and in a bigger way, but the US entered WWII and television was all but dropped until after the war.