Six Hits and a Miss

This is one of the newest of the Vitaphone shorts--known as a "Melody Master". These later musical shorts generally had been more straight forward and had simpler sets and no real story to tie it all together--just a famous band of the day doing their stuff. However, starting during the war years these shorts began to have a narrator and purported to give a bit of background on the band leader.

"Six Hits and a Miss" is very unusual for a Melody Master in that the film is not named after a band leader and he and his band are really NOT the stars of this short. The title refers to a rather dull septet--with five neat guys singing along with a lady. The film also features the Dancing Colleens. I must admit that this routine was pretty spectacular--like one from an old Busby Berkeley musical. However, when the couple dance, the tapping sound appears to have been provided by the band--not their shoes. Finally, you see Rudolf Friml Jr. and his band. Overall, one of the duller entries into the series and why they named the short after this group, I have no idea.

Jean Negulesco first rose to prominence as a director of Vitaphone musical shorts. Earlier efforts had been largely simply staged and shot, but Negulesco livened up the staid proceedings with moving cameras and frequent cuts. Here's one.

The title refers to the singing group of the same name. Rudolph Friml Jr. And his orchestra provide the music for the piece, and we soon find ourselves in Busby Berkeley territory, with an overhead camera showing off the dancers. It's pleasant, if a bit overproduced.

It's hard to believe there was a time in our movie culture when audiences would have been entertained by short films like this.

Six Hits and a Miss was apparently an actual singing/dancing group in the 1940s, and this film is just 10 minutes or so of them performing while complex dance numbers unfold on screen. It goes on and on, with no real differentiation between the songs or dances, so that everything blends together.

It was a surprise to me to see fairly big-time director Jean Negulesco at the helm of this. He must not yet have made the transition to feature director, but he would be responsible later in his career for films like "Johnny Belinda" and "Three Coins in the Fountain."

During Hollywood's Golden Age of the Studio System, each studio had its own department that made short subjects for theatrical distribution. These short subject departments did not receive big budgets to make their films. What they DID have was access to their studio's film vault, as well as access to their studio's collections of set pieces, props and costumes. So they could cobble together some pretty classy looking short films out of various odds and ends. This "Six Hits and a Miss" musical short subject is an unusually sophisticated example of this type of low budget recycling.

To save money, somebody decided to recycle the dance sequences from the finale of Ruby Keeler's 1936 musical, Colleen. This finale was really the standout piece from an otherwise run-of-the-mill film. This re-releasing of old musical numbers was also quite common during the pre-TV era, when old movies just sat in cans in a vault, gathering dust. But I guess it wasn't considered legitimate to just re-release these musical numbers as standalone films; these numbers had to be reframed with new content to make them seem fresh for modern audiences. Six Hits and a Miss was a very popular singing group that was really having a "moment" at this time, appearing in many feature films. So clearly, somebody thought it would be a good idea to feature them in this low budget project, possibly director Jean Negulesco himself. The vocal sound of Six Hits and a Miss blended well with the musical arrangements from the recycled dance sequences, which featured a lot of male chorus singing, so the two soundtracks could dovetail together seamlessly. It's really a very clever idea.

So somebody composed these new bridging sequences, brought in Six Hits and a Miss and the Rudolph Friml Jr group to pre-record the new musical tracks, and then filmed the bridging sequences in either an existing set from another film, or something cobbled together from odds and ends. That was one of the advantages of the factory system: a filmmaker had access to so many things that he could borrow for a few days to shoot his own project.

I'm honestly surprised that some reviewers were bored by this film. I thought it was delightful! The Colleen finale was choreographed by the great Bobby Connolly, who choreographed The Wizard of Oz. Granted, in 1936, Connolly was copying Busby Berkeley a lot, so this particular ensemble section is very much a 2nd rate Busby Berkeley knockoff. Still, it's quite watchable and lavish. And this finale was really one of Ruby Keeler's career-best dance numbers, partnered with the sophisticated stylings of Paul Draper, so there's a lot worth seeing. And the slightly edgier sound of Six Hits and a Miss paired with the Rudolph Friml Jr Orchestra make for some really rocking bridging material, in my opinion.

Overall, I thought this was a superior and quite entertaining repackaging of existing material; it's well worth seeing, if you get the chance. Assuming that you like swing music, of course!

Today, this Vitaphone movie short from World War II plays like a big band swing music video spotlighting the Harry Warren/Al Dubin ditty, "You've Got To Know How To Dance." The one-reeler begins with The Six Hits and a Miss warbling the lyrics, the Miss singing lead, the Six Hits surrounding her as backup chorus and harmony. The Six Hits and A Miss were popular rivals to such swing acts as The Andrews Sisters until the war intervened and took two of the Six Hits away to join Uncle Sam overseas. Somehow, The Four Hits and a Miss just didn't jell with the public. As a result, the top of their career, performing in the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney extravaganza, "Girl Crazy," was also their swan song.

Though the Six Hits and a Miss begin and end the short, most of the film consists of inserts from the lackluster musical "Colleen," featuring Ruby Keeler and Paul Draper emulating Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire with some showy tap dancing. The choreography utilized in the "Colleen" sequence is obviously influenced (or maybe copied is a better word) by that of the inimitable Busby Berkeley.

"Six Hits and a Miss" is recommended for big band swing fans who enjoy the music of the World War II era. Others beware.