A Regular Trouper

Ruth Eton (Ruth Etting) is a singer in a traveling production. The manager Joe Grant is her boyfriend until her younger sister Laura arrives. He marries Laura instead and Ruth has to accept her troubles like a real trouper.

This pre-Code musical short has Ruth Etting singing two songs. I like both of them. The big issue for the modern audience is probably Laura's age. Wanda Perry looks young and it seems like she is at most fifteen in real life at the time. This is a real ugly story and quite sad. It's not a pretty message. The production has its flaws. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this darker short.

Ruth Eaton -- played by Ruth Etting -- is the singer in a traveling show which includes two midgets, a leg show and her sister -- played by Wanda Perry. When Ruth's boyfriend makes a play for her sister, things don't turn out well.

Ruth Etting was a great singer who made a few tries at the movies in the 1930s. In this Vitaphone short she shows her weakness as an actress, but her strengths as a singer in two songs: a bluesy number at the beginning, accompanied by the great jazz guitarist Eddie Lang. It is performed in the style of Annette Hanshaw, with whom Lang recorded many numbers; and a torch song at the end.

Although the camera-work by E.B. DuPar and the montages are flashy, they can't disguise the tiredness of the story. However, Miss Etting's singing more than makes up for that.