The Song of Fame

Ruth Etting was a Broadway star who made occasional passes at the movies, but they never took. An interesting biopic, LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME, starring Doris Day as Miss Etting and stolen by Jimmy Cagney was made in the mid-fifties at MGM (not Warners). How much truth is involved is a matter of conjecture.

In this one there is a plot as she and her agent try to get her to see an impresario who can give her a break. She sing three songs. There is also one interlude in which the Canova family appears. It is Judy Canova's first screen appearance.

The director of this short film is Joseph Henabery, who basically operated out of the old Vitaphone studio in Brooklyn until it went into war work. One of D.W. Griffith's disciples, he tells a bit of his story in Kevin Brownlow's THE PARADE'S GONE BY.