Let's Sing Grandfather's Favorites

One of the numerous musical short subjects that the movie studios churned out, this one purports to offer you a sampling of songs from the Gay 90s and the Mauve Decade -- the latter being the first decade of the 20th Century. First they show you someone singing the song in the style of a Vaudeville performer of the era, then they offer you the words on the screen for a sing-along. The titles are "While Strolling the the Park One Day", "The Bowery", "After the Ball", "In My Merry Oldsmobile" and "Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet." Except for the first, all you get is the chorus.

Such featurettes were common to movie theaters. Indeed, photographs of early movie theaters advertise sheet music and performances; and Max Fleischer began his famous 'Follow the Bouncing Ball' series of cartoon sing-alongs in 1926

Let's Sing Grandfather's Favorites (1948)

*** (out of 4)

This is a pretty entertaining short from Warner that has Art Gilmore serving as the narrator as he introduces us to a few of the songs that grandpa might have enjoyed listening to. We get the introduction and then we flashback to the vaudeville days and see it performed before we return to current times and the lyrics are shown on the screen for a sing-a-long. Overall this is an entertaining short even if the format makes it somewhat uneven. For the most part I think film buffs will be entertained simply by getting to see this type of thing, which was quite familiar back in the day. I still remember being a young kid and seeing HUD for the first time and not fully understanding the scene inside the theater with the sing-a-long. The songs performed are all fairly good and I think their production values are quite good as well. The Melody Makers perform the music and we even get a clip from the movie IT'S ALL TRUE with Ann Sheridan.