Movies Til Dawn

One of the things that keeps the Nicholas Brother's dancing fresh to this day (aside from the fact that they're break-dancing fifty years before the advent of break-dancing) is the strange way in which, though they're each performing the same steps as the other, they seem just a tad out of sync. This isn't by any means due to sloppiness or human error. Rather it gives their routines a jaunty looseness, a jivey relaxation if you will, and allows each brother their own identity in a sense. Fayard is overtly, enthusiastically athletic while Harold--though every bit the stuntman as his brother--moves more sleekly, with a slyer glint in his eye than Fayard, who appears to be as friendly, enthusiastic and uncomplicated as his brother is cunning. The above clip, from 'Down Argentine Way'--a 1940- something vehicle for Bette Grable and Don Ameche--is quite literally the only footage from that film that remains valid or necessary viewing in any way. But how deeply nece...

Above is a terrific 40 minute doc on the Nicholas Brothers. I have nothing else to add.   Subscribe in a reader

Boy are the Nicholas Brothers young here. The song is called 'Lucky Number' but the clip, though it purports to be from 1936, must be older than that. From the style of the arrangement and the childlike appearance of both Fayard and Harold this strikes me as a solid ten years older to the previously posted 'Jumping Jive' clip (which we know for certain dates from 1943). No matter. These guys were already exactly who they were to become, minus some of the more outlandish splits and splats and swoops that they reveled in later.   Subscribe in a reader

What better way to spend the Thanksgiving Day weekend than by devoting four minutes a day to the Nicholas Brothers and their unbelievable dance acrobatics. Harold and Fayard Nicholas have, in my opinion, never been topped--not as swing, tap or jazz dancers. Here's a clip from the 1943 film 'Stormy Weather', featuring Cab Calloway among others. The movie itself is pretty silly but offers incredible glimpses of Fats Waller and Bill Bojangles Robinson among others. I'll post a Nicholas Brothers routine every day through the end of the weekend. Enjoy!   Subscribe in a reader

Last week I posted a wonderfully insane production number from the mostly lost film "Gold Diggers Of Broadway" (1929). (Scroll down to read/watch it).  In it I identified an uncredited James Cagney as one of the acrobatic hoofers as well as the credited George Raft, also hoofing it up pre his gangster persona. Above is another, more detailed clip of Raft's extraordinary dance technique from a 1929 crime drama called 'Side Street' . I can only describe his dancing gimmick as a kind of pre-Michael Jackson jazz-age Moonwalk. This time Raft was uncredited, though referred to as 'Georgie'. The set is an art deco apartment which appears to be hosting a desultory party filled with chorus girls who appear to be clad in slips only. As with these other 1920s chorus lines, the girl's routine is woefully staged and performed but Raft takes it over with great aplomb.   Subscribe in a reader

Warner Brothers famous series of "Gold Diggers" films (of 1933, 1935 and 1937) had an antecedent which is now a mostly lost film. "Gold Diggers Of Broadway", shot in 1929, was a tremendously successful early sound Technicolor musical. The soundtrack was recorded on the famous (or in some cases infamous) Vitaphone system, which meant that it existed on individual discs (one per reel) that were synced up to the projector showing the movie. This insanity actually lasted for a three or so years before sound-on-film became the accepted norm. On a bad day, the sync disappeared due to a  faulty disc-to-projector connection, allowing the voices to gradually descend into chaos a la "Singing In The Rains's" infamous premiere scene of "The Dueling Cavalier." (If you're geek enough to be reading this blog then none of this probably needs any further explanation). But the good news with the sound-on-disc system is that thousands of the discs survive...

Today's visit to the strange--almost incomprehensible--world of the 1920s features Ginger Rogers in what can only be described as her pre-sexual phase. It's a clip from a short film called 'A Night In A Dormitory", shot in 1929 when she was nineteen years old. She does two songs--"Why Can't You Love That Way" (which she sings in an annoying Betty-Boopish voice) and "I Love A Man In a Uniform (An' How!)". The stone-age flat shooting style of the entire nightclub act is for me one of the delights of these pieces of antiquity, as it really does make you feel like you're sitting in the nightclub staring at the floorshow. And what a train wreck of a floor show it is! The chubby chorus girls all seem to be dancing to different songs in different time meters. I've noticed this before in other '20s musicals. Unless you were a bona fide dancing star like Marilyn Miller, not much was expected of your dancing abilities. As for Ginger, I d...

Above is a fascinating clip from the 1930 musical comedy/drama 'Showgirl In Hollywood'.   Like our other recently explored clips from the era, this one features a terrifying set consisting of a gigantic demonic clown which, upon opening its dreadful teeth, spits out the star of the number, the cute as a button/now forgotten as yesterday's mashed potatoes Alice White . The real value of the scene, however, is that it shows the making of an early sound movie--we see the soundstage beyond the set, the multiple cameras in the sealed booths that were the bane of the cameramen's existence (there was a lot of passing out due to airlessness), the sound men fiddling with the the big, boxy sound equipment etc. There's even a very hip shot taken from inside one of the camera booths where you hear the noisy whirring of the film which is what necessitated the booths to begin with (the 'blimp' which silenced the camera had yet to be invented). All in all, a wondrous and...

Here we have yet another hallucinatory, no doubt Gin inspired musical number from the 20s, this one from 1930's "Paramount On Parade". Just as "King Of Jazz" featured the largest piano ever made--large enough to fit Paul Whitman and his orchestra inside of the shell--the creators of the above musical number have created the largest pair of high-heeled shoes and jewelry box to house Abe Lyman and his orchestra. The song, 'Dancing To Save Your Soul', is performed by Nancy Carroll and Al Norman, the latter one of the great 'eccentric dancers' of the vaudeville era. But it's Nancy who steals the show from both Norman and the Gigantosauras set. What a hotsy-totsty of the bootleg era she was! She was a wildly popular Paramount star of the early sound era and was even nominated for an Oscar for a movie that I can't remember the name of and don't have time to go and research. Apparently she was something of a bitch as well and, at the first...

Above are various and sundry color excerpts from the 1929 Florenz Ziegfield production "Glorifying The American Girl". As with our previous example of the demented nature of 1920s entertainment, we are treated to things that one just doesn't see anymore in the elysian pastures of American popular entertainment--the butterfly costumes alone! The sound and the picture don't seem to have much to do with each other but the raw nudity is a bit shocking--I have a feeling that this excerpt reel is literally comprised of the parts of the film that had to be excised for television sale in the 1950s, turning up in the closet of the forgotten editor who performed the butchery years later. In this sense it reminds me of the beautiful ending of 'Cinema Paradiso', where the reel of forbidden kisses is discovered and screened in the forlorn and abandoned theater...   Subscribe in a reader

Here's an extraordinary restoration of yet another nightmarish musical sequence from "King Of Jazz", which I posted about yesterday (scroll down, darling). This is a portion of the film's climactic 'Rhapsody In Blue' sequence, involving a tremendously large piano on top of which sits Paul Whitman's orchestra. A handful of 'pianists' sit in front of the ginormous keys, some pretending to play while others sit numbly by. The real pianist (who is it?) is superimposed over the fake ones, playing a green grand piano. In fact, the entire sequence is pretty much in green--a delicious, mint ice-cream kind of green--which strikes me as strange. Wasn't the rhapsody supposed to be in blue? Whilst reading the helpful comments underneath the Youtube video, however, I learned that this was a two-tone Technicolor process as opposed to the normal three-tone, and that blue was the color that was left out. It could be added later apparently, but only at great...

The 1920s simply didn't look, sound or behave like any other decade--at least those that have been documented on film. Men wore waxed moustaches and make-up, women were either fat-legged chorus girls or breast-free boyish ingenues. And the musical numbers of the early talkie years, though they began as simple photographic reproductions of the Broadway shows they were originally from, soon turned into terrifyingly surrealistic forays into the demented, gin-soaked sensibilities of the day. Witness the above clip from the 1930 musical extravaganza "King Of Jazz." The song "Happy Feet" provides the vehicle for a series of unnerving musical acts. The first (and tamest) is the 'Rhythm Boys', a singing trio that featured the young and as yet not famous Bing Crosby at the center. Things quickly slide into the freakish with the next interpretation, featuring two gorgeous twin sisters who appear as disembodied heads, only to reappear as gyrating, hysterical fla...