The Show of Shows

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For the TV show (1950–54), see Your Show of Shows.
The Show of Shows (1929)

Sheet Music for the film.
Directed by John G. Adolfi
Produced by Darryl F. Zanuck
Written by J. Keirn Brennan
Frank Fay
Starring Frank Fay (emcee)
John Barrymore
Richard Barthelmess
Noah Beery, Sr.
Loretta Young
Dolores Costello
Bull Montana
Myrna Loy
Chester Conklin
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Tully Marshall
Betty Compson
Music by Edward Ward
Cinematography Barney McGill
Distributed by Warner Bros.
Release date(s) November 21, 1929
Running time 128 min (107 minutes in Technicolor)
Country USA
Language English
Budget $850,000

The Show of Shows (1929) is a lavish all talking Vitaphone musical revue film that cost $850,000 to make. The Show of Shows was Warner Bros. fifth color movie, the first four were The Desert Song (1929), On With the Show (1929), Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929) and Paris (1929). This movie featured most of the contemporary Warner Bros. film stars.

The movie was styled in the same format as the earlier MGM film The Hollywood Revue of 1929. The Show of Shows was photographed almost entirely in Technicolor; the cost of the film meant that although it performed well at the box office, it did not return as much profit as the MGM film. The Show of Shows was originally meant and advertised as being in all color-talking movie, however, twenty-one minutes was in black and white, the first part, seventeen minutes and the first four minutes of part two.

Seen today in incomplete black and white duplicate prints, it remains of historical interest, showing the talent working at Warner Bros. in the early talkie period. The film features all the stars then working at Warner Bros. except for Dorothy Mackaill and Al Jolson. Virtually all the performers shown would vanish from the studio by 1931, after tastes had shifted due to the effects of the Great Depression, which began to be felt late in 1930.

At that time, the sophisticated and musical talent that had characterized the 1920s was replaced by a new set of stars, more in tune with the common man and with more sober times, headed by the likes of Warren William, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Glenda Farrell, William Powell, Kay Francis, Lee Tracy, Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, Clark Gable, and James Cagney. In 1929 however, these were as yet unknown names in the movie world with the exception of Powell who was a well known villain in Paramount silents. In The Show of Shows we see many of the performers who were popular in silent movies mixed in with hand picked stage stars and novelty acts.

The emcee of the film was Frank Fay, who had an unusual style of barbed sarcasm. In an era of almost naive optimism, he stands out as a witty devil's advocate. Fay's unique style appears to have been often misunderstood by reviewers and audiences and interpreted as bad technique, but Fay is clearly sending up the film, albeit slyly. He uses this technique to good effect in introducing each act and has a running joke about doing his own song, which he eventually performs near the end of the film.

Contents

[edit] Scenes

What follows here is a detailed description of the existing prints. Most of the scenes were originally in color, but only black and white television prints survive, except for The Chinese Fantasy scene and The Meet My Sister scene. The Meet My Sister scene is available only in black and white on most prints, as the color print is held private.

  • Prologue—In a scene set in the French Revolution, Hobart Bosworth as an executioner and H.B. Warner as an aristocrat who is executed on a guillotine. This strange and morbid opening serves to show that traditional stage shows are finished. Up until 1929, most big cities had added stage acts before silent movies. These were costly and sound films would make them mostly obsolete. As the aristocrat tries to speak he is interrupted by the executioner who rants that they have heard his remarks too often and it is time for him to be gone. After the blade falls the executioner joyously shouts: "Prologue is Dead! On with the Show of Shows!".
  • Military March—lead by Monte Blue and Pasadena American Legion Fife and Drum Corps. A very static pageant set entirely on a huge set of steps with the cadets changing formation to provide a series of color effects in a manner that would be popularized much later by Busby Berkeley.
  • What's Become of the Florodora Boys?—Myrna Loy, Marian Nixon, Ben Turpin, Lupino Lane, and many others in a partial parody of the now largely forgotten 'Florodora' Edwardian stage show. This was the first of its kind — a lavish show featuring girls in a chorus, and it would attract a generation of male admirers before passing into history. Thus, the production was still a living memory among many in 1929, prompting this gentle parody.
  • Motion Picture Pirates—featuring Ted Lewis with a fantasy number set of a pirate ship headed by cut-throat Noah Beery and Tully Marshall with Wheeler Oakman, Kala Pasha and other well known movie villains of the era. A group of beautiful girls are captured and saved from an awful fate (almost) by light comedian Johnny Arthur sending up Douglas Fairbanks. The pirates literally blow him overboard. Finally the day is saved by Ted Lewis, a well known bandleader at that time who had recently appeared in his own starring vehicle for Warner Bros., Is Everybody Happy? (1929), a film now deemed lost. His trademark was a battered top hat and his signature tune was "Me and My Shadow".
  • Dear Little Pup—sung by Frank Fay.
  • The Only Song I Know—Nick Lucas
  • If I Could Learn to Love—In a brief introductory sequence, missing from circulating prints, Georges Carpentier is introduced by Frank Fay, who provokes Carpentier into lightly tapping him with his formidable hands, to which Fay comically overreacts and then beats a hasty retreat. Georges Carpentier was a French lightweight boxer who was briefly adopted as a star in the Maurice Chevalier mold. He sings here against an Eiffel Tower backdrop, accompanied by Patsy Ruth Miller and Alice White and later, a singing and dancing chorus of girls. Ultimately, everyone removes their street clothes to reveal athletic togs underneath, and a precision dance routine follows, with the participants positioned on an upright series of geometric struts.
  • Recitations—Beatrice Lillie, Louise Fazenda, Lloyd Hamilton and Frank Fay. A series of stark limerick recitations that are first performed by each performer whole and then line by line, until when mixed up they form a bizarre and suggestive product. The sequence also includes a parody of the MGM song "Your Mother and Mine" and a series of purposely lame and pointless practical jokes.
  • Intermission—Ten Minutes—Title Card (missing from some prints)
  • If Your Best Friend Won't Tell You (Why Should I?)—Sid Silvers back with Frank Fay wickedly singing about the horrors of halitosis.
  • Larry Ceballos' Black and White Girls—Introduced by Sid Silvers, danced by chorus girls dressed up in black and white dresses. One half of the girls wear outfits with black fronts and white backs (with corresponding wigs) the others wear outfits exactly the reverse. As the girls turn about in formation the lines of dancers switch from white to black, or form geometric patterns. Music instrumental Jumping Jack. A reworking of an almost identical dance routine, set to "The Doll Dance", that appeared in the 1928 Technicolor two-reeler, "Larry Ceballos' Roof Garden Revue".

As an afterpiece the dance appears to begin again but is halted by Louise Fazenda as the "Dancing Delegate" complaining about the costumes ("These skirts are TOO SHORT!") demanding that Fay be brought on stage — which happens so rapidly he appears without his pants.

  • Your Love Is All I Crave—An emotional and surprisingly moving torch song of lost love sung by Frank Fay. Fay introduces the number with a topical and (for 1929) surprisingly sharp series of jokes — he describes being in a play where the entire cast entered dressed in rags; "It was a futuristic piece". He also tweaks his own image: "The leading lady called to me: "My Stalwart Youth" ... (I was heavily made up)...."
  • King Richard III (in excerpt from Henry VI (Part III))—Introduced and recited by John Barrymore. This Shakespeare extract was thought to add a bit of class at the time. Deliberately picked as a particularly grim sequence, the delivery or meaning could easily be accepted by any contemporary audience.
  • Mexican Moonshine —Comedy sketch with Monte Blue as a condemned man, and Frank Fay as his executioner, accompanied by Lloyd Hamilton, Albert Gran and others as rather effeminate soldiers. ("Oh, Penelope!" calls Fay, and Lloyd Hamilton walks over swaying his hips.) It is a parody of 'Chesterfield' Tobacco advertising. Much the same idea, parodying a cigarette advertising slogan, also appears in the opening seconds of Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929).
  • Lady Luck Finale—A genuinely spectacular finale lasting over quarter of an hour. (Originally filmed in 2-strip Technicolor it now exists only in black and white. The following description is of the ORIGINAL version). It starts with Alexander Gray singing a full blooded version of the song "Lady Luck" inside an enormous ballroom set with huge windows revealing a midnight green sky. The set is backed by stairs in varied warm colors, down which a procession of novelty acts, pastel colored dancers with pink and green costumes, flood the stage, each with a different number to perform against a fast moving musical backing. The red lined ceiling reveals chandeliers to which girls have been fixed all in the name of spectacle. Tap dancers (both White and Black groups) dance themselves into a frenzy on a highly polished wooden floor. This all ends as Betty Compson walks down the full length of the stage in procession to meet Alexander Gray and with the whole cast assembled, hundreds of colored streamers drop from the roof as "Lady Luck" reaches a finale.
  • Curtain of Stars —With the cast appearing with their heads poked through holes in canvas singing "Lady Luck", especially John Barrymore making facial gestures while he pretends to be singing along with the others.

[edit] Film preservation

This movie still survives in a black and white 1950s television copy. Color sequences only survive in black and white except The Chinese Fantasy Scene introduced by Rin Tin Tin, starring Myrna Loy and Nick Lucas.

[edit] Songs

"You Were Meant For Me" by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed—Sung by Bull Montana and Winnie Lightner

"Singin' in the Bathtub" Music by Michael Cleary, Lyrics by Herb Magidson and Ned Washington—Sung by Winnie Lightner with a chorus of men dressed as women wearing comic bathing suits, who in turn are joined by fat cigar smoking men in reclining in glass bathtubs.

"Lady Luck"—Music and Lyrics by Ray Perkins, Sung by Nick Lucas, Alexander Gray and Ted Lewis

"Motion Picture Pirates"—Music and Lyrics by M.K. Jerome

"If I Could Learn to Love"—Music by M.K. Jerome, Lyrics by Herman Ruby—Sung by Georges Carpentier

"Isle of Pingo-Pongo"—Music by Joseph Burke, Lyrics by Al Dubin, Sung by Winnie Lightner

"The Only Song I Know"—Music by Ray Perkins, Lyrics by J. Keirn Brennan

"Meet My Sister", Music by Ray Perkins, Lyrics by J. Keirn Brennan

"Your Mother and Mine", Music by Gus Edwards, Lyrics by Joe Goodwin

"Just an Hour of Love", Music by Edward Ward, Lyrics by Alfred Bryan

"Li-Po-Li", Music by Edward Ward, Lyrics by Alfred Bryan, Sung by Mr Nick Lucas

"Rock-A-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody", Music by Jean Schwartz, Lyrics by Sam Lewis and Joe Young

"If Your Best Friends Won't Tell You (Why Should I)", Music by Joseph Burke, Lyrics by Al Dubin, Sung by Frank Fay

"Your Love Is All I Crave", Music by Jimmy Johnson, Lyrics by Perry Bradford and Al Dubin, Sung by Frank Fay

"What's Become of the Floradora Boys?", Music and Lyrics by Ray Perkins

"Dear Little Pup", Music by Ray Perkins, Lyrics by J. Keirn Brennan, Sung by Frank Fay

[edit] Credited cast

[edit] Uncredited Cast

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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