Ben Bernie and All the Lads

Ben Bernie and All the Lads
Produced by	Lee de Forest
Starring	Ben Bernie Oscar Levant
Distributed by	De Forest Phonofilm
Release date	1925 (1925)
Running time	10 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Ben Bernie and All the Lads is a short film made by Lee de Forest in the De Forest Phonofilm sound-on-film process. The film features Ben Bernie conducting his band All The Lads, and features pianist Oscar Levant and saxophonist Jack Pettis. At the time of the filming, Ben Bernie and All the Lads were a featured band at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York City.

The band and Levant perform songs—or medleys of songs—including:

• "Tea for Two"
• "Rose Marie"
• "Lady Be Good"
• "Tell Her in the Springtime"
• "Craving"
• "Tintina"
• "Sweet Georgia Brown"
• "Indian Love Call"

by composers such as Bernie, George Gershwin, Vincent Youmans, Irving Berlin, and Oscar Hammerstein.

The film was produced by de Forest at his studio in New York City in 1925. Earlier dates have been claimed, with no hard evidence to support them, but one of the featured songs, "Sweet Georgia Brown", was not copyrighted, published or recorded until 1925.

External links

• Ben Bernie and All the Lads at IMDb
• Ben Bernie and All the Lads at SilentEra
• First four minutes on YouTube
• Ben Bernie and All the Lads (1924 or 1925) at Red Hot Jazz Archive