The Dance of Life (film)

The Dance of Life
The Dance of Life
Directed by	John Cromwell (silent version) ; A. Edward Sutherland (sound version)
Written by	Benjamin Glazer (screenplay); Arthur Hopkins (play "Burlesque"); Julian Johnson (titles); George Manker Watters (play "Burlesque"), (dialogue) and (adaptation)
Starring	Hal Skelly; Nancy Carroll; Dorothy Revier; Ralph Theodore
Cinematography	J. Roy Hunt
Edited by	George Nichols Jr.
Music by	Adolph Deutsch; Vernon Duke; John Leipold
Production; company	Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date	February 16, 1929
Running time	115 minutes
Country	USA
Language	also silent version intertitles English

The Dance of Life

The Dance of Life (1929) is the first of three film adaptations of the popular Broadway play Burlesque, the others being Swing High, Swing Low (1937) and When My Baby Smiles at Me (1948).

The Dance of Life was shot at Paramount's Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens, and included Technicolor sequences, directed by John Cromwell and A. Edward Sutherland.

In 1957, the film entered the public domain (in the USA) due to the claimants failure to renew its copyright registration in the 28th year after publication.^[1]

Cast

Hal Skelly - Johnson
Nancy Carroll - King
Dorothy Revier - Marco
Ralph Theodore - Howell
Charles D. Brown - Lefty
Al St. John - Bozo
May Boley - Gussie
Oscar Levant - Jerry
Marjorie Kane - uncredited

Plot

Burlesque comic Ralph 'Skid' Johnson (Skelly), and dancer Bonny Lee King (Carroll), end up together on a cold, rainy night at a train station, when he's thrown out and she's rejected from the same show.

The two things they have in life are dancing and each other, if she could only keep him away from the booze, long enough to keep dancing.

A tragi-comedic, burlesque version of All That Jazz, from an earlier era.

Soundtrack

"True Blue Lou"

Music by Richard A. Whiting

Lyrics by Sam Coslow and Leo Robin

Sung by Hal Skelly

"The Flippity Flop"

Music by Richard A. Whiting