Short films, often before the main feature
The
musical short
(a.k.a.
musical short film
, a.k.a.
musical featurette
) can be traced back to the earliest days of sound films.
Performers in the
Lee de Forest
Phonofilms of 1923-24 included
Eddie Cantor
,
George Jessel
,
Abbie Mitchell
("The Colored Prima Donna") and comic singer-dancer
Molly Picon
, plus the team of
Noble Sissel
and
Eubie Blake
. The husband-and-wife vaudeville team of
Eva Puck
and
Sammy White
(billed as Puck and White) starred in the Phonofilm
Opera vs. Jazz
(1923).
Max Fleischer
used the Phonofilm process in 1924 when he introduced his animated
Song Car-Tunes
series.
[1]
Vitaphone
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The nearly 2,000
Vitaphone
short subjects
produced by
Warner Bros.
and its sister studio
First National
from 1926 to 1930 included vaudevillians, opera singers, Broadway stars, dancers, bands and popular vocalists. One- and two-reel short musical films were valuable to the movie studios as springboards for new talents. Performers who made their film debuts in short films include
Joan Blondell
,
Humphrey Bogart
,
Burns and Allen
,
Sammy Davis Jr.
,
Judy Garland
(as Baby Gumm),
Cary Grant
,
Bob Hope
,
Bert Lahr
and
Ginger Rogers
.
[1]
Ruth Etting
sang "My Mother's Eyes" (by Abel Baer and L. Wolfe Gilbert) and "That's Him Now" (by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen) in the
Paramount
Movietone
Ruth Etting in Favorite Melodies
(1929), filmed in a single take at the
Astoria Studios
in
Queens, New York
.
[2]
Astoria Studios was built by Paramount in the early days of sound films to provide the company with an audio-capable facility close to the Broadway theater district. Many features and short subjects were filmed there between 1928 and 1933, including the 16-minute
St. Louis Blues
(1929), the only film of
Bessie Smith
.
[1]
1930s
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Orchestra leader
Phil Spitalny
made a series of musical shorts beginning with
Phil Spitalny
(1929) at
MGM
, followed by shorts for both Vitaphone and Paramount, including
Big City Fantasy
(1929),
Phil Spitalny and His Musical Queens
(1934),
Ladies That Play
(1934),
Phil Spitalny and His All Girl Orchestra
(1935) and
Sirens of Syncopation
(1935).
For promotional purposes, major film stars, including
Gary Cooper
and
Clark Gable
, made guest appearances in such musical shorts as MGM's
Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove
(1934) and
Starlit Days at the Lido
[3]
(1935), while others featured a single band, such as
Freddie Rich and His Orchestra
(1938).
Richard Barrios
(author of
A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film
) provided notes for Kino Video's compilation,
The Best of Big Bands and Swing
:
- During the "Dawn of Sound," musical short subjects were the
hors d'œuvre
before the main feature, and an effective means for the studio to test their freshly signed talent in front of the camera. Aggressively pursuing the top singers, songwriters and musicians of Tin Pan Alley, Paramount's roster of contract players was composed of some of the top names in the world of entertainment. Cary Grant makes his film debut as a sailor cruising the Far East in search of whoopee in
Singapore Sue
.
Artie Shaw
presents a master class in the elementals of swingband construction (
Artie Shaw
's
Class In Swing
). A very young
Bing Crosby
croons three ballads in
Dream House
, a comedy-musical directed by slapstick impresario
Mack Sennett
. This collection showcases several top female vocalists, including
Ethel Merman
(
Her Future
),
Ruth Etting
(
Favorite Melodies
and
Lillian Roth
(
Meet The Boyfriend
). There's also a two-edged homage to that icon of 1930s naughtiness,
Betty Boop
, with appearances by Betty's prototype, "Boop-a-Doop Girl"
Helen Kane
(
A Lesson In Love
), and Betty's actual voice,
Mae Questel
(
Musical Doctor
, in which
Dr. Rudy Vallee
finds musical deficiencies to be the root of all ills). Perhaps the gem of this collection, however, is
Office Blues
, in which a pre-
Astaire
and pre-stardom
Ginger Rogers
cavorts with Broadway chorines in an Art Deco extravaganza. With artists like these on the bill it's clear that the short subject -- not the feature -- was often the highlight of the program!
[4]
1940s
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In the late 1930s and early 1940s,
Betty Hutton
made a half-dozen musical shorts before her feature debut in
The Fleet's In
(1942) and then continued to make shorts for the war effort. She was seen in
Paramount Headliner: Queens of the Air
(1938), Vitaphone's
Vincent Lopez and His Orchestra
(1939),
Broadway Brevities: One for the Book
(1939),
Paramount Headliner: Three Kings and a Queen
(1939),
Broadway Brevities: Public Jitterbug Number One
(1939),
Paramount Victory Short No. T2-1:
A Letter from Bataan
(1942),
Army-Navy Screen Magazine #20: Strictly G.I.
(1943), Paramount's
Skirmish on the Home Front
(1944) and
Hollywood Victory Caravan
(1945), produced on the Paramount lot by the Treasury Department for the 1945 Victory Loan Drive. Several of Hutton's musical shorts have been shown on
Turner Classic Movies
in recent years.
Modern jazz was added to the mix in such films as the 16-minute
Artistry in Rhytym
(1944), with
Stan Kenton
and
Anita O'Day
, later re-edited into another short,
Cool and Groovy
(1956), which also featured
Chico Hamilton
and
The Hi-Los
. In the mid-1940s,
Louis Jordan
made short music films, some of which were spliced together into a feature-length musical Western,
Look-Out Sister
(1947).
Television
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During the 1950s, musical shorts were revived for telecasting on local stations. Feature films in that decade were usually not edited to fit. Instead, if a feature ended 20 minutes before the hour, footage from musical shorts was used to fill the gap.
Snader Telescriptions
were musical shorts made for television from 1950 to 1954. There were thousands of these three- and four-minute films, covering various genres from jazz and pop to R&B and country. Louis "Duke" Goldstone directed for Louis D. Snader.
[5]
See also
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References
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Sources
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- Bradley, Edwin R.
The First Hollywood Sound Shorts, 1926-1931
, McFarland, 2005.
External links
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