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Musical?
They were marooned somewhere near the Pole — cut off from all communication with the outside world. The director had been quick to realize that this was a time to bring in some music
nice people play or sing, and the nicer they are the bi Iter they (or their doubles) do it. If the villain is shown playing or singing, you can always bet your last dollar that he will turn out at the end to be one of those sympathetic villains. He will gallantly refrain from stealing the heroine's virtue and will probably insist on presenting her with a check for a thousand dollars as a wedding gift for the nuptials with the hero.
Musical comedies, of course, are different; although the complicated ways they have of dragging in the songs and dances, to try to make them look like something out of real life, are fascinating to study. But even the straightforward dramas have their musical frills, nowadays. No big scene is considered correct unless suddenly, in the middle of it, one of the characters asks another to perform, which he proceeds with great alacrity to do. Often even the formal request is dispensed with, and somebody starts bellowing away without a word of warning. .Music, as we all know, hath
There's No Hope
You In The Talkies
charms; but one can have too much of it, not to mention the fact that, as the undertaker said to the doctor, there's a time and place for everything.
Miracle Men
T wouldn't be so bad if they didn't all sing and play so remarkably well. When, for example, Ronald Colman and his fellow-prisoners in "Condemned" burst into a marching song, that is reasonable enough. But that they should sing it in luscious harmonies, in perfect unison and in smooth, mellow voices is rather too much to swallow. Is it — can it be — that Sam Goldwyn and his colleagues are afraid lest, if the singing were done as it really would be done in real life, audiences ; might think it was seriously meant to be good music? I can hardly believe it, but I don't know what other explanation to offer.
The same applies to Universal's little opus entitled "Dames Ahoy," which opens up on one of Uncle Sam's battleships. The whole ship, from stem to stern, appears to be pulsating with gorgeous melodies. And the camera takes us for a promenade through the sailors' quarters, where every man is engaged in the production of some sort of musical sound — some singing in the most perfect harmonies, others by the dozen sitting around in a nonchalant way, playing ukes, saxophones, guitars, banjos, flutes, oboes, clarinets, violins, trombones, sousaphones and what-not. "Ah!" one thinks, "this must be 'Hit the Deck.'" But it isn't. It's supposed to be a straight comedy, and we are to think it is all quite real. The ubiquity of musical instruments in talkies is definitely one of the new wonders of the world. If a producer
has an actor in his picture who can play something, his talents are certainly not going to be kept from the world by any such little thing as the unlikeliness of his particular instrument being to hand.
Imagine, for example, the superb and mighty Cecil de Mille (Continued on page pj)
To put up for public approval a hero or heroine who couldn't sing or play something would be as bad as having a heroine who didn't long for the love of a good man and babies
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