Picture Play Magazine (Jan - Jun 1931)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

20 New York fifty years from now is visualized in "Just Imagine," a fantasy by the authors of "Sunny Side Up. The Future of Melody Films Though King Jazz is nobody any more and Tin-pan Alley is taboo in Hollywood, the musical picture survives — but with a vast difference. In this illuminating article you will learn all about a new form of entertainment which employs music — and better music — than the screen has hitherto provided. By Edxtfin Schallert Oh, .Mr. Melody Man. Please be good if you can SO runs the burden of an old song. And so, too, in a way, goes the theme of Hollywood's newest and biggest upset. Another revolution has come to pass in the film?. Another king has been overthrown. A year ago this monarch's banners were the brightest in the land. To-day they are draggling in the dust, to the dissonant cackles of the I-told-you-sos. A victim of all-too-familiar movie hysteria, which fools with its golden promises of success, and then clamorously demands the slaughter of anything that doesn't hit. King Jazz right now is a deposed, disaffected old nobody, with his crown battered in. his scepter smashed and a woebegone expression on his face. And if you don't believe it. why sec how much syncopated melody you can find gushing forth from the loud-speakers of any first-line picture theater in the land. Also listen to the estimates which say that while fifty per cent of the films sang their way gayly along a year ago, only hw per cent are warbling a tune at the present. What has been the matter with the so-called musical film thus far? How could anything that started off so brightly just one year ago, with a budding future that seemed bound to bloom, fall into such a sad estate ? Can nothing be done to reanimate and revivify this apparently decrepit and palsied form of entertainment that faded and curled up almost before it reached maturity? The screen must possess some musical possibilities, or else all the seers and the nineteen dozen prophets that flourish about the studios struck nothing but sour notes in their predictions. Too, there are other reasons why there must be something to this music thing. You just have to consider that certain harmonious little opuses went over at the box office with a terrific smash. There was "Sunny Side Up." for instance. Xo complaint about that. The picture is expected to bring in more shekels than that very popular feature. "The Cock! World." In fact it was one of the very best winners on Fox's program last season, and all this despite that it lacked any genuine singers in the two leading roles. Then there was "Rio Rita." Xo fault to find here, either. Bebe Daniels's vocal debut was a most felicitous