The Picture Show Annual (1939)

John Boles and Gladys Swarthoui in “ Romance in the Dark-" They previously appeared to- gether in “ Rose of the Rancho,” in which Gladys Swarthout made her film debut. Gene Autry, the singing cowboy, whose meteoric rise to popularity caught the big studio bosses •IVIIH SONG T here can be no doubt that a very large percentage of cinema-goers will agree with the headline to this article. Singing stars have not only given us music from grand opera down to jazz, but they have also proved that they can hold their own in acting. Grace Moore, Jeanette MacDonald, Lily Pons, can all act well, and they would have attracted the attention of any casting director in the days of silent films by their faces and figures alone. In the younger generation we have smart girls in Deanna Durbin and Judy Garland; and Bobby Breen, a smart lad who can act and sing with the best. Among the men, John Boles has long been noted as a player who can say it with song in first-class style, or make a hit by his acting alone, and one of the finest actors and singers on the screen is Paul Robeson. To my way of thinking. Paid Robeson is a complete justification for the introduction of singing in films. “ Show Boat " is a very fine play, but the majority who saw it will always remember it by Paul Robeson’s singing of that great song, “ 01’ Man River.” The song is really a poetic painting in words of the soul of the American Negro. It tells of his aspirations, his despair and his philosophy, and there is real genius in linking the negro with the river, for it is at once his saviour and his oppressor. That mighty river the Mississippi, helped by its tributaries, fertilises the crops of com and cotton, but it also, by its floods at times, destroys them, and the labour of the Negro is rendered useless. 93