I love watching musical numbers from c 1928-1929, since they were recorded live. You are watching a live performance, not lip-synced like almost all musical performances on film since 1929.
@moldyoldie7888 Let's remember it was a 78rpm record/film synchronization that due to the differences in speed didn't always go in synch. And It's possible prior to been passed to DVD or digital recording the sound was "cleaned" and amplified when it was digitalized, so you are getting better sound than those who watched the movie in 1929 when it was released.
@@roverworld7218 My belief is that the actors and orchestra were pre-recorded, and that's what you hear. What you see is actors lip-synching, and the actress sometimes messes up. FWIW, if Vitaphone was used, its speed would be 33rpm.
@moldyoldie7888 Could be. As far as I remember 33RPM was the speed used by LPs since around 1948 (the other was 45RPM with the "big hole" vynils). But between the beginnings of the gramophone to the start of the LP after World War II the usual recording speed was 78RPM, which explains the "big" records used in Vitaphone recordings.
My maternal grandmother was one of these women tap dancers circa 1925 - 1930 and had a scrapbook of these type of dance chorus productions 😊 love them ❤
This is so cool on so many levels...i'm almost tempted to watch the movie but, I just want to think this is what people who i knew and talked to saw back in the 20's(stage show. music, clothes, singing)...God what a time
So do I. Did you see her in “The Lady Refuses.” This unusual and moving 1931 film includes John Darrow and Gilbert Emery in the cast. Very good picture, indeed.
So great to see what a live performance really looked like. The stage and wings and even the proscenium arch and actual grand drape of the theatre and the footlights too. Those days are gone forever.
Yes, terrific movie plus his later Great Flammarion. What a nut ! In a good way . His performance in Sunset Boulevard is just the top of the iceberg. Oh yeah this little number is cute. She is a cross between Fanny Brice and Helen Kane.
This film was shot in NYC, I believe. The second chorus line could prove this out. The talkies were slowly closing Broadway shows in 1929 and it probably would have taken little effort to "borrow" dancers off B'way for the closing number. All in step, high kickers, etc, Gad, they even look the same physically!! Those dancers are real pros. The first crew looks like they were hired the day they shot the scene. Did you notice one of the male dancers dropping his cane and picking it up without missing a step?
Maravilloso musical de los años finales de los 20. Margie y Donald, están encantadores y ni que decir del cuerpo de baile. Lo he visto ciento de veces y no me canso de seguir viéndolo.
Up until the beginning of the Depression (October 29, 1929), the men used top hats and canes and gloves (every now and then) as seen in Al Jolson’s movie “About a Quarter to Nine”. Eight years ago I asked a 95-yr old about that. He said he was a kid at the time, but he recalled that style of dressing.😮🤗
@@paulnicholson1906 Neat! When we lived in SF in 1954, I recall the men downtown wearing hats. In photos from 1955, not so many, so apparently that’s when they started going out of style.
What a good quality panchromatic print. Sound is fair too. If only Congress had legislated to make films, like books and periodicals, compulsory items for deposit at designated libraries. So many films have been lost in whole or part, endure only in b&w when shot in color, or have to be struck from damaged negs. So much of historical and cultural value from the first third of the 20C is gone beyond recall.
Margie 'Babe' Kane was not related to Helen 'Betty Boop' Kane despite the squeaky voice. Both she and Donald Douglas were typical of early talkies: Broadway up-and-comers who could not hack Hollywood. Margie was camera-shy and Donald wooden. After marrying the celebrated film editor William Hornbeck, Margie did bit parts in routine movies. Douglas became a virtuoso voice on radio but died at 40. The long chorus line was choreographed by Maurice L. Kusell, who had a short spell in that field before trying vainly to break into films and TV as a producer. The girls' bending and rippling near the end of their number is copied from Larry Ceballos, the industry's most influential dance director before Busby Berkeley followed him from the Main Stem.
Authentic true 20's here not the usual stuff they use to represent the time.Pin-striped gangsters and women with feathers in their hair with some sort of "all that Jazz" type music playing,or just a bit better some tinny modern working of the Charleston
Oh God not that modern re-make of 20's jazz that sounds like music from a kids show. Some people enjoy it and that's fine for them. It always made me cringe hearing that. Just sucks cause I've yet to hear a modern band sound anything close to the bands from the teens, 20's, 30's, all the way to about the 70's for certain bands. They just have a completely different sound and I don't even think it's just the recording equipment cause I've heard bands from the 70's that use solid state recording equipment that have the sound I'm looking for. Is it that they tune the instruments different and use different arrangements of instruments? Idk what it is.
Thank you for the Donald Douglas-Margie Kane duet on Every Now and Then from The Great Gabbo, starring Erich von Stroheim and Betty Compson. I haven't seen that movie in several years. Loved the number, however.
Es un número musical "fabuloso" grupos de coristas impresionante, la pareja de inicio de canción se merece un "10" Me encanta lo veo todos lodos los días Julio Luís Rodríguez
He didn’t actually drop it; all the man let go of their canes and immediately reach out to grab them as they start to fall, but the cane of one of the guys in the center falls farther than the others. Still, you bring up a good point, which is that film dancers at this time a great deal less precise and synchronized than they’d be just a few years later. Once Busby Berkeley was in charge things got much sharper and sloppiness disappeared.
@@hebnehWell, up to a point. There are a fair few flubs in Buzz's Warner numbers, and as late as 1943 there is a conspicuous one in 'A Journey to a Star' from 'The Gang's All Here'. The only studio which never knowingly let one through was Metro, which could best afford retakes. For example, I have not spotted any in the fabulous water-skiing routine he devised for Esther Williams in 'Easy to Love'.
@@esmeephillips5888 Actually I can name three visible mistakes in two MGM films. In the finale of "Good News" (1947), at 3:06, one of the female dancers who's 4th from left appears to snag a bracelet on her dress, and when everyone else stands up straight and claps above their heads, she's very visibly bent over and standing still. Then at 4:27, as the camera dollies towards the main couple, the two secondary couples are seated below them while everyone lip-synchs to the soundtrack - however, Joan McCracken clearly screws up by erroneously mouthing "Tell her her eyes are blue" instead of the correct line, "Send her a billet-doux." In "Pagan Love Song" (1950), at the end of a Polynesian dance number, everyone tosses into the air the small straw items they've been waving around, but one lands on the head of a woman who you clearly see says "Ow!" followed by rubbing the top of her head.
@@hebneh Tks, I'll check those out. Both from the Freed Unit too, tsk tsk. Surprised at the 'Pagan Love Song' booboo bc the picture was cut by Blanche Sewell's successor, Adrienne Fazan, who edited three of Gene Kelly's best entries. Still, Albert Akst, who cut 'Good News', also had a fine CV at Metro. Perhaps they just ran out of time or money at 'Retake Valley'.
@@esmeephillips5888 When these films were made, they could only be viewed in theaters, and nobody had the technology to watch in slow motion or freeze a frame or go back and rewatch - so mistakes like these went past so quickly that the majority of viewers wouldn't notice them or comprehend that they'd happened at all.
When she started to sing I thought this was the woman who did Betty Boop's voice. But it turns out Helen Kane did Betty Boop (or inspired the voice). Quite the coincidence that they have almost identical voices and the same last name.
A lot of women singers copied that voice at the time. Annette Hanshaw was one of the first recorded although her voice didn't quite sound exactly like Betty Boops voice until Helen Kane came along. Kane actually filed a lawsuit against Fleischer studios (the creators of Betty Boop) for copying her but lost it. They claimed that Kane herself copied a child singer called Baby Esther. Personally I don't think Kane copied her since she was making records before Baby Esther even started performing although it seems the court didn't agree with that and ruled in favor of the Fleischers who later admitted to copying Kane
You're the dance director I don't care I want another 75 girls on that stage I don't care where you put them 75 is the least all except cram them in and make them dance hahaha
The entire film is in fact quite dramatic and dark - Erich Von Stroheim's character predates Micheal Redgrave's role in Dead of Night by almost 20 years - a man controlled by the puppet
Her costume is a bit shocking for the time, or maybe that was just me 😂 but I often am surprised by vintage fashions being more risqué than you’d think.
I love watching musical numbers from c 1928-1929, since they were recorded live. You are watching a live performance, not lip-synced like almost all musical performances on film since 1929.
No. The voices are too clean and even to have been recorded live.
The girl's mouth isn't always in sync with what's heard.
@moldyoldie7888 Let's remember it was a 78rpm record/film synchronization that due to the differences in speed didn't always go in synch.
And
It's possible prior to been passed to DVD or digital recording the sound was "cleaned" and amplified when it was digitalized, so you are getting better sound than those who watched the movie in 1929 when it was released.
@@roverworld7218 My belief is that the actors and orchestra were pre-recorded, and that's what you hear. What you see is actors lip-synching, and the actress sometimes messes up. FWIW, if Vitaphone was used, its speed would be 33rpm.
@moldyoldie7888 Could be. As far as I remember 33RPM was the speed used by LPs since around 1948 (the other was 45RPM with the "big hole" vynils). But between the beginnings of the gramophone to the start of the LP after World War II the usual recording speed was 78RPM, which explains the "big" records used in Vitaphone recordings.
The male singer is really good!
Yes, a good voice, This is the only picture of his in which he sings. Except for this, I’ve seen Donald Douglas in dramas and a few comedies.
Not so sure about her though :-)
His is a distinctly old-fashioned style of singing. You never hear a rapid vibrato in the voice like that for many decades.
Donald Douglas (1905-45) had a leading role on Broadway and on tour in “Rio Rita” (1927) and in “The Desert Song” (1928), and other musicals.
My maternal grandmother was one of these women tap dancers circa 1925 - 1930 and had a scrapbook of these type of dance chorus productions 😊 love them ❤
How wonderful.❤
Very clever dance and effective black and white attire!
Both singers have great voices
This is so cool on so many levels...i'm almost tempted to watch the movie but, I just want to think this is what people who i knew and talked to saw back in the 20's(stage show. music, clothes, singing)...God what a time
Talented singers don’t need auto-tune. They are all so good! I love it! Orchestra and dancers too, of course. Real professionals!
Such class... Fantastic number.... I watch this movie three times a year. Love Betty Compsom.
I loved Betty too!
So do I. Did you see her in “The Lady Refuses.” This unusual and moving 1931 film includes John Darrow and Gilbert Emery in the cast. Very good picture, indeed.
What can I say, but wow! Love these old Busney Berkely-style arrangements.
So great to see what a live performance really looked like. The stage and wings and even the proscenium arch and actual grand drape of the theatre and the footlights too. Those days are gone forever.
Don douglas and marjorie kane were so well suited - great screen musical
I saw this movie, in the early '80's. Old PBS program "Matinee at the Bijou". Fun Show!
And you-awl-ways, ask me all the toooooiiiiime all abouttalotta Wedding bells that chooiiiiiime!
Great song and duet!
Love these. She sounds like she comes from bklyn I know I'm from bklyn
How could I have missed this gem before?
Most early films whose clips are on TH-cam probably looked and sounded this good at one time. Thanks for posting.
From THE GREAT GABBO (1929). The entire film is fascinating and bizarre in the best of ways. It also started the "ventriloquist vs his dummy" genre.
Yes, terrific movie plus his later Great Flammarion. What a nut ! In a good way . His performance in Sunset Boulevard is just the top of the iceberg. Oh yeah this little number is cute. She is a cross between Fanny Brice and Helen Kane.
And lest we forget THE CRIME OF DR. CRESPI as a noted surgeon who keeps a bottle of booze in his desk to sneak shots between operations.😂
@@gregorypalmer5403 Director and actor, Erich von Stroheim
This film was shot in NYC, I believe. The second chorus line could prove this out. The talkies were slowly closing Broadway shows in 1929 and it probably would have taken little effort to "borrow" dancers off B'way for the closing number. All in step, high kickers, etc, Gad, they even look the same physically!! Those dancers are real pros. The first crew looks like they were hired the day they shot the scene. Did you notice one of the male dancers dropping his cane and picking it up without missing a step?
How big is that orchestra? 8 double basses(!) Anyone know which theatre the numbers were shot in?
No.
@@tonyhurst5615 That ork looks like stock footage to me could be any ork hall
@@caroltenge5147 no to what?
It was filmed at the Shrine
auditorium in Los Angeles CA.
Maravilloso musical de los años finales de los 20. Margie y Donald, están encantadores y ni que decir del cuerpo de baile. Lo he visto ciento de veces y no me canso de seguir viéndolo.
Wonderfull stage number!
Up until the beginning of the Depression (October 29, 1929), the men used top hats and canes and gloves (every now and then) as seen in Al Jolson’s movie “About a Quarter to Nine”. Eight years ago I asked a 95-yr old about that. He said he was a kid at the time, but he recalled that style of dressing.😮🤗
My grandfather wouldn't go out of the house unless he was in a three piece suit with a hat.
@@paulnicholson1906 Neat! When we lived in SF in 1954, I recall the men downtown wearing hats. In photos from 1955, not so many, so apparently that’s when they started going out of style.
My father, like many men at the time, wore a hat to work in the 1950's and 1960's.
What a good quality panchromatic print. Sound is fair too.
If only Congress had legislated to make films, like books and periodicals, compulsory items for deposit at designated libraries. So many films have been lost in whole or part, endure only in b&w when shot in color, or have to be struck from damaged negs. So much of historical and cultural value from the first third of the 20C is gone beyond recall.
These were private enterprises. No business of the government at all.
@@BarryMoreno-zx4dc Do you also disapprove of statutory copyright libraries for print works, or of legal copyright protection against piracy?
You’ve got me there! Perhaps not.
Pre-Hays Office, yikes! Leading Lady giving all she's got.
Super excellent with very good interesting video
Awesome thanks!
Awesome. Thanks amen 🙏🏻
Lovely, lovely, lovely ❤❤❤ oh for such entertainment nowadays.........
wonderful thank you
very catchy number - from an old film that has made it onto British television at least twice in the last ten years.
Wow, that's a lot of dancers.
That's what I thought 👯♀️👯♀️👯♀️
beautiful copy
👍 BRAVO! BRAVO!!, ENCORE!!
ENCORE!!! 👋🤩💕💖👋👌
Adorable!
Pure vaudeville style.
Margie 'Babe' Kane was not related to Helen 'Betty Boop' Kane despite the squeaky voice. Both she and Donald Douglas were typical of early talkies: Broadway up-and-comers who could not hack Hollywood. Margie was camera-shy and Donald wooden.
After marrying the celebrated film editor William Hornbeck, Margie did bit parts in routine movies. Douglas became a virtuoso voice on radio but died at 40.
The long chorus line was choreographed by Maurice L. Kusell, who had a short spell in that field before trying vainly to break into films and TV as a producer. The girls' bending and rippling near the end of their number is copied from Larry Ceballos, the industry's most influential dance director before Busby Berkeley followed him from the Main Stem.
Unübertrefflich! Das waren Koenner damals! Jetzt weiß ich, warum meine Grosseltern in diesen Jahren ständig Revuetheater besuchten........
Grand!
Amazing & restored but can't get any of the movies the same.
I am out of breath just watching them.
thank you so much for posting this song. it's been a shared favorite between my mom and me.
Margie Kane, wow! Why had I never heard of her before?
Authentic true 20's here not the usual stuff they use to represent the time.Pin-striped gangsters and women with feathers in their hair with some sort of "all that Jazz" type music playing,or just a bit better some tinny modern working of the Charleston
Oh God not that modern re-make of 20's jazz that sounds like music from a kids show. Some people enjoy it and that's fine for them. It always made me cringe hearing that. Just sucks cause I've yet to hear a modern band sound anything close to the bands from the teens, 20's, 30's, all the way to about the 70's for certain bands. They just have a completely different sound and I don't even think it's just the recording equipment cause I've heard bands from the 70's that use solid state recording equipment that have the sound I'm looking for. Is it that they tune the instruments different and use different arrangements of instruments? Idk what it is.
Thank you for the Donald Douglas-Margie Kane duet on Every Now and Then from The Great Gabbo, starring Erich von Stroheim and Betty Compson. I haven't seen that movie in several years. Loved the number, however.
Fantastic song and such great choreography!
All dancers are really charming, but I wonder how many of them are still alive now.
Arithmetic!
2020 - 1929=91 (years ago)
Dancers age = +\- 25
91+25= +\- 116
Answer= 0
@@labryon Thank you for your calculation. My father was born in 1927, and he has already passed away, and it makes sense.
@@labryon 🤣
sadly, none
That was fantastic. Wow.
Que triste ese arte perdido y que no volverá, un rigor artesanal, y espectáculos con personas tan auténticas. Hoy todo es tan falso y banal
Lots of string basses in that pit orchestra!
total knockout! more more!!
Какая красивая музыка, манера, стилистика.
"The Great Gabbo" combined music and tragedy. Where did the find armies of dancing girl's?
Today 60 cuts per minit !
The 1929 song was composed by musician Donald McNamee (1897-1940) and the lyrics were written by a poet known as King Zany (Charles Dill; 1889-1940).
Her costume is obviously before the Hays code came in.
Es un número musical "fabuloso" grupos de coristas impresionante, la pareja de inicio de canción se merece un "10" Me encanta lo veo todos lodos los días Julio Luís Rodríguez
Gabbo!!!❤
I noticed one of the male dancers drops his cane and picks it up and continues. Amazing they didn't reshoot the scene. Anybody else see it?
He didn’t actually drop it; all the man let go of their canes and immediately reach out to grab them as they start to fall, but the cane of one of the guys in the center falls farther than the others. Still, you bring up a good point, which is that film dancers at this time a great deal less precise and synchronized than they’d be just a few years later. Once Busby Berkeley was in charge things got much sharper and sloppiness disappeared.
@@hebnehWell, up to a point. There are a fair few flubs in Buzz's Warner numbers, and as late as 1943 there is a conspicuous one in 'A Journey to a Star' from 'The Gang's All Here'. The only studio which never knowingly let one through was Metro, which could best afford retakes. For example, I have not spotted any in the fabulous water-skiing routine he devised for Esther Williams in 'Easy to Love'.
@@esmeephillips5888 Actually I can name three visible mistakes in two MGM films. In the finale of "Good News" (1947), at 3:06, one of the female dancers who's 4th from left appears to snag a bracelet on her dress, and when everyone else stands up straight and claps above their heads, she's very visibly bent over and standing still. Then at 4:27, as the camera dollies towards the main couple, the two secondary couples are seated below them while everyone lip-synchs to the soundtrack - however, Joan McCracken clearly screws up by erroneously mouthing "Tell her her eyes are blue" instead of the correct line, "Send her a billet-doux." In "Pagan Love Song" (1950), at the end of a Polynesian dance number, everyone tosses into the air the small straw items they've been waving around, but one lands on the head of a woman who you clearly see says "Ow!" followed by rubbing the top of her head.
@@hebneh Tks, I'll check those out. Both from the Freed Unit too, tsk tsk.
Surprised at the 'Pagan Love Song' booboo bc the picture was cut by Blanche Sewell's successor, Adrienne Fazan, who edited three of Gene Kelly's best entries. Still, Albert Akst, who cut 'Good News', also had a fine CV at Metro. Perhaps they just ran out of time or money at 'Retake Valley'.
@@esmeephillips5888 When these films were made, they could only be viewed in theaters, and nobody had the technology to watch in slow motion or freeze a frame or go back and rewatch - so mistakes like these went past so quickly that the majority of viewers wouldn't notice them or comprehend that they'd happened at all.
One casting couch for each girl dancer hired (and maybe some of the guys, too).
When she started to sing I thought this was the woman who did Betty Boop's voice. But it turns out Helen Kane did Betty Boop (or inspired the voice). Quite the coincidence that they have almost identical voices and the same last name.
A lot of women singers copied that voice at the time. Annette Hanshaw was one of the first recorded although her voice didn't quite sound exactly like Betty Boops voice until Helen Kane came along. Kane actually filed a lawsuit against Fleischer studios (the creators of Betty Boop) for copying her but lost it. They claimed that Kane herself copied a child singer called Baby Esther. Personally I don't think Kane copied her since she was making records before Baby Esther even started performing although it seems the court didn't agree with that and ruled in favor of the Fleischers who later admitted to copying Kane
Margie Kane sounds much like Mae Questel.
You're the dance director I don't care I want another 75 girls on that stage I don't care where you put them 75 is the least all except cram them in and make them dance hahaha
why did all the music and dance remind me of the Wizard of Oz in this time zone?
Erich von Stroheim! With a marionette!
you dumb sh*t that is english
She WAS Betty Boop.
The entire film is in fact quite dramatic and dark - Erich Von Stroheim's character predates Micheal Redgrave's role in Dead of Night by almost 20 years - a man controlled by the puppet
Yes. Otto the puppet.
Anyone know which theatre this was filmed in please?
I understand the girl singer is Margie Kane. Is she related to Helen Kane (the voice of Betty Boop)? Sounds similar.
Notice the use of black and white
What's up with the eight bass viols? Is that common?
I was wondering about that too! I guess they did have some stage orchestras that big on Broadway at that time.
Her costume is a bit shocking for the time, or maybe that was just me 😂 but I often am surprised by vintage fashions being more risqué than you’d think.
I've always wondered who the Great Gabbo was?
The German vent.
Back when you were paid .25 cents an hour to be a professional dancer.
Is Margie Kane any relationship to Helen Kane, the Boop girl of the 1920s?
No
Is this actress the voice of Betty Boop?
No. That was Helen Kane.
hes got a good voice she sounds like minnie mouse
I'm guessing Margie Kane was Helen's sister. If only the color print still existed.
Great as this is I never liked how most women of that era spoke and sang in a squeaky high pitched voice I just turned me off
Is this a metaphor for erectile disfunction? 😆🤣