Eskimo Spit Bath Orchestra

I have an extreme fondness for early sound films.  I dislike the word 'quaint' but that is the best term describing these formative, clunky productions.  I first saw The Broadway Melody around 1969 at the Encore Theatre on Melrose across the street from Paramount Studios.  It was love at first sight.  Like many of its fellow features and short subject "experiments", The Broadway Melody shares those surreal aspects of early cinema that probably drove it's contemporaries nuts with aggravation. The new sound technology with all its inflexible and learn-as-you-go experimention forced a certain stagey-ness to most scenes something like television! The wierd acting tableau created when casts were made up of disparate  stars of stage and bewildered silent film veterans. Some disorientation must have occurred as the whole Hollywood Industry was "wired for sound" with bulky, strange equipment. There is a certain quaint ambience created by primitive sound equipment, forcing everything to be shot and recorded in tightly enclosed sound stages with every foot step heard thumping into the lower frecuencies.

I also love the songs of prolific Californio Nacio Herb Brown and New Yawker Arthur Freed.

Bessie Love

(1898-1996)

as Hank Mahoney

Anita Page

(1910-)

as Queenie Mahoney

Charles King

(1889-1944)

as Eddie Hearns

Jed Prouty

(1879-1956)

as Uncle Jed

Kenneth Thomson

(1899-1967)

as Jacques Warriner

or Jock, or Warry

Eddie Kane

(1989-1969)

as Zanfield

Eddie Dillon

(1879-1933)

as stage manager

Mary Doran

(1910-1995)

as Flo

referred to only as 'stupid'

Marshall Ruth

(1898-1953)

Stew, Zanfield's assistant

J. Emmett Beck

as tipsy Babe Hatrick

Drew Demorest

(1898-1949)

costumer

Beth Laemmle

(1909-)

extra, credited as "Oyster Shell"

For more information on the production of this film and a great foto of the Wedding the Painted Doll sequence check out the webpage of L.A. writer Mark Alan Vieira.

TheStarLightStudio.com

(392-38) Queenie starts to rebel against the advice of big sister Hank.

(392-63) Eddie entertains backstage and invents the "weggie" to the consternation of the stage manager. Producer Zanfield and back-stage-cat (Mary Doran) look on. Beth Laemmle, chorine behind/left of Zanfeld spies for Universal?

(392-49) Hank desperately uses reverse psychology and sparse cleavage to convince Eddie to save Queenie from herself.

(392-87) Queenie resigns herself to the situation that she is the chicken while plucky Hank is the dumb cluck.

(392-149) Eddie crashes the party confronting uncredited bit player.

(392-153) Femme prospector, Jacques Warner, Stew and Babe look on approvingly as prospective harem gush over expensive doodad given to Queenie. I think Beth Laemmle is bimbo left-most.

(392-42) Hard-nosed trouper, Hank rehearses "Flo" as replacement Mahoney sister, whilst less than successful agent, "Uncle" Jed, and the blissful newlyweds look on.