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Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. While critically acclaimed for many different roles throughout her career, she is widely known for playing the part of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939). She attained international stardom as an actress in both musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage. Renowned for her versatility, she received an Academy Juvenile Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Special Tony Award. Garland was the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, which she won for her 1961 live recording titled Judy at Carnegie Hall.
Vitaphone was a sound film system used for feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects made by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1931. Vitaphone was the last major analog sound-on-disc system and the only one that was widely used and commercially successful. The soundtrack was not printed on the film itself, but issued separately on phonograph records. The discs, recorded at 33+1⁄3 rpm and typically 16 inches (41 cm) in diameter, would be played on a turntable physically coupled to the projector motor while the film was being projected. It had a frequency response of 4300 Hz. Many early talkies, such as The Jazz Singer (1927), used the Vitaphone system. The name "Vitaphone" derived from the Latin and Greek words, respectively, for "living" and "sound".
Sinkin' in the Bathtub is the first Warner Bros. theatrical cartoon short as well as the first of the Looney Tunes series. The cartoon features Bosko, and the title is a pun on the 1929 song Singin' in the Bathtub. The short debuted in April 1930, at the Warner Bros. Theater in Hollywood.
Gold Diggers of Broadway is a 1929 American pre-Code musical comedy film directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring Winnie Lightner and Nick Lucas. Distributed by Warner Bros., the film is the second all-talking, all-Technicolor feature-length film.
The Show of Shows is a 1929 American pre-Code musical revue film directed by John G. Adolfi and distributed by Warner Bros. The all talking Vitaphone production cost $850,000 and was shot almost entirely in Technicolor.
Meglin Kiddies was an American troupe of acting, music and dance performers, consisting of children up to the age of 16..
Showgirl in Hollywood is a 1930 American pre-Code all-talking musical film with Technicolor sequences, produced and distributed by First National Pictures, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. The film stars Alice White, Jack Mulhall and Blanche Sweet. It was adapted from the 1929 novel Hollywood Girl by J.P. McEvoy.
Paris is a 1929 American Pre-Code musical comedy film, featuring Irène Bordoni. It was filmed with Technicolor sequences: four of the film's ten reels were originally photographed in Technicolor.
General Crack is a 1929 American pre-Code part-talkie historical costume melodrama with Technicolor sequences which was directed by Alan Crosland and produced and distributed by Warner Bros. It was filmed and premiered in 1929, and released early in 1930. It stars John Barrymore in his first full-length talking feature. The film would prove to be Crosland and Barrymore's last historical epic together. It was based on the 1928 novel General Crack by the British writer Marjorie Bowen, published under the name George Preedy, one of her several pen names.
"Singing in the Bathtub" is a song written in 1929 by Michael H. Cleary, with lyrics by Herb Magidson and Ned Washington for the film The Show of Shows. The Show of Shows was Warner Bros.' answer to MGM's The Hollywood Revue of 1929, and "Singing in the Bathtub" spoofs Hollywood Revue's song "Singin' in the Rain". In Show of Shows, the number features an enormous bathtub and is performed by Winnie Lightner and a chorus of male performers wearing antiquated bathing suits.
The musical short can be traced back to the earliest days of sound films.
Paramount on Parade is a 1930 all-star American pre-Code revue released by Paramount Pictures, directed by several directors including Edmund Goulding, Dorothy Arzner, Ernst Lubitsch, Rowland V. Lee, A. Edward Sutherland, Lothar Mendes, Otto Brower, Edwin H. Knopf, Frank Tuttle, and Victor Schertzinger—all supervised by the production supervisor, singer, actress, and songwriter Elsie Janis.
Hardboiled Rose is a 1929 American part-talkie romantic drama film directed by F. Harmon Weight and released by Warner Bros. It starred Myrna Loy, William Collier, Jr., and John Miljan.
The “Vitaphone Color Parade” was a series of documentary short films produced by Warner Bros.
The name “Technicolor Adventure” was used by Warner Bros. to define its one-reel film shorts that were not part of the Sports Parade, also shot in Technicolor in the 1940s. Most were travelogues or human interest documentary films. Gordon Hollingshead produced most of them, with music scores provided by Howard Jackson.
The Sports Parade was a short film series of Warner Bros. that was regularly shown before the main studio feature, along with another Warner-Vitaphone short, Joe McDoakes comedy and/or Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. The average running time of each film was between nine and eleven minutes.
Vitaphone Varieties is a series title used for all of Warner Bros.', earliest short film "talkies" of the 1920s, initially made using the Vitaphone sound on disc process before a switch to the sound-on-film format early in the 1930s. These were the first major film studio-backed sound films, initially showcased with the 1926 synchronized scored features Don Juan and The Better 'Ole. Although independent producers like Lee de Forest's Phonofilm were successfully making sound film shorts as early as 1922, they were very limited in their distribution and their audio was generally not as loud and clear in theaters as Vitaphone's. The success of the early Vitaphone shorts, initially filmed only in New York, helped launch the sound revolution in Hollywood.
Technicolor Special was a common term used for Hollywood studio produced color short films of the 1930s and 1940s that did not belong to a specified series.
Broadway Brevities are two-reel musical and dramatic film shorts produced by Warner Bros. between 1931 and 1943. The series continued as Warner Specials in later years.
References
- 1 2 Bubbles (Motion picture). Warner Bros. 1930. Rel. No. 3898.
- 1 2 3 "Judy Garland Discography: The Gumm Sisters/Garland Sisters Short Films". thejudyroom.com.
- ↑ "The Vitaphone Project! "A Night at the Palace" Hit at Film Forum (Spring/Summer-1996)". picking.com.
"Bubbles" (1930) is a one-reel Vitaphone Variety, originally shot in Technicolor, but now only surviving in black and white. An all-kiddie musical, this short marks the earliest surviving screen appearance of Judy Garland, here seen with her sisters, billed as The Vitaphone Kiddies.
- ↑ "The Vitaphone Project! Lost or Just Hiding? (Summer/Fall 2003)". picking.com.
Judy Garland, as Frances Gumm, appeared with her sisters in three west coast-produced one reel Vitaphone Technicolor shorts. Two have no known film at all, and the third, BUBBLES (‘30) survives only in a black and white print. Much of the color output was returned to the Technicolor Corporation in Hollywood, to the building now ironically occupied by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Much of the stored footage was discarded in the 1950’s as Technicolor itself moved away from the superior three-strip system in favor of the monopak approach of Eastman Color.
- ↑ Bradley, Edwin M. (2005). The First Hollywood Sound Shorts, 1926-1931. McFarland & Company. p. 103. ISBN 9780786410309.
- ↑ Liebman, Roy (2003). Vitaphone Films – A Catalogue of the Features and Shorts. McFarland & Company. p. 213. ISBN 9780786412792.
- ↑ "Meet Me In St.Louis Blu-ray - Judy Garland". dvdbeaver.com.
- ↑ "Judy Garland Discography: The Golden Years At MGM". thejudyroom.com.
- ↑ "Judy Garland – Lost Tracks 1929 - 1959". thejudyroom.com.
