Glorifying the American Girl | |
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Directed by | John W. Harkrider Millard Webb |
Written by | J.P. McEvoy (story) Millard Webb |
Produced by | Florenz Ziegfeld |
Starring | Mary Eaton Dan Healy |
Cinematography | George J. Folsey (Technicolor) |
Music by | Irving Berlin Walter Donaldson Rudolf Friml James E. Hanley |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 96 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Glorifying the American Girl is a 1929 American pre-Code musical comedy film produced by Florenz Ziegfeld that highlights Ziegfeld Follies performers. The last third of the film, which was filmed in early Technicolor, is basically a Follies production, with appearances by Rudy Vallee, Helen Morgan, and Eddie Cantor.
Rex Beach was paid $35,000 for the original story. [1] [2]
The script for the film was written by J.P. McEvoy and Millard Webb and directed by John W. Harkrider and Millard Webb. The songs were written by Irving Berlin, Walter Donaldson, Rudolf Friml, James E. Hanley, Larry Spier and Dave Stamper. The film is in the public domain, and many prints exhibited on television are in black-and-white only, and do not include pre-Code material, such as nudity.[ citation needed ]
The plot involves a young woman (Mary Eaton) who wants to be in the Follies, but in the meantime is making ends meet by working at a department store's sheet music department, where she sings the latest hits. She is accompanied on piano by her childhood boyfriend (Edward Crandall), who is in love with her, despite her single-minded interest in her career. When a vaudeville performer (Dan Healy) asks her to join him as his new partner, she sees it as an opportunity to make her dream come true. Upon arriving in New York City, our heroine finds out that her new partner is only interested in sleeping with her and makes this a condition of making her a star. Soon, however, she is discovered by a representative of Ziegfeld.
This Pre-Code movie is notable for being the first talkie to use the word "damn" (that credit usually goes to either Pygmalion or Gone with the Wind ). The word is used twice by Sarah Edwards as well as multiple times in the skit involving Eddie Cantor, Louis Sorin and Lew Hearn. (The word was also used twice in the film Coquette , released in April of the same year.) The revue sequence contains virtual nudity and revealing costumes. Both Paramount and EMKA failed to renew the copyright and the film is now in the public domain.[ citation needed ] EMKA's successor, Universal Studios, continues to hold the original film elements; though technically the EMKA library is part of NBC Universal Television, successor to Universal Television and MCA Television (EMKA was a subsidiary of MCA). The movie contains brief shots of Noah Beery, Irving Berlin, Billie Burke, Charles B. Dillingham, Texas Guinan, Otto Kahn, Ring Lardner, and Mayor of New York City Jimmy Walker as themselves, taken from newsreels and other productions. There is an uncredited, non-speaking scene with Johnny Weissmuller wearing nothing but a fig leaf. The greater part of the final half of the film is a revue given over to a re-creation of a Follies production, replete with musical solos by Rudy Vallee and Helen Morgan and a comedy sketch with Eddie Cantor and Louis Sorin as a pair of Jewish tailors.
The black-and-white prints currently shown on television, with a cut-down running time of 87 minutes, were made in the 1950s and have a number of sequences cut due to their Pre-Code content, i.e. nudity, etc. The film was restored, to the length of 96 minutes, with the original Technicolor sequences, by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. [3] Glorifying The American Girl was released on DVD and blu-ray by Kino Lorber on December 3, 2019. This version is taken from the UCLA restoration and includes the complete film including the Technicolor sequences.
The film was a box office flop, with low-quality sound technology and low-value stars, and with little success among retrospective critics. [4] [5]
The film begins with a medley of hits from Ziegfeld productions, including "Tulip Time", "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody", "Sally, Won't You Come Back?", and "No Foolin'." The band at the picnic plays "Bye Bye Blackbird" and "Side by Side."
The Great Ziegfeld is a 1936 American musical drama film directed by Robert Z. Leonard and produced by Hunt Stromberg. It stars William Powell as the theatrical impresario Florenz "Flo" Ziegfeld Jr., Luise Rainer as Anna Held, and Myrna Loy as Billie Burke.
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1929.
Eddie Cantor was an American comedian, actor, dancer, singer, songwriter, film producer, screenwriter and author. Familiar to Broadway, radio, movie, and early television audiences, this "Apostle of Pep" was regarded almost as a family member by millions because his top-rated radio shows revealed intimate stories and amusing anecdotes about his wife, Ida, and five daughters. Some of his hits include "Makin' Whoopee", "Ida ", "If You Knew Susie", "Ma! He's Making Eyes at Me", “Mandy”, "My Baby Just Cares for Me”, "Margie", and "How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm ?" He also wrote a few songs, including "Merrily We Roll Along", the Merrie Melodies Warner Bros. cartoon theme.
The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical revue productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 to 1931, with renewals in 1934, 1936, 1943, and 1957. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air.
Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke was a Canadian-American actress who was famous on Broadway and radio, and in silent and sound films. She is best known to modern audiences as Glinda the Good Witch of the North in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie musical The Wizard of Oz (1939).
Florenz Edward Ziegfeld Jr. was an American Broadway impresario, notable for his series of theatrical revues, the Ziegfeld Follies (1907–1931), inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris. He also produced the musical Show Boat. He was known as the "glorifier of the American girl". Ziegfeld is a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.
Bert Kalmar was an American songwriter, who was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. He was also a screenwriter.
Irving Caesar was an American lyricist and theater composer who wrote lyrics for numerous song standards, including "Swanee", "Sometimes I'm Happy", "Crazy Rhythm", and "Tea for Two", one of the most frequently recorded tunes ever written. In 1972, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
"Shine On, Harvest Moon" is a popular early-1900s song credited to the married vaudeville team Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth. It was one of a series of moon-related Tin Pan Alley songs of the era. The song was debuted by Bayes and Norworth in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1908 to great acclaim. It became a pop standard, and continues to be performed and recorded in the 21st century.
George White's Scandals were a long-running string of Broadway revues produced by George White that ran from 1919–1939, modeled after the Ziegfeld Follies. The "Scandals" launched the careers of many entertainers, including W. C. Fields, the Three Stooges, Ray Bolger, Helen Morgan, Ethel Merman, Ann Miller, Eleanor Powell, Bert Lahr and Rudy Vallée. Louise Brooks, Dolores Costello, Barbara Pepper, and Alice Faye got their show business start as lavishly dressed chorus girls strutting to the "Scandal Walk". Much of George Gershwin's early work appeared in the 1920–24 editions of Scandals. The Black Bottom, danced by Ziegfeld Follies star Ann Pennington and Tom Patricola, touched off a national dance craze.
Doris Eaton Travis was an American dancer, stage and film actress, dance instructor, owner and manager, writer, and rancher, who was the last surviving Ziegfeld Girl, a troupe of acclaimed chorus girls who performed as members in the Broadway theatrical revues of the Ziegfeld Follies.
Mary Eaton was an American stage actress, singer, and dancer in the 1910s and 1920s, probably best known today from her appearance in the first Marx Brothers film, The Cocoanuts (1929). A professional performer since childhood, she enjoyed success in stage productions such as the Ziegfeld Follies. She appeared in another early sound film, Glorifying the American Girl (1929). Her career declined sharply during the 1930s.
Ziegfeld Girl is a 1941 American musical film directed by Robert Z. Leonard and starring James Stewart, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr, Lana Turner, Tony Martin, Jackie Cooper, Eve Arden, and Philip Dorn. The film, which features musical numbers by Busby Berkeley, was produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
James Frederick Hanley was an American songwriter and author.
"Mandy" is a popular song by Irving Berlin, published in 1919.
Kid Boots is a musical with a book by William Anthony McGuire and Otto Harbach, music by Harry Tierney, and lyrics by Joseph McCarthy. The show was staged by Edward Royce.
David Stamper was an American songwriter of the Tin Pan Alley and vaudeville eras, a contributor to twenty-one editions of the Ziegfeld Follies, writer for the Fox Film Corporation, and composer of more than one thousand songs, in spite of never learning to read or write traditional music notation. He may have written "Shine On Harvest Moon", a claim supported by vaudeville performer and writer Eddie Cantor. He was also a charter member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers or ASCAP.
"A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody" is a popular song written by Irving Berlin in 1919 which became the theme song of the Ziegfeld Follies. The first verse and refrain are considered part of the Great American Songbook and are often covered as a jazz standard.
The Ziegfeld Follies of 1919 was a revue produced by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. Billed as the thirteenth edition of the Ziegfeld Follies series, it had a tryout at Nixon's Apollo Theatre in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on June 10, 1919 and opened at Broadway's New Amsterdam Theatre on June 16, 1919 and closed on December 6, 1919. It is often considered to be the best and most successful of the Follies series produced by Ziegfeld.
Joan Gardner was a Broadway actress and chorus girl in the early 20th century. She was known for being in the Ziegfeld Follies as a tall beauty standing at 5 feet 8 inches.