On with the Show

Information about On with the Show

On with the Show! (1929)
Directed byAlan Crosland
Written byRobert Lord
based on the play by Humphrey Pearson
StarringJoe E. Brown
Betty Compson
Arthur Lake
Ethel Waters
Louise Fazenda
Music byHarry Akst
CinematographyTony Gaudio (Technicolor)
Editing byWilliam Holmes
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Release date(s)July 13, 1929
Running time103 min.
LanguageEnglish
|/ IMDb profile


On with the Show! 1929 is historically important in cinema history as the first modern sound film photographed entirely in Technicolor. To explain this breakthrough, this film was promoted in 1929 terms as a 100% 'talkie', meaning that it had synchronised speech. Prior to this, Tiffany had released The Cavalier (1928), which was technically the first feature length sound completely in Technicolor, but only had music and sound effects with silent title cards, and would be regarded as a silent film by viewers today.

Warner Brothers promoted 'On With the Show!' as being in: "Natural Color." The pioneers of sound were the first to introduce sound combined with color. Adverts proclaimed 'Now color takes to the screen'. The novelty of the color alone was enough to ensure a worldwide gross of over $2 million, at the time an outstanding figure. For Warners this would be the first in a series of contracted films made in color. It generated much interest in Hollywood and virtually overnight, most other major studios began films shot in the process. The film would be eclipsed by far greater success of the second Technicolor film, Gold Diggers of Broadway. Unfortunately, the original negative of On With the Show is now lost and no Technicolor prints have survived, only prints in black-and-white. A fragment of an original color print lasting about 20 seconds was recently discovered and used for the frame images shown here.

The film was a combination of a few genres. Part backstage musical using the now familiar 'show within a show' format, part mystery and part comedy. It featured famed singer Ethel Waters in two songs written and staged for the film. "Am I Blue" and "Birmingham Bertha" (with dancer John Bubbles).

The cast includes William Bakewell as the head usher eager to get his sweetheart, box-office girl Sally O'Neil, noticed as a leading girl. Betty Compson plays the temperamental star and Arthur Lake the whiny young male lead. Louise Fazenda is the company's eccentric comedienne, who is given little to do but laugh at inappropriate moments, her hair hennaed an improbable shade of red. Joe E. Brown plays the part of a mean comedian who constantly argues with Arthur Lake.

All of the characters are stereotypes and much of the attempts at humour are fascinating historically, but were dated even at the time of the film's release. Contemporary critic Mordaunt Hall noted in his 'New York Times' review that he imagined the lovely hues 'writhed in agony' serving such a story.

Despite this, the direction by Alan Crosland is far snappier than many other films of the period. Moving camera shots and angled, composed scenes do feature when many other early sound films have cameras firmly planted on the floor. The staging of the musical numbers is competent and the settings have been designed with some care to use Technicolor in a flashy, if obvious way. Thus Sally O'Neil finds herself in a storeroom crammed with colored vanity cases and many of the performers are heavily rouged on the cheeks with matching 'cherry lips'.

This is one of four 1929 Warner Bros Technicolor films that blazed a trail, creating a brief year-long craze for color films. The others were the smash hit comedy Gold Diggers of Broadway, a lavish revue The Show of Shows, and a Ziegfeld stage adaption Sally (film).

Enlarge picture
Sam Hardy looks nervous before he takes to the stage.

Plot

With unpaid actors and staff, the stage show 'Phantom Sweetheart' seems doomed. To complicate matters, the box office takings have been robbed and the leading lady refuses to appear. Can the show be saved?

Cast (in credits order)

Enlarge picture
Lobby card for On with the Show (1929).
Alan Crosland (born August 10, 1894; died July 16, 1936) was an American actor and film director.

Born in New York City, New York to a well-to-do family, Alan Crosland attended from Dartmouth College.
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Joe E. Brown

from the trailer for the film
Bright Lights (1935).
Birth name Joseph Evans Brown
Born July 28, 1892
Holgate, Ohio, USA
Died July 6, 1973, age 80
Brentwood, California, USA

Joseph Evans Brown
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Betty Compson (March 19, 1897 - April 18, 1974) was an American actress. Born Eleanor Luicime Compson in Beaver, Utah, she had an extensive filmography. As a youth her father died and she was forced to drop out of school and earn a living for herself and her mother.
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Arthur Lake may refer to:
  • Arthur Lake, Bishop of Bath and Wells (1569–1626)
  • Arthur Lake (actor) (1905–1987)
  • Arthur Lake (skateboarder), 1970s professional skateboarder

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Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977) was an Oscar-nominated American blues vocalist and actress. She was the second African American to ever be nominated for an Academy Award.
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Louise Fazenda

from the trailer for
The Casino Murder Case (1935).

Born June 17, 1895
Lafayette, Indiana, USA
Died April 17, 1962, age 66
Beverly Hills, California, USA

Louise Fazenda
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Harry Akst (August 15, 1894–March 31, 1963) was an American songwriter who started out his career as a pianist in vaudeville accompanying singers such as Nora Bayes, Frank Fay and Al Jolson.
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Tony Gaudio (Gaetano Antonio Gaudio) (20 November 1883 - 10 August 1951) was the chief photographer for Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Sr, and the first cinematographer to use a montage sequence in a film.
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Technicolor is the trademark for a series of color film processes pioneered by Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation (a subsidiary of Technicolor, Inc.), now a division of Thomson.
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William Holmes may refer to:
  • William Holmes, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University 1732–1735.
  • William Holmes (1779-1851), British Tory politician of the early nineteenth century
  • William Edgar Holmes, English recipient of the Victoria Cross.

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Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., or Warner Bros. (pronounced Warner Brothers), is one of the world's largest producers of film and television entertainment.

It is currently a subsidiary of the Time Warner conglomerate, with its headquarters in Burbank, California.
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July 13 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.
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19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1890s  1900s  1910s  - 1920s -  1930s  1940s  1950s
1926 1927 1928 - 1929 - 1930 1931 1932

Year 1929 (MCMXXIX
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English}}} 
Writing system: Latin (English variant) 
Official status
Official language of: 53 countries
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: en
ISO 639-2: eng
ISO 639-3: eng  
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-1929- 1930 1931 1932  1933 .  1934 .  1935 .  1936  . 1937  . 1938  . 1939 

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Sound is a disturbance of mechanical energy that propagates through matter as a wave (through fluids as a compression wave, and through solids as both compression and shear waves).
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Technicolor is the trademark for a series of color film processes pioneered by Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation (a subsidiary of Technicolor, Inc.), now a division of Thomson.
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19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1890s  1900s  1910s  - 1920s -  1930s  1940s  1950s
1926 1927 1928 - 1929 - 1930 1931 1932

Year 1929 (MCMXXIX
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Synchronization (or Sync) is a problem in timekeeping which requires the coordination of events to operate a system in unison. The familiar conductor of an orchestra serves to keep the orchestra in time.
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Speech communication refers to the processes associated with the production and perception of sounds used in spoken language. A number of academic disciplines study speech and speech sounds, including acoustics, psychology, speech pathology, linguistics, and computer science.
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Tiffany Productions Inc. a Hollywood movie studio also known as Tiffany Studios or Tiffany-Stahl Productions which produced or distributed about 140 films, including some in Technicolor, from 1922 to 1932, when the studio filed for bankruptcy.
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IMDb profile

The Cavalier is a 1928 Technicolor Western directed by Irvin Willat for Tiffany Studios. It stars Richard Talmadge and Barbara Bedford and is a dramatic picture.
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Technicolor is the trademark for a series of color film processes pioneered by Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation (a subsidiary of Technicolor, Inc.), now a division of Thomson.
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For the album by The Jam, see Sound Affects.


Sound effects or audio effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of movies, video games, music, or other media.
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intertitle (also known as a title card) is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of (i.e. inter-) the photographed action, at various points, generally to convey character dialogue, or descriptive narrative material related to, but not necessarily covered by,
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Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., or Warner Bros. (pronounced Warner Brothers), is one of the world's largest producers of film and television entertainment.

It is currently a subsidiary of the Time Warner conglomerate, with its headquarters in Burbank, California.
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Hollywood is a district in Los Angeles, California, situated west-northwest of Downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word "Hollywood" is often used as a metonym for the Cinema of the United States.
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studio is an artist's workroom, or an artist and his or her employees who work within that studio. This can be for the purpose of painting, pottery (ceramics), sculpture, photography,graphic design, cinematography, animation, radio or television broadcasting or the making of music.
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Technicolor is the trademark for a series of color film processes pioneered by Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation (a subsidiary of Technicolor, Inc.), now a division of Thomson.
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