His Pastimes
About His Pastimes
Roy Smeck sits on a garden bench in a bow tie and plays three instruments. He starts with a steel guitar across his lap, using a slide. He switches to ukulele, then adds a harmonica while both hands stay on the uke. He finishes on a four-string banjo, hitting the body for rhythm as well as picking.
Cast & crew
More about His Pastimes
Vitaphone production number 302, shot with the Western Electric sound-on-disc system and released by Warner Bros. It premiered on 6 August 1926 at the Warners' Theatre in New York on the same program as Don Juan. Ed DuPar is the cinematographer named in silent-film credits. One reel.
Themes
Background
Vitaphone was still demonstrating sound-on-disc with short musical acts in the months before The Jazz Singer.
Making
The camera stays on Smeck on the bench. The disc, not a later score, carries the performance.
Look
Ed DuPar shot Smeck seated, with the instruments changed in front of a fixed camera.
Technique
Western Electric Vitaphone sound-on-disc, production 302, shown with Don Juan.
Music
Smeck's own playing, recorded on a Vitaphone disc locked to the picture.
Preservation
A 35mm print exists. Silent Era lists the short as surviving.
Notes
- The title card calls Smeck 'The Wizard of the String.'
- He plays steel guitar, ukulele, harmonica, and banjo, in that order.
- The short is fully synchronized. There is no spoken plot.
- A 35mm print survives, and the film is in the public domain in the United States.
Scenes
- Smeck keeps both hands on the ukulele and plays a harmonica at the same time.
