On With the Show!
About On With the Show!
Opening night of The Phantom Sweetheart at the Wallace Theater in Milbank, New Jersey, is Broadway or bust, and producer Jerry still has not paid the company. Prop dealer Sam Bloom wants the scenery back. Hat-check girl Kitty and head usher Jimmy need the week's wages, while leading lady Nita French refuses to go on until theater owner Bob Wallace pays her. A masked man robs the box office, and the suspects include Jimmy. When Nita walks, Kitty goes on in the Phantom Sweetheart's veil. Her father, the doorman, admits he took the receipts and returns them. Wallace is arrested after he locks Kitty in the prop room, Nita leaves the stage, and Kitty takes the bow with Jimmy.
Cast & crew
More about On With the Show!
Alan Crosland directed, with Larry Ceballos staging the ensemble numbers. Robert Lord wrote the scenario and dialogue from Humphrey Pearson's story Shoestring. The picture was shot in two-strip Technicolor and released with Vitaphone discs. Warner Bros. records list domestic rentals of $1,741,000 and foreign rentals of $674,000.
Themes
Background
It followed Warner Bros.' part-color musical The Desert Song and was sold as the first all-talking, all-color feature.
In film history
Copyright ran out on January 1, 2025, and the film entered the public domain in the United States.
Making
William Holmes edited. Tony Gaudio photographed the two-color negative, which needed enough light to wash the sets out. Joe E. Brown plays the comedian Joe Beaton, Louise Fazenda plays Sarah Fogarty, and Arthur Lake plays leading man Harold Astor.
Reviews
Mordaunt Hall in The New York Times praised the Technicolor pastels and dismissed the story and the "raucous voices," comparing the film to a clumsy person in Fifth Avenue clothes. Variety called it too long but "impressive, both as an entertainment and as a talker." John Mosher in The New Yorker found it undistinguished except for the color.
Audiences
Warner Bros. counted it a hit: $1,741,000 in domestic rentals and $674,000 abroad.
Look
Tony Gaudio shot it in two-strip Technicolor, the red and green records that gave the musical numbers their pastel look.
Technique
It was the first feature that was all-talking and entirely in color. Vitaphone discs carried the sound; when prints later moved to an optical track, the picture was cropped on the left.
Music
Harry Akst and Grant Clarke wrote the songs, recorded with the Warner Bros. Vitaphone Orchestra. Ethel Waters performs "Am I Blue?" with the Harmony Four Quartette and "Birmingham Bertha" with dancer Angelus Babe.
Preservation
The British Film Institute holds one reel of the 35mm color nitrate. The rest of the surviving picture is black and white, including a Library of Congress copy. A color fragment of about 20 seconds turned up in 2005, and further color fragments were found in 2014. U.S. copyright expired on January 1, 2025.
Notes
- New York opened it on May 28, 1929, and the general U.S. release was July 13, 1929.
- Ethel Waters sings "Am I Blue?" and "Birmingham Bertha." Harry Akst wrote the music and Grant Clarke the lyrics.
- Josephine Huston sang "Let Me Have My Dreams" off camera while Betty Compson and Sally O'Neil mouthed the words. Dubbing had not been worked out yet.
- A later sound-on-film issue cropped the left side of the frame to make room for the optical track.
- In 2004 the American Film Institute nominated "Am I Blue?" for its 100 Years...100 Songs list.
- Gold Diggers of Broadway, the next all-Technicolor Warner musical, outgrossed it. Song of the West was finished earlier but held until March 1930.
Scenes
- Ethel Waters sings "Am I Blue?" alone and then with the Harmony Four Quartette, which is enough to keep Sam Bloom from taking the scenery.
- Joe Beaton and Harold ride hobby horses in a fox hunt while a mechanical pack and real horses cross the stage.
- Veiled as the Phantom Sweetheart, Kitty sings "Let Me Have My Dreams" in the gazebo after Nita refuses to appear.
Influenced by
- Shoestring, a story by Humphrey Pearson
- The Desert Song (1929)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (On With The Show (1929).webm)
