The Dance of Life
About The Dance of Life
On a rainy night, burlesque comic Skid Johnson is thrown off a show for defending dancer Bonny King, who has just failed an audition. They join Lefty Miller's High Steppers in Milwaukee, fall in love, and marry. Skid gets drunk and wrecks the wedding night. Sylvia Marco, a comic who wants him, stays close. He takes a solo offer for the Ziegfeld Follies and does not send for Bonny. She comes to New York, finds him kissing Sylvia in a speakeasy, and files for divorce, planning to marry rancher Harvey Howell. Drinking then costs Skid a lead in Lefty's new show. Lefty brings Bonny back to sober him up. Skid passes out on opening night. The next night Bonny comes on stage with him and he gets through the number.
Cast & crew
More about The Dance of Life
John Cromwell and A. Edward Sutherland directed. Benjamin Glazer wrote the screenplay, with dialogue by George Manker Watters, from the 1927 play Burlesque by Watters and Arthur Hopkins. Julian Johnson wrote the titles. David O. Selznick was associate producer. Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky presented it. Paramount shot it at the Astoria studio, with two-strip Technicolor sequences, and also issued a silent version in eight reels. It premiered in New York on 16 August 1929 and opened across the United States on 7 September 1929.
Themes
Background
Paramount released it in the first full year of talking pictures, while Broadway backstage plays were being turned into musical features.
Making
Skelly had played Skid for a year on Broadway. Paramount kept him, Levant, Brown, and Theodore, and built the backstage numbers at Astoria rather than in Hollywood.
Look
J. Roy Hunt photographed it at Astoria. The camera is largely fixed for the dialogue, and the stage numbers are the scenes shot in two-strip Technicolor.
Technique
Paramount recorded it as a Movietone sound-on-film feature and cut two-strip Technicolor sequences into an otherwise black-and-white picture. A silent version was released the same year.
Music
Adolph Deutsch, Vernon Duke, and John Leipold are credited with the music. Hal Skelly sings "True Blue Lou." The score also uses "Sweet Rosie O'Grady," "In the Gloaming," and Walter Donaldson's "Sam, the Old Accordion Man."
Preservation
The film entered the public domain in the United States in 1957 after the copyright was not renewed. Sound and silent versions were both released in 1929.
Notes
- Hal Skelly repeats his Broadway role as Ralph "Skid" Johnson. It was his first feature. Oscar Levant, Charles D. Brown, and Ralph Theodore also came over from the Plymouth Theatre production.
- Nancy Carroll plays Bonny Lee King. Dorothy Revier plays Sylvia Marco. Al St. John plays Bozo. May Boley plays Gussie.
- Cromwell plays a speakeasy doorkeeper. Sutherland plays a theater attendant.
- Songs include "True Blue Lou," "The Flippity Flop," "King of Jazzmania," "Ladies of the Dance," and "Cuddlesome Baby," by Richard A. Whiting, Sam Coslow, and Leo Robin.
- The copyright was not renewed, and the film entered the public domain in the United States in 1957.
- Later films of the same play are Swing High, Swing Low (1937) and When My Baby Smiles at Me (1948). Barbara Stanwyck had played the dancer on Broadway; she is not in this film.
Scenes
- Skid and Bonny meet at a rainy train station after both are thrown off the same bill.
- Bonny walks into a speakeasy and finds Skid kissing Sylvia.
- Skid collapses on opening night, and the next night Bonny joins him on stage so he can finish.
Influenced by
- Burlesque (play, 1927)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons
