The March of Time (1930) was the title of a planned Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical film originally scheduled to be released in September 1930. Production of this early film, which would have been one of the first musicals filmed in two-color Technicolor, was abandoned, although a number of musical numbers were filmed. The uncompleted film was originally titled Hollywood Revue of 1930 and was conceived by producer Harry Rapf as a follow-up to MGM's Hollywood Revue of 1929 which he had also produced.
Footage from The March of Time later found its way into the musical shorts The Devil's Cabaret (1930), Nertsery Rhymes (1933), Beer and Pretzels (1933), Jail Birds of Paradise (1934), and The Big Idea (1934). MGM's 1931 musical revue Wir schalten um auf Hollywood (We Tune In to Hollywood), produced for the German market, also featured scenes from The March of Time as did 1933's Broadway to Hollywood. Footage from the unfinished film appears in That's Entertainment! III (1994).
Among the performers originally scheduled to appear in The March of Time were Buster Keaton, Joe Weber and Lew Fields of the Weber and Fields comedy team, Marie Dressler, Gus Edwards, Fay Templeton, DeWolf Hopper Sr., Albertina Rasch and her dancers, Ramon Novarro, Joan Crawford, Polly Moran, Wallace Beery, Barney Fagan, Raquel Torres, and Bing Crosby. Beery, Dressler, Moran, Weber and Fields, Templeton, Edwards, Fagan, and Hopper were to be included in a series of vaudeville sketches as the "Old Timers".
Famous quotes containing the words march and/or time:
“Knowledge, Virtue, Power are the victories of man over his necessities, his march to the dominion of the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1993)