The Show of Shows - Scenes

Scenes

What follows here is a detailed description of the existing prints. Most of the scenes were originally in color, but only black-and-white television prints survive, except for the Chinese Fantasy scene and the Meet My Sister scene. The Meet My Sister scene is available only in black and white on most prints, as the color print is held privately.

• Prologue—In a scene set in the French Revolution, Hobart Bosworth as an executioner and H.B. Warner as an aristocrat who is executed on a guillotine. This strange and morbid opening serves to show that traditional stage shows are finished. Up until 1929, most big cities had added stage acts before silent movies. These were costly, and sound films would make them mostly obsolete. As the aristocrat tries to speak, he is interrupted by the executioner, who rants that they have heard his remarks too often and it is time for him to be gone. After the blade falls, the executioner joyously shouts: "Prologue is Dead! On with the Show of Shows!"

• Military March—lead by Monte Blue and Pasadena American Legion Fife and Drum Corps. A very static pageant set entirely on a huge set of steps with the cadets changing formation to provide a series of color effects in a manner that would be popularized much later by Busby Berkeley.

• What's Become of the Floradora Boys?—Myrna Loy, Marian Nixon, Ben Turpin, Lupino Lane, and many others in a partial parody of the now largely forgotten 'Florodora' Edwardian stage show. This was the first of its kind, a lavish show featuring girls in a chorus, and it would attract a generation of male admirers before passing into history. Thus, the production was still a living memory among many in 1929, prompting this gentle parody.

• Motion Picture Pirates—featuring Ted Lewis with a fantasy number set of a pirate ship headed by cut-throat Noah Beery and Tully Marshall with Wheeler Oakman, Kala Pasha, and other well-known movie villains of the era. A group of beautiful girls are captured and saved from an awful fate (almost) by light comedian Johnny Arthur sending up Douglas Fairbanks. The pirates literally blow him overboard. Finally, the day is saved by Ted Lewis, a well-known bandleader at that time who had recently appeared in his own starring vehicle for Warner Bros., Is Everybody Happy? (1929), a film now deemed lost. His trademark was a battered top hat, and his signature tune was "Me and My Shadow".

• Dear Little Pup—sung by Frank Fay.

• The Only Song I Know—Nick Lucas

• Ping Pongo—sung by Winnie Lightner

• If I Could Learn to Love—In a brief introductory sequence, missing from circulating prints, Georges Carpentier is introduced by Frank Fay, who provokes Carpentier into lightly tapping him with his formidable hands, to which Fay comically overreacts and then beats a hasty retreat. Georges Carpentier was a French lightweight boxer who was briefly adopted as a star in the Maurice Chevalier mold. He sings here against an Eiffel Tower backdrop accompanied by Patsy Ruth Miller and Alice White and later a singing and dancing chorus of girls. Ultimately, all of them remove their street clothes to reveal athletic togs underneath, and a precision dance routine follows with the participants positioned on an upright series of geometric struts.

• Recitations—Beatrice Lillie, Louise Fazenda, Lloyd Hamilton, and Frank Fay. A series of stark poetic recitations that are first performed by each performer whole and then line by line, until when mixed up they form a bizarre and suggestive product. The sequence also includes a parody of the MGM song "Your Mother and Mine" and a series of purposely lame and pointless practical jokes.

• Meet My Sister—Introduced by a deliberately nervous Richard Barthelmess followed by 'Hollywood' sisters, including Dolores Costello and Helene Costello, singing "My Sister", along with Loretta Young and Sally Blane, Sally O'Neil and Molly O'Day, Alice Day and Marceline Day, Marion Byron and Harriette Lake (later better known as Ann Sothern), Viola Dana and Shirley Mason, Lola Vendrell and Armida Vendrell, and Alberta Vaughn and Adamae Vaughn. All of the pairs were sisters in real life except for Marion Byron and Harriette Lake, who were not related. The song is partly compromised by having each set of 'twins' representing a different country against a backdrop serving to illustrate each in a display of international stereotypes (this number exists in color in a faded private print, which has the start and end partly removed).

• Intermission—Ten Minutes—Title Card (missing from some prints)

• Singin' in the Bathtub—Winnie Lightner and a bunch of male chorines amusingly send up Singin' in the Rain against a huge bathroom set, concluding with Lightner and ex-wrestler Bull Montana singing a parody of the MGM song "You Were Meant for Me" from the 1929 film The Broadway Melody.

• Irene Bordoni singing "Just an Hour of Love".
• Chinese Fantasy—Introduced, via sharp barks, by canine performer Rin Tin Tin, with Nick Lucas singing "Li-Po-Li" and Myrna Loy dancing. This lavish production number is a good illustration of the film as a whole and still entertains today. It survives in Technicolor.

• Frank Fay with Sid Silvers—Amusing skit with Sid Silvers stepping in as an annoying spectator who is auditioning for a solo spot by showing Frank Fay his own imitation of Al Jolson singing "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody". Jolson, although a Warner Bros. top star, does not appear.

• A Bicycle Built for Two—Another music hall pastiche featuring Chester Conklin, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Chester Morris, Gertrude Olmstead, Sally Eilers and others singing the 1890s standard "Daisy Bell" against a deliberately unreal revolving backdrop.

• If Your Best Friend Won't Tell You (Why Should I?)—Sid Silvers back with Frank Fay wickedly singing about the horrors of halitosis.

• Larry Ceballos' Black and White Girls—Introduced by Sid Silvers and danced by chorus girls dressed up in black and white dresses. One half of the girls wear outfits with black fronts and white backs (with corresponding wigs) while the others wear outfits exactly the reverse. As the girls turn about in formation, the lines of dancers switch from white to black or form geometric patterns. Music instrumental Jumping Jack. A reworking of an almost identical dance routine set to "The Doll Dance", which appeared in the 1928 Technicolor two-reeler "Larry Ceballos' Roof Garden Revue".

As an afterpiece, the dance appears to begin again but is halted by Louise Fazenda as the "Dancing Delegate" complaining about the costumes ("These skirts are TOO SHORT!") and demanding that Fay be brought on stage—which happens so rapidly that he appears without his pants.

• Your Love Is All I Crave—An emotional and surprisingly moving torch song of lost love sung by Frank Fay. Fay introduces the number with a topical and (for 1929) surprisingly sharp series of jokes: He describes being in a play where the entire cast entered dressed in rags ("It was a futuristic piece"). He also tweaks his own image: "The leading lady called to me: "My Stalwart Youth" ... (I was heavily made up)...."

• King Richard III (in excerpt from Henry VI (Part III))—Introduced and recited by John Barrymore. This Shakespeare extract was thought to add a bit of class at the time. Deliberately picked as a particularly grim sequence, the delivery and meaning could easily be accepted by any contemporary audience.

• Mexican Moonshine —Comedy sketch with Monte Blue as a condemned man and Frank Fay as his executioner accompanied by Lloyd Hamilton, Albert Gran, and others as rather effeminate soldiers. ("Oh, Penelope!" calls Fay, and Lloyd Hamilton walks over swaying his hips.) It is a parody of 'Chesterfield' Tobacco advertising. Much the same idea, parodying a cigarette advertising slogan, also appears in the opening seconds of Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929).

• Lady Luck Finale—A genuinely spectacular finale lasting over a quarter of an hour. (Originally filmed in two-strip Technicolor, it now exists only in black and white. The following description is of the ORIGINAL version.) It starts with Alexander Gray singing a full-blooded version of the song "Lady Luck" inside an enormous ballroom set with huge windows revealing a midnight green sky. The set is backed by stairs, in varied warm colors, down which a procession of novelty acts and pastel-colored dancers with pink and green costumes flood the stage, each with a different number to perform against a fast moving musical backing. The red-lined ceiling reveals chandeliers to which girls have been fixed, all in the name of spectacle. Tap dancers (both white and black groups) dance themselves into a frenzy on a highly polished wooden floor. This all ends as Betty Compson walks down the full length of the stage in procession to meet Alexander Gray, and with the whole cast assembled, hundreds of colored streamers drop from the roof as "Lady Luck" reaches a finale.

• Curtain of Stars —With the cast appearing with their heads poked through holes in canvas singing "Lady Luck", especially John Barrymore making facial gestures while he pretends to be singing along with the others.