By Ed Bradley
The
photograph on the cover of my newly published movie history book is from It’s
Great to Be Alive, a 1933 mix of music, comedy, romance, science fiction, and
gender-role reversal – all set amid a global pandemic.
Ripped
from the headlines? No, the image on the front of Hollywood Musicals You
Missed: 70 Noteworthy Films from the 1930s (McFarland & Co.) was selected
well before Covid-19. Much stranger than the real-life menace is the malady in It’s
Great to Be Alive, which leads to the demise of the Earth’s entire male
populace … save for one conveniently golden-voiced swain portrayed by Brazilian
heartthrob Raul Roulien.
Even
if It’s Great to Be Alive doesn’t seem quite as frivolous now as when I viewed
it during my research, I love it, and its ilk, no less. This is my fourth book about
Depression era American musical films. There have been decades of movie musicals
with more patriotism, bigger bands, splashier color, pricier budgets, and rock
’n’ roll. But it is easy to dive into ’30s tune fests – and the talents of Fred
Astaire, Busby Berkeley, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and others, with Tin Pan
Alley and the advent of swing music – and not want to come up for air.
The
more obscure, the better. Stellar figures such as Astaire, Berkeley, and Judy
Garland deserve appreciation, but historians have discussed them and their
pictures to death. That is why the new book includes entries on The Way to
Love (1933), in which star Maurice Chevalier gets upstaged by a dog, and The
Girl Said No (1937), a wonderful tribute to Gilbert and Sullivan that was a
jukebox musical before there were jukeboxes.
Then
there are the little-seen pictures starring Herbert Jeffries, the Detroit-born
actor billed as the first African American singing cowboy; Dorothy Page, the first
female Western singing actor; and Lou Gehrig, the New York Yankees star whose emoting
in Rawhide (1938) makes you wish he would have spent some time away from
playing first base to take acting lessons.
Screen
musicals aren’t very popular in 2020. The thought of actors bursting into song
unprompted is somehow too fanciful for the audiences who thrill at Star Wars
or the Marvel Universe, although the success of La La Land and recent
Queen and Elton John biopics provide some hope for the genre. As time passes,
the sounds of the early films seem to grow fainter, more remote.
For
my first book, The First Hollywood Musicals (1996), Douglas Fairbanks
Jr., Maureen O’Sullivan, George Burns, Dorothy Lee, and other stars were alive
for me to interview about their forays into song. They are gone now, but their vintage
tune films should not be allowed to disappear. They won’t, as long as there are
caretakers to make sure they are seen, heard, and preserved.