(Anthem Art and Culture), by Gary Morris (Editor), Bert Cardullo (Introduction), Jonathan Rosenbaum (Foreword). London and New York: Anthem Press, 2009.
— David Hudson, IFC.com
The highlight of Hollywood Rhythms, Vol. 2 is "Office Girl," a ten-minute
short from 1930 that is nothing but Ginger, and she's nothing but adorable,
a 19-year-old brunette with a little curl right in the middle of her
forehead. Ginger's a stenographer 1
cum flapper, pining for TD&H boss Clairborne Bryson (who, it must be said,
looks like a Clairborne Bryson), who somehow never takes the hint. "I
am cynical, he's rabbinical," she sighs, lamenting her inability to catch
his eye. As she types up one of his letters, beginning "Dear sir, I am
writing you," she begins singing a love letter ("please inspect our new
spring line, locked up in this heart of mine") that carries her into a
wonderfully naïve dream sequence. She's in an evening gown in front of
a chorus line of stenos, who have letters on their smock-like dresses
and carry steno pads and pencils. She's joined by her boss in a tux, reprising
her song as "Dear miss, I just received your note." When they kiss, the
stenos hide their blushing faces behind their steno pads.
The rest of Hollywood Rhythms is a very mixed bag indeed, unearthing
popular entertainment so dated and obscure you don't believe it even
after you've seen it. If you're a Cary Grant obsessive, you can catch
him in his very first film appearance, "Singapore Sue," a brutally racist,
sexist short that features Cary as a libidinous sailor in pursuit of
Anna Chang (who fortunately rejects him for a shy Chinese boy).3
Bing Crosby appears in a pair of two-reelers he made for Mack Sennett
in the early thirties, which combine his singing with rowdy slapstick.4
In a very brief bit, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys sing "Sittin' on
Top of the World." The Playboys,5
who have a devoted cult following today, put together a strange mixture
of country and western, swing, and blues — part of the primordial
brew that eventually spat forth the rough beast known as rock and roll.6
Despite the rodeo outfits and violins, Wills drew heavily on black blues
singers for his lyrics and vocal style, with more than just a touch of
Fats Waller, and clearly liked to think of himself as a very bad boy.7
1. "Stenographer" is Greek for "she who takes shorthand." In the good old days, before men could type, businesses employed thousands of women who took shorthand dictation from high-powered executives. The development of portable tape recorders more or less destroyed the steno business.
2. The number is a loving recreation of Louis Armstrong's 1925 recording with his Hot Five. The Boswells, led by sister Connee, flourished in the early thirties. For more information, go here.
3. Anna is accompanied by "Pickard's Chinese Syncopators," a vaudeville group
who presumably toured the U.S. in the twenties and thirties. Talk about
hard traveling!
4. Sample gag: Bing's mountainous prospective mother-in-law gets in a cab that contains a lion. In a long shot, we see the cab rock wildly and then an obviously cartoon lion comes flying out the window. "What a woman!" gasps an exhausted Leo.
5. If you're not already a member of the Bob Wills Discussion Group, check this out.
6. Not to mention Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys.
7. Wills admitted he didn't have exact numbers, but insisted that, though not a model of stability, he'd had more horses than wives.
8. The disc also contains three bonus shorts, and they're all bad too!
9. Ginger also has several serious catfights in the beginning of the film, and we definitely see more leg than in the pictures she did with Fred. We also see Nigel Bruce ("Dr. Watson" in the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series) kissing Ginger's foot.
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