September 7 & 21 |31 Shorts, 8 Features, 1 Documentary
If you’ve never been introduced to this unique film entertainment of the World War II years, you’re in for a treat. The Soundies, as they were known, were short movies of only a few minutes, the length of a single song, made to be viewed on self-contained, coin-operated machines called Panorams (aka movie jukeboxes) installed in nightclubs, bars, restaurants and other public places. The 16mm shorts were spliced together in reels holding up to eight of them and screened via rear projection.
Produced by a number of companies, including one founded by FDR’s son James, between 1940 and 1946, they’re most often talked about today as the precursor to the music videos of the 1980s and later. But their greatest historical value lies in their preservation of a wide range of musical styles performed by some of the most noteworthy musicians, bands and composers of the day, as well as a number of early performances by people who went on to become stars of stage and screen. Perhaps most important, however, is the record they left of African American artists, many of whom rarely got widespread exposure in feature films. An excellent in-depth study of this aspect can be found in the book “Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time” by Susan Delson, who joins TCM to co-host part of this special programming.
Not that the Soundies were any more integrated than mainstream movies of the time. Catalogs separated their listings of white and black performers to accommodate segregated venues, and most of the films were made by white men. One notable exception highlighted by New York Times’ critic Manohla Dargis was famed black football Hall of Famer Fritz Pollard. In 1942, Pollard signed with the Mills Novelty Company, manufacturer of the Panorams, to manage its New York production office. According to Pollard’s biographer John M. Carroll, musicians rehearsed in Harlem at his Suntan Studios and the numbers were shot on a sound stage in the Bronx.
For the best overview, check out the 2007 documentary that bookends TCM’s two-night programming, Soundies: A Musical History (2007). First shown on PBS, the film is hosted by singer and pianist Michael Feinstein, who brings his vast knowledge of American pop music history to the story of this fleeting phenomenon.
TCM breaks roughly ten hours of programming on each night of this showcase into segments that feature particular performers, styles and genres, interspersed with related feature films that amplify both the background and influence of the tuneful shorts.
Before They Were Stars:
Cow Cow Boogie (1942) features 20-year-old Dorothy Dandridge, years before becoming the first African American nominated for Best Actress (Carmen Jones, 1954), strutting her way through this Western boogie classic in cowgirl costume, backed by saloon girl dancers and comic actor Dudley Dickerson, from the all-Black cast of The Green Pastures (1936).
Mexican-born Ricardo Montalban made his film debut in Soundies, often as an extra or chorus member. In He’s a Latin from Staten Island (1941), he stars as a guitar-strumming gigolo, with an off-screen vocal by Gus Van.
Still billed with his first name Walter, Liberace tears his way through a popular tune from his nightclub act, Tiger Rag (1943), without benefit of candelabra but with two lovelies swaying rather perfunctorily beside his trademark white piano.
Caught in a love triangle, Cyd Charisse dances and sings (dubbed, no doubt, as she was throughout her career) through This Love of Mine (1942) accompanied by Stan Kenton and His Orchestra.
Doris Day was seven years away from her feature film debut and still the singer for Les Brown and His Orchestra when she recorded My Lost Horizon (1941).
The segment concludes with Day’s debut in the musical Romance on the High Seas (1948) as a nightclub singer posing as a society woman on an ocean voyage. The picture was directed by Michael Curtiz, with Busby Berkeley handling the musical numbers, including Day introducing one of her signature songs, “It’s Magic.”
Battle of the Band Leaders, Part One:
The first part of this showcase of top band leaders of their day includes Louis Armstrong (Swingin’ on Nothin’, 1942), Johnny Long (Swingin’ at the Séance, 1941) and Stan Kenton and His Orchestra in a number obviously inspired by the Soundies movie jukebox machines (Jammin’ in the Panoram, 1942). There are also two definitive performances. Cab Calloway recreates his greatest hit, Minnie the Moocher (1942), first recorded in 1931 and the first single by an African American artist to sell a million copies. Influential drummer and composer Gene Krupa leads his band through a rare integrated Soundie, Let Me Off Uptown (1942), featuring jazz greats singer Anita O’Day and trumpet player Roy Eldridge.
They may be called the Gene Morrison Orchestra on screen, but there’s no mistaking Glenn Miller and his band performing the Oscar-nominated hit “I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo” in Orchestra Wives (1942). A group of traveling musicians’ wives try to hold their marriages together in this feature-length musical showcasing such other Miller classics as “Chattanooga Choo Choo” and “Moonlight Serenade.” The cast includes Cesar Romero, the ill-fated Carole Landis, a young Jackie Gleason and the peerless dance team the Nicholas Brothers.
Country Classics:
The Soundies were meant to attract a range of audiences with diverse tastes, and certainly country-western music had a high appeal, even if the musical shorts often tended to be more pop oriented and didn’t always feature the great country performers of the time. Dick Thomas performs Back in the Saddle Again (1942) instead of the man who made it a hit, “singing cowboy” Gene Autry, but there’s yodeling, cowgirls in short skirts, a comic rocking horse rider and other Western stereotypes on view. Vocalist Phyllis Kenny and Austrian-born comic actor Lew Hearn, better known for his stage roles, perform the classic Deep in the Heart of Texas (1942). But bona fide country star Merle Travis shows up in two shorts performing his hits Why Did I Fall for Abner? (1945) and No Vacancy (1946).
The evening’s program also presents a rarity worth catching. In the all-Black Along the Navajo Trail (1945), the blues group Johnny Moore’s 3 Blazers was pressed into service for a boogie-inflected version of the title tune from a Roy Rogers movie released the same year. The song is sung by John “Shadrach” Horace, but that’s future Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Charles Brown at the piano.
The accompanying feature films focus on two country music legends. Elvis Presley was considered for the lead in Your Cheatin’ Heart (1964), a fictionalized biography of the great Hank Williams, who died tragically in 1953. Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, nixed that idea but introduced his friend, actor George Hamilton, to Williams’ widow, who lobbied producer Sam Katzman on the young star’s behalf. Hamilton is dubbed by Hank Williams, Jr. on about a dozen of his father’s classic tunes.
Willie Nelson plays a singer struggling on the road and caught in a love triangle with Dyan Cannon and Amy Irving in Honeysuckle Rose (1980), a loose remake of the romantic drama Intermezzo (1939), which introduced Ingrid Bergman to American audiences. Nelson sings several his self-composed songs, including the Oscar-nominated hit that has become his theme, “On the Road Again.” Cannon and Irving did their own singing on few numbers.
Swing Music and Dance:
In the war years, swing was the thing, and the Soundies kept pace with the public taste. Many of the swing shorts put African American artists in the forefront.
When veteran Paramount executive Jack Barry assumed the presidency of the newly created Mills Novelty Company, he initiated production of a string of Soundies featuring Black performers, starting with Swing for Sale (1941) featuring the gospel-pop group The Charioteers.
Jazz legend Duke Ellington and His Orchestra are represented by two shorts in this segment. Hot Chocolate (aka “Cottontail”, 1941) showcases the astounding dancers of Arthur White’s Lindy Hoppers and Jitterbugs, most likely best known from their unforgettable routine in the feature Hellzapoppin’ (1941). Ellington’s hepcat slang song Bli-Blip (1942) is sung and danced with great humor and energy by Paul White and Marie Bryant. White also appeared in a Soundie with Dorothy Dandridge, Zoot Suit (1942).
Singing piano player Johnny Taylor instructs a group of revelers how to duck out of a boring rent party in Good Nite All (1943), while a couple of Zoot Suiters show off their dance moves and hep outfits in Jordan Jive (1944) starring jazz saxophonist-composer Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five. Jordan was known as the “The King of the Jukebox” and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 as an important early influence.
The King’s Men are the only white performers in this segment of the programming. They play and sing the novelty tune The Chool Song (1942) in an 18th century Versailles setting with longtime dance partners Dean Collins and Jewel McGowan, considered the best female Lindy Hop dancer of all time, known for her hip swivels.
The segment’s feature film post-dates the heyday of the Soundies. The all-Black Reet, Petite, and Gone (1947) with jazz great Louis Jordan in a dual role as a wealthy, dying musical star and his son, leader of a swing band. The picture was the debut feature by William Forest Crouch, producer and director of many musical shorts. Jordan performs a dozen or so songs. A few of these are sung by June Richmond, considered the first African American jazz singer to appear regularly with a white band (Jimmy Dorsey’s orchestra), and the glamorous Pat Rainey, both of whom left the U.S. to continue their careers in Europe.
Battle of the Band Leaders, Part Two:
The second part of the Big Band Soundies runs the gamut from Duke Ellington (Jam Session, 1942) to Lawrence Welk (Doin’ You Good, 1945). One of the most popular acts of the period, Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra, with vocalist Helen O’Connell, perform their 1941 hit Au Reet (1943). Count Basie and his Orchestra play one of the greatest scat songs, Air Mail Special (1941), later made famous by the greatest scat singer, Ella Fitzgerald, most notably in her 1957 Newport Jazz Festival performance. Lesser known band leader Larry Clinton covers Dipsy Doodle (1943), the number he wrote as composer and arranger for Tommy Dorsey, who made a hit recording of it in 1937.
Vincente Minnelli made his directing debut with Cabin in the Sky (1943) with an all-star Black cast including Ethel Waters, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Lena Horne, Rex Ingram, Butterfly McQueen (Prissy in Gone With the Wind, 1939) and dancer John W. Bubbles. The Duke Ellington Orchestra turns up for two numbers, “Going Up” (written by Ellington) and “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be” by his son and frequent collaborator Mercer Ellington. Louis Armstrong is credited in the cast but has little to do after his number “Ain’t It the Truth” was edited out of the release print. Lena Horne also had her version of the song left on the cutting room floor when producers decided having a Black woman sing while taking a bubble bath would be just too much for moral decency.
Joining the War Effort:
The Soundies took note of the momentousness of their times but did their best to boost morale with many shorts focused on the war. Doris Day, fronting Les Brown and His Orchestra, returns in uniform to ask Is It Love or Is It Conscription? (1941), a commentary on the run of hasty marriages as men were drafted into service. Louis Jordan also dons a uniform for G.I. Jive (1944), which reached number one twice that year with recordings by Jordan and the song’s composer, Johnny Mercer. Love’s Gonna Be Rationed (1943) cautions viewers, with tongue in cheek, that romance would soon be parceled out like gas and auto tires. A foursome billed as the Pretty Priorities perform a rather racy strip tease as they patriotically rid themselves of luxuries like girdles and hosiery on behalf of the war effort in Take It Off (1942). One of the many Soundies produced by William Forest Crouch, When Hitler Kicks the Bucket (1943), has singer Toni Lane gleefully anticipating the demise of the Nazi leader.
In addition to another screening of the documentary Soundies: A Musical History, TCM’s tribute concludes with two feature films built around many of the period’s biggest stars performing numbers for the entertainment of soldiers and those on the homefront.
Hollywood Canteen (1944) celebrates the famous Los Angeles club where G.I.s could get a meal; take a spin around the dance floor with the likes of Joan Crawford (at least on screen); meet movie stars like Paul Henreid, Ida Lupino and Canteen founders Bette Davis and John Garfield; and enjoy musical numbers by the Andrews Sisters, Roy Rogers, Eddie Cantor and others.
Thousands Cheer (1943) casts Gene Kelly and Kathryn Grayson as wartime lovers and features a wealth of musical numbers by Judy Garland, June Allyson, Lena Horne and Eleanor Powell. Lucille Ball, Frank Morgan (The Wizard of Oz himself), Donna Reed, Mary Astor and Red Skelton also appear. The writers of this patriotic morale booster, Paul Jarrico and Richard Collins, were later blacklisted for their supposed “un-American activities.”
