The real significance of this short subject, however, lies in a musical number that is plopped in partway through. Three girls costumed as alpine milkmaids swing into "Harlem Yodel," eventually joined by a jazz band. The band is played by The Cats and the Fiddle, a novelty group of the time, while the milkmaids are portrayed by the Dandridge Sisters, including 15-year-old future sensation Dorothy Dandridge. She is flanked by her real-life sister Vivian and their friend and classmate Etta Jones, who officially made up the third "sister" in the singing act.
The three girls had originally started singing for fun, but when their parents realized how good they were, they were groomed into a more polished act. They took singing and dancing lessons, entered amateur contests, and built themselves up. Finally, they got a Hollywood break with an appearance in Paramount's The Big Broadcast of 1936, which sported the likes of Bing Crosby, Ethel Merman, the Nicholas Brothers, and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, with whom the Dandridge Sisters performed.
Over the next few years, they appeared in several more shorts and features, including the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races (1937) and the Dick Powell comedy Going Places (1938). Snow Gets in Your Eyes was shot in February 1938 and released that May. By the end of the summer, the Dandridge Sisters would be performing regularly at New York's famed Cotton Club, alongside Cab Calloway.
"Harlem Yodel" was arranged by Phil Moore, who can be glimpsed in the background playing the piano. A decade later he helped Dorothy Dandridge, then a struggling single mother of a mentally disabled child, get her career back on track with a series of smash nightclub performances. Moore was also an unsung creative force of 1930s-1950s Hollywood, not just as a musician and as an arranger of numerous scores (almost all uncredited because of his race), but as a performance coach for actors and singers at MGM and Paramount.
Snow Gets in Your Eyes was the second directing job for 27-year-old Will Jason, though he'd been working in the movie industry since age 13. An accomplished songwriter, he would become best known for light comedies and musicals as he went on to direct and produce many more shorts, B features and television.
Actress Virginia Grey, then 20, had only just begun receiving credited parts as an adult (she had started in the business as a 10-year-old). Never a star, she nonetheless worked on over 100 movies into the 1970s. At her height, she was cast as the second lead opposite the likes of Joan Crawford, Susan Hayward and Betty Grable. She later said: ''I consider myself a professional who acts--not to express my soul or elevate the cinema, but to entertain and get paid for it."
By Jeremy Arnold
SOURCES:
Donald Bogle, Dorothy Dandridge
Wheeler W. Dixon, The "B" Directors: A Biographical Directory
Mel Gussow, "Virginia Grey, a Veteran Of 100 Films, Dies at 87." The New York Times, 8/6/04
