Dance Hall

Likeable little b-movie featuring a young Arthur 'Dagwood' Lake as a young man whose gawky mannerisms vanish when he's on the floor of his local dance hall. His partner of choice is Olive Borden, but she only has eyes for flashy, two-timing pilot Ralph Emerson. Production values are low, and the sound is frequently out of synch, but that somehow adds to its homely charm.

"Dance Hall" simply has the worst match of sound to picture I've ever seen in any era. There are all kinds of speculation here as to why it is so off, but speculate no more. The solution is simply that whomever cut this picture used the wrong takes of soundtrack to go with the visual. This is confirmed by the scene where Arthur Lake, as Tommy, dances with his mother, played by Margaret Seddon; as they dance, Lake speaks a line which goes unheard, followed by a line spoken by Seddon in response which falls roughly in the right place. The editor picked a visual take where Lake spoke the line and matched it to one where he didn't, however, Seddon did not forget her line like Lake did, and it comes in nearly where it should. And scenes like this abound in "Dance Hall;" even sequences that are matched to correct takes are a little off in the synchronization department. From this standpoint alone, "Dance Hall" is a train wreck.

Someone stated that you could re-synchronize it, but it wouldn't be worth it. Actually, even if you worked with a set of surviving discs, you still couldn't sync it properly because they used the wrong takes; the audio, for the most part, does not fit the action on screen. I still feel a restoration would be worthwhile just to help us understand what the dialog is in the first place. Some scenes are very, very hard to understand, and a lot of the dialog is swallowed up in limiting; the soundtrack is littered with pops and the sounds of splice marks. However, even with an improved soundtrack, it might not improve the picture, at least by much. It's Viña Delmar's first story credit, and not one destined to win her any Oscar nominations, as "The Awful Truth" did. "Dance Hall" is pretty bad in the story sense alone; Tommy and Gracie (Olive Borden) are broke ballroom dancers, and Tommy is pretty keen on Gracie, but her emotional world is thrown into a tailspin when she is wood by no-good jerk-wad pilot Ted (Ralph Emerson). And that short summary almost gives away the whole story.

Arthur Lake -- who plays the whole first scene without his pants [!] --is trapped in the kind of miserable juvenile role that Humphrey Bogart was often saddled with in his days on Broadway. Lake is wasted; as Dagwood Bumstead he was a kind of a comic genius, but here he is trying to play Tommy as a lovable boob and only succeeds at making him a boob. And it is not through inexperience; Lake had already been in dozens of pictures. Olive Borden is lovely as Gracie, but the part -- well -- it's vapid. Redoutable supporting actors Seddon and Joseph Cawthorn play stock characters and seem anxious to move on to the next picture, whatever it is. Visually, the direction, camera-work and cutting is strong for an early talkie; the dance hall set is attractive and authentic, and the dance music is charming and catchy. But the total package plays like a weak comedy that doesn't have any gags in it. Everyone connected with it -- including producer William LeBaron, who ultimately produced such classic comedies as "It's a Gift," "Peach-A-Reno" and took home the Best Picture Oscar for "Cimarron" a couple of years later -- must have been embarrassed beyond description by "Dance Hall."

It is unlikely "Dance Hall" was made as a silent as there are few fades, actors do not "wait" for imagined title cards to pop up, or otherwise stall the action as is sometimes seen in talkies made both ways. If you had the means to fix it, however -- all of the original soundtrack, including the right takes -- you would probably remove the element that is the most interesting thing about "Dance Hall." If you were teaching a film class and wanted to show the students how important sound editors are, and how a bad one could really screw up a picture, then this is the perfect vehicle for that.

I can't bring an expert historian's perspective on 1929's "Dance Hall", but I can speculate some. It must have been among the first batch of talkies produced by RKO, but clearly doesn't have the production values of a "Rio Rita".

In fact, the TCM print demonstrates clear issues with sound and picture sync. It doesn't seem to me that this was ever intended as a silent, nevertheless the entire soundtrack seems to have been dubbed in by the actors after the fact. One could speculate whether this was done because of technical failures or limitations at the time of filming or for budgetary reasons, but it creates a jarring effect that will turn some viewers off immediately. It does seem though, that this could be corrected through restoration work, but who's going to put up the money for something like that?

As for the film itself, it's a fairly paint-by-numbers love triangle set in the world of the dance hall. Arthur Lake seems born to play these naive lovelorn 20-something roles, and while we're supposed to identify with and root for him, it's hard not to also want to slap him upside the head a few times as well, viewing the film through 2013 eyes.

Visually, the film is somewhat ahead of many other 1929 productions in that it keeps its characters moving and mostly avoids the interminable stagy scenes and long pauses characteristic of the period.

It is painfully obvious where the film is going at any given moment, and anyone who's seen just a few movies of this age won't have too much trouble predicting the next scene at any given time. It also has that hallmark of the era, the oddly placed comic relief character, who in this case shows up for his biggest laugh during arguably the dramatic crescendo of the film.

All in all, a middling melodrama that is somewhat more visually interesting than many of its 1929 cohorts, plagued by issues with the sound technology used, which will turn off many but be tolerated by others.

The graceful camera motion, combined with the voices mismatched with mouths confirms the trivia entry to this 1929 RKO talkie: this was shot as a silent and then sound was goat-glanded onto it. Also, Arthur Lake, better known for his role as Dagwood in the "Blondie" movie and TV series for twenty years, is unbearably twitchy in this love triangle set around a dance hall.

Nonetheless, there are some technical issues to this movie that make it important. There is an early example of two people doing ballroom dancing that is shot in a long take to show their movement. Most film historians indicate that this manner of shooting dancing was an innovation for the Astaire-Rogers films about five years after this, yet here it is. Perhaps this was a specialty number, but it points the way. There is also some antediluvian foley work in the home shots, feet clumping along the floor, utensils clattering on dishes and doors latching and unlatching. They are loudly annoying, but definitely added sounds.

However, unless you are afflicted with a technical curiosity in such things, you can skip this one.

In its current form this is a real "Singin in the Rain" experience as the sound wanders in and out of sync for the entire film. However, it must have been released in a suitable format in 1929 - and that's definitely not the TCM print - or else it would not have gotten the good reviews it did which are quoted in a book I read on Olive Borden entitled "Olive Borden: The Life and Films of Hollywood's Joy Girl". If the version shown on TCM had been shown in theaters in 1929 it would have been greeted with boos, hisses, eggs, tomatoes, and any other groceries available to the audience. Another reviewer's comments on the TCM print being a probable merging of the sound on disc with just the film in a careless manner is the best explanation I've heard so far.

However, I was grateful to see this in any form and applaud TCM for at least showing what they had available. It's an interesting look into film and life as it stood at the end of the roaring twenties. The plot is simple and this is absolutely not a musical. It is simply the story of shipping clerk Tommy Flynn (Arthur Lake) who thinks his love for dance hall hostess Gracie Nolan (Olive Borden) is reciprocated. He finds out otherwise when he sees Gracie in the arms of stunt pilot Ted Smith (Ralph Emerson).

Arthur Lake is very much like a Mickey Rooney for the roaring twenties - an optimistic young man of the pre-Depression years. There are some precode elements in this film which is really just a light romantic fluff piece. At one point we see Ted in his apartment in his robe with dance hall girl Bee in her nightgown on his lap. You'll have to look fast to see the other precode element - girls waltzing together towards the end of the movie. Then there is the whole element of the "stunt pilot" - the bigger than life pioneers and heroes of the 1920's. Also note the difference between the haves and have-nots right before the Depression. Tommy and his mother badly need the six dollars a week rent they get from a boarder in order to make ends meet, yet salaries for professional dancers are quoted at two hundred dollars a week! So you get the feeling that work and extra hours are plentiful, but they just don't pay very well for the average worker. This is the reason to watch such a film - not the pedestrian plot, but the little things that tell you about a bygone era.

Honorable mention among the cast - Lee Moran as the soda jerk at the dance hall and the Flynn's boarder that has a humorous Ned Sparks way about him. Unfortunately for him, the real Ned Sparks would soon be signed by RKO and that would be the end of Lee Moran. Margaret Seddon, as Tommy's mother, was 57 when she made this film and would live to be 95, outliving leading lady Olive Borden by 20 years even though Olive was 34 years her junior. Then there is Joseph Cawthorne as the crusty but sympathetic dance hall owner who did numerous comedy supporting roles for RKO in the early talkie years, usually as a Scandinavian that butchers his sentences without mercy.

And finally there is one big decision as to costume design that has me stumped. Why are both Olive Borden and Joseph Cawthorne wearing obvious cheap blonde wigs? A mystery for the ages. Recommended for the film history buff only.