A Modern Cinderella

For me, the only strong point of the short was watching Brian Donlevy portray a drunk in way over-the-top fashion. He manages to provide the only point of interest in this insufferable take on the Cinderella story.

Vitaphone produced some really dated musical shorts in the '30s and this is certainly one that lacks a decent script. Much of the humor is today regarded as politically incorrect, particularly the overdone Italian accents and the drunken routines that are supposed to be very funny.

The only originality comes in the "mirror" scene with Etting seated before what looks like a huge TV screen (a mirror) gazing at the party and imagining herself as being introduced as a singer.

Her voice is small and tinny (thanks to the bad sound recording of the era), but it's her acting that is really atrocious. She sounds like a Brooklyn dame trying to sound high class and reading her lines with flat delivery. Nothing at all like the woman who would portray her much later on--Doris Day.

So much for Vitaphone and their Ruth Etting shorts. This has got to be one of the worst. The lifeless songs are no help.

I know Buddy Ebsen when I see him dancing. Nobody can dance like that except Buddy. I don't know who his partner was, but, she was great herself. This duo dance routine in this "A Modern Cinderella" IS the highlight of this whole Vitaphone Short.

I tried to find a reference to Buddy Ebsen in this short but he was not mentioned anywhere...... But... Now you know!

The chance to see Ruth Etting one of the great singers of the 20s and 30s who did not make too many films is not to be passed up. Even in a short subject like A Modern Cinderella and I have to say that Ms. Etting's acting was not as good as her singing.

Ruth plays the daughter of an Italian tailor played by Adrian Rosley who makes Chico Marx's Italian look like a Renaissance Prince. He asks his daughter to rush deliver a gown over to a swank party.

When she models the gown, she gets invited to the party by the chauffeur a most tipsy Brian Donlevy. Where she delivers a couple of songs in good Ruth Etting style.

Etting never did really make it in Hollywood. Her life turned out to be a great subject for a great film where Doris Day played her. Best you see her in the Eddie Cantor classic Roman Scandals where she has a big Sam Goldwyn/Busby Berkeley production number No More Love.

Ruth Etting works in her father's costume shop. When she delivers a dress to a customer, the customer rejects it; Miss Eating models it to show it's nice and sings one of her torch ballads.

Miss Etting made several assault on the movies over the years, mostly in shorts subjects. Somehow, despite her undeniable talent and ability to sell a sad song, or indeed any song, none of them took. Whatever it was that made her a top Broadway star did not transfer over to the screen. It's one of those mysteries that make show business such a puzzlement to insiders and outsiders.

In any case, this is a good short subject, not only because of Miss Etting's singing, but because of a nifty two-act dancing to "Dinah."

It's easy to agree with the other reviewers that Etting wasn't the greatest singer and that this short is sub-par in many ways. Shorts, however, were shown between the main features and Etting was primarily a radio star--perhaps the first woman to fully become a radio-based celebrity. It's hard to know what she really sounded like--the technology of the day doesn't compare to now and if you listen to the spoken dialog it's just about as tinny as the vocals.

But I was very surprised to see the bit of creative film-making in the middle of this short. I'm referring to the scene where Etting is filmed sitting singing into a mirror. We see her sing through her reflection. Then, the mirror image changes and the frame around the mirror becomes a screen into which Etting and the audience can see, as if by remote surveillance video, the other characters going through their motions elsewhere. This was a common understanding at the time of what television would look like when made available. It also pretty well encapsulates Jacques Lacan's notion of the mirror stage--that place where the real and the fantasy bump against each other when desire comes out to play.

Not a great short but always interesting to find hidden gems of cinema making no matter where Hollywood buried them at the time.