A Modern Cinderella

I've seen a number of Ruth Etting shorts and have never really understood what was so great about her. She was a below-par actress and a passable singer. She certainly is not the singer that Doris Day portrays in "Love Me or Leave Me". In this short, she portrays the daughter of an Italian tailor who must deliver a gown to a socialite for a party. At the party, she is asked to sing. This is where we get her two musical numbers. The comedy in this short is mild at best and the supporting players do not add much. Ruth Etting does not give anything to her role; she is not funny and it seems that she is reading her dialog. I suppose her poor acting kept her in shorts and in guest spots in features. The Brooklyn Vitaphone short subject unit was never a great studio for comedy. They tried, but they rarely succeeded. They did not use Bob Hope properly and gave Shemp Howard some very bad material. This is just another in the series of comedy misfires from Vitaphone.

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.

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.

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."

Modern Cinderella, A (1932)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Warner short has Ruth Etting playing a poor shop owner's daughter who is sent to a lavish party so that she can deliver a dress to a rich girl. The stuck up one doesn't like the dress so she has Etting put it on who eventually gets mistaken for "one of them" and is asked to sing. When Etting's name is brought up today it's usually because someone is mentioning Doris Day who played her in the classic LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME. This here was my second or third short with Etting and I'm pretty much in the middle. There's nothing bad about her but then again there's nothing overly great either. She doesn't have the greatest voice in the world but it is a unique one and I did enjoy her big number here. The film is well directed by Mack who keeps everything moving and the 17-minutes really flew by. The supporting cast wasn't overly strong and that includes the comedy relief by the drunks.