On with the Show!

Desperate for Broadway, the traveling troupe of The Phantom Sweetheart must always go ON WITH THE SHOW!

Here is another very early talkie musical, full of excitement for the new medium, but bloated by too much talk, unexciting songs sung by the chorus with mostly unintelligible lyrics and an overlong running time. The plot deals with the usual frustrations & jealousies that most backstage musicals seem to find requisite.

The cast includes William Bakewell as the head usher eager to get his sweetheart, box-office girl Sally O'Neill, her chance at the Great White Way. Betty Compson plays the temperamental star and Arthur Lake the whiny young male lead. Louise Fazenda is the company's eccentric comedienne, who is given little to do but laugh at inappropriate moments.

The film does have some compensations. Rubber faced Joe E. Brown is cast as the company's brash comic and, as always, he is funny simply to look at. Best of all, the incomparable Ethel Waters is brought in to sing a couple of songs, including 'Am I Blue?' Miss Waters has no connection with the rest of the story whatsoever, but just enjoying her for a few minutes is pure pleasure.

Early Warner Bros. musical, stagy, slow, and mostly of historical interest. The poor quality film available for viewing doesn't help. It's interesting to see how much the movie musical improved between this movie and, for instance, "42nd Street" (also a Warner Bros production) just a few years later. The dialog portions are very static, presumably due to the requirements of early sound pick up systems. However, the result is to bring the action to a halt. The overacting is almost unintentionally laughable. Betty Compson finally has a decent scene near the end of the movie. Arthur Lake is just plain irritating, and I couldn't even warm up to Joe E. Brown. Some of the singers seems to be recorded live, and others poorly dubbed. By far, the most interesting scenes are Ethel Waters singing "Am I Blue", and the quartet of black tap dancers who are unidentified.

A true backstage musical (like MURDER AT THE VANITIES) that weaves the onstage and backstage action into one plot. ON WITH THE SHOW is a tad creaky but bad sound and hammy performances aside it was a total pleasure.

A fascinating look at what 20s musicals were really like: the stage crammed with performers, long numbers, reprises of the main tunes, etc. The show within a show, THE PHANTOM SWEETHEART is a loony plantation musical that looks like a cheap rip-off of SHOW BOAT but that's of little consequence since the "real story" occurs backstage. It's a plot we've seen before and seemingly borrows from every contemporary musical you ever saw.

But several of the performers are total standouts. Betty Compson plays the temperamental star but has little to do until the last section of the film. She has a great face, a good voice, and for some reason is a fave of mine. She's a good old "broad" with a heart of gold and is excellent in her final scenes. Joe E. Brown is also very good, although I think his eccentric dance was repeated in BRIGHT LIGHTS a few years later. Both have star quality.

Louise Fazenda has an odd role (she laughs) but is always likable. Ethel Waters is terrific singing "Am I Blue?" and "Birmingham Bertha" but is not involved in the backstage plot.

The rest of the cast doesn't come off so well. Arthur Lake is the juvenile lead, William Bakewell and Sally O'Neil are the "innocents," Sam Hardy is the producer, Wheeler Oakman is the nefarious Mr. Wallace, Lee Moran (related to Ray Bolger?) is the stage manager, and the Fairbanks Twins dance and cause trouble.

Compson has a great entrance line when heading onstage someone says something like "there's Nita French!" She turns and says, "In the flesh, baby, in the flesh!" while clutching her shear robe around her......

OK, so it's the old story about what goes on backstage in the production of a Broadway musical----even to the cliché of the star getting sick and the understudy taking her place and becoming a big star. Many critics see this as the inspiration for 42nd STREET, but this film has the period charm that only the transitional talkie musicals could have. Part of it is quite stagebound-----including musical numbers as you probably would have seen them on the Broadway stage in the 1920's, so if you don't care for very early musicals, you'd better pass on this one.

This was the film that introduced the song "Am I Blue" sung by a very young Ethel Waters, and followed by the even better "Birmingham Bertha" with black dancer John Bubbles. You should be warned that there are black dancers in the cast who wear some outrageous politically incorrect costumes---including one number where their costumes have watermelon stripes on them! And seeing Joe E. Brown as a mean comedian who constantly argues with Arthur Lake (better known as Dagwood Bumstead in the BLONDIE Series) will be something of a revelation to his fans. The film was made in the early two-strip Technicolor process, which unfortunately has yet to be found, but is still quite enjoyable in B & W. Remember, although this is a very charming transitional talkie musical, modern audiences will only see it as a horribly dated antique.

When I saw "On With the Show" on Turner Classic Movies, I was very disappointed in the poor quality of the picture and the sound, but was very pleased by some clever dialog, although realizing some of it was not so clever, and I was absolutely in awe of the performance of Betty Compson.

She was not only lovely just to look at, in her big scene near the end, she stole the show.

She was more than charming -- she was adorable.

Joe E. Brown's presence in a movie is usually enough to make me skip it but here he is toned down considerably, is not so silly, and he performs an eccentric dance with a surprising athleticism. I actually liked him in "On With the Show."

Sally O'Neil was surprising. She sounded at first like some precocious child, with little-girlish voice, but when this caterpillar bursts out of her cocoon, she is a star.

One other aspect of this film is almost unique for its time: The cast is integrated. Right there on stage are black dancers with white dancers, although to be accurate there is not interaction between white and black. Still, it was a start.

Ethel Waters made what was apparently her film debut, and surely was an immediate hit since she was already a star in other media.

A 21st century viewer of "On With the Show" must consider context, remember the times in which it was made, during the changeover from silents to talkies, to be able to appreciate it fully.

There were lots of great individual talents involved, and a viewer should try to ignore the poor framing of the scenes and the poor quality of the sound, at least some of which might be because of the age or even generation of the print.

But appreciate the historicity as well as the talent, and you will enjoy "On With the Show" as much as I did.