Service with a Smile

Someone was foolish enough to give Leon Erroll technicolor and a decent budget, so he spent it. You don't see chorines wearing purple any more, and more's the pity, say I. Erroll milks the gags for all they are worth.

With Broadway comedian Leon Erroll having found a tidy following in a series of minor Warner Brothers' comedies on the West Coast, Vitaphone used him in several fast filler items like this lavishly produced short.

A great experiment in early three strip Technicolor (seldom have the colors lept off the screen in this kind of rich brilliance even in feature films), the only serious weakness in SERVICE WITH A SMILE is the "book" (a little morality tale/joke on the desirability of honesty in dealing with insurance companies). If stage musicals of the twenties and early thirties were *really* this vacuous - as popular imagination and Hollywood "history" would have it - we'd never have remembered any of them.

The unexpected strength in the film however (aside from Errol himself - and he doesn't get to shine with his usual bluster and physical comedy) is the delightfully accessible music of Cliff Hess. It's a minor Hollywood tragedy that Hess didn't follow others who found success on the wrong coast back to stage success in the East. He might be better remembered today (or remembered at all).

Hess had cut his teeth (and apparently learned a good deal about melody and lyrics) as a musical secretary to Irving Berlin from 1913 to 1918 and even served a term as chorus member in Berlin's Broadway cast of STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN in 1915! Hess's work on SERVICE WITH A SMILE is a consistently tuneful delight, well delivered by a cast that frequently has more enthusiasm than precision - but that seemed a hallmark of twenties and thirties choreography judging from earlier filmed stage musicals from the Marx Brothers' (and Irving Berlin's) COCOANUTS to Burt Lahr's (and Rodgers' and Hart's) HEADS UP!. Well worth a look and listen, but don't expect a lost masterpiece; just a bit of very enjoyable fluff.

Service with a Smile (1934)

*** (out of 4)

Leon Errol plays a gas station owner who gets a call in the middle of the night saying his piece of junk station has blown up. Knowing he's going to get the insurance money, he decides to make his status out to be something much better than it actually was. Errol tells a story about a neon lights station being ran by chorus girls. SERVICE WITH A SMILE comes from Vitaphone, features a familiar comic and best of all is in glorious 3-strip Technicolor. There's no question about it but the Technicolor is the reason to check out this two-reeler. Those familiar with these early color films know that the quality of the color is usually very high as long as the materials are good and thankfully they're terrific here. Just check out the sequence in the bedroom with Errol gets the news. The color on his pajamas just jumps right off the screen as do the beautiful looking blankets on the bed. The colors of the room just leap right out at you and this is especially true once we get to the fantasy sequence with all the red neon and the girls. The music numbers are also fairly good and a lot of credit goes to the set designer for making everything look so good. Errol gets a few funny lines here but mostly he's just introducing the music numbers and the girls but hey, there's nothing wrong with that!

"Service with a Smile" (1934) is a deluxe Vitaphone mini-musical filmed in the early 3-strip Technicolor process, and the brilliant colours in this short film are incredible! (Although some of the male performers look ridiculous in bright green shirts that are nearly phosphorescent.) The tunes are catchy, the lyrics are well above average, and the chorus girls are gorgeous. If you've ever wanted to see a line of chorus girls tap-dancing in riding boots and jodhpurs, this movie's your big chance.

Australian-born musical-comedy star Leon Errol (a headliner in the Ziegfeld Follies) plays Walter Webb, the owner of a small service garage with only one petrol pump. At 4 a.m., he's home in bed when one of his employees rings him up, telling him the service garage was destroyed in a fire. Fortunately, Webb has insurance. Now he hatches a plan: Webb will tell the insurance adjuster that his cheapjack little filling station was actually a super-colossal extravaganza business with hundreds of employees. The insurance company will have to replace the big fancy business which Webb CLAIMS he lost, not the small-time concern that he actually insured. In the insurance agent's office, Webb starts to describe his jumbo-sized filling station.

Now, thanks to some movie-musical magic, we SEE the gas station as Webb is describing it. He's got dozens of beautiful girls (in skimpy boiler suits) working as garage mechanics, gas jockeys, and waitresses. They sell gasoline for nine cents a half-gallon, and they transform a customer's beat-up jalopy into a gorgeous motorcar for $1.65, with a free lunch thrown in. There's even a 19-hole golf course behind the lube rack. Meanwhile, the girls have plenty of time for singing and dancing. If a guy wants a date, Webb's chauffeur will drive out to meet him with a lorry-load of girls dressed like the Stepford Wives, and you can have your pick. Yes, this is a FULL-service garage.

There are some very funny gags. One motorist is parking with his girlfriend, until a motorcycle cop comes along and persuades the girl to join him on his motorcycle. No problem; the motorist opens the boot of his car and takes out another girl! "I always carry a spare," he says.

SPOILER COMING. After Webb describes the super-colossal gas station he SAYS he owned, the insurance adjuster insists on inspecting the wreckage of the fire. Webb happily drives him out there ... and discovers that his service station (in its original grotty state) is intact. The phone call was an April Fool joke ... and now Webb is guilty of filing a false insurance claim. Oo-er!

"Service with a Smile" is a delight from start to finish. I have only one complaint. Leon Errol was famous for doing a hilarious rubber-legged eccentric comedy dance: he did it in the Ziegfeld Follies and in several of his "Mexican Spitfire" films with Lupe Velez. Unfortunately, Leon Errol DOESN'T sing or dance in "Service with a Smile" ... which is a shame, because his comedy dancing would fit right into the gorgeous musical numbers you'll see here. Still, I'll rate "Service with a Smile" 10 points out of 10. They don't make 'em like this any more. Do whatever it takes to see this knockout mini-musical.

While a variety of color processes were developed before this film came out in 1934, they were either experimental and never really used in commercial films or they were primitive two-color processes. The two-color process made for a color-ish film. Since the color strips were orange-red and green-blue, the color tended to be mostly tones of greens and oranges...and many colors in the spectrum simply looked orange or green (or some shades similar to this). However, "Service With a Smile" is a true color film...using the newly developed Three-Color Technicolor...a color process licensed to only a few studios such as Disney (and no other full color cartoons could me made until this contract expired) as well as Warner Brothers/Vitaphone. While the colors are very intense and a tad garish, it does look color and has purples, yellows and other colors not possible with previous processes employed on commercial films. I think much of the garishness is actually NOT the fault of the film but the color choices--and the guy who developed this color process made the studios agree to employ his ex-wife as a color consultant...and she may well be the reason the colors are so intense.

As for the film, Leon Errol stars as Walter Webb, a guy who owns a service station. It soon burns down and when Errol is asked by his insurance adjuster to describe his old business, he describes it in insanely lavish terms--and you see a HUGE ultra-modern station filled with gorgeous ladies in beautiful uniforms attending to customers. It's ludicrously fancy and deluxe! The overall effect is silly but also mesmerizing due to the color!

This is a very important movie historically. While the studio's first Three-Color film, "La Cucharacha" came out first, this short has the distinction of being the second film using this process from Warner. It's also is more entertaining and looks a bit nicer than "La Cucharacha". Well worth seeing...especially for some of the nutty production numbers...especially the eye-popping one near the end with the ladies in bathing suits dancing about the Walter Webb sign!