It's a Great Life

The Warner Archives got this one right. The last time this film was shown in its entirety on TCM back in the 1990's, the color finale was still lost. After it was found, the restored film was never shown on TCM to my knowledge, but the discovered color finale was often shown on Turner Classic Movies under its "One Reel Wonder" series between films. The Warner Archives DVD-R release restores the color finale to the film itself, so we get to see it as it was supposed to be seen and was seen in 1929.

The story involves sisters Babe and Casey Hogan, (Vivian and Rosetta Duncan), salesgirls at a department store, which is ruled somewhat like a banana republic in that store employees are required to assemble and sing the store song each morning. The girls have been orphaned since Babe was a child, and Casey is the older sister. Thus Casey is accustomed to looking after sister Babe and deflecting the advances of Jimmy Dean (Lawrence Grey), who has a strong romantic interest in younger sister Babe. This was the Duncan Sisters' only sound film, and they come across oddly on camera. Vivien is somewhat like a husky Anita Page, and Rosetta reminds me in voice and actions of Lucille Ball, although Rosetta does not have Lucy's delicacy of features.

Pieces of this story looks like it inspired Singing in the Rain. For example, there is a show by and for the department store employees about half way into the film that includes a fashion show. A song is sung by a male tenor as each girl steps down a staircase to present the latest in flapper fashions - much like the Beautiful Girl number in Singin in the Rain. Also, Babe gets deathly ill towards the end of the film and goes unconscious, allowing a couple of over the top musical numbers that are the highlight of the movie - "The Hoosier Hop" and the recently found finale "Sailing on a Sunbeam". These numbers are supposed to be Babe's hallucinations as she lies unconscious. These numbers rather reminded me of the long "Broadway Melody" number in Singin in the Rain, with its wild colors and big sets in that film within a film.

Recommended for those who enjoy the early sound films.

This is one of the few movies I've had a hard time sitting through to the end. One might guess that the title was an intentional effort by MGM to draw an audience in the dark times of the Great Depression that had just begun. The film came out less than six weeks after the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929. Otherwise, the title, "It's a Great Life," is meaningless with the story.

This is one of the first MGM sound pictures, and it even has a couple of short scenes at the end that are in color. Those are of staged dance and costume extravaganzas. But, at best, they are B-level talent and entertainment. The film's opening scene is a real hoot and the only real comedy in it. What this movie is otherwise, is a scripted play that serves to knit together a few skits and song and dance routines of the Duncan Sisters, Rosetta and Vivian. They were a vaudeville team for some time, and Vivian wrote some of the songs for their act. They had played the title roles in a Broadway musical, "Topsy and Eva," that ran just over four months from late December 1924 to early May, 1925. Those were black face roles of the two characters from "Uncle Tom's Cabin," in a musical play written as a sequel to the Harriet Beecher Stowe story.

MGM was casting about looking for the talent that would soon make it the master and premier studio of cinema musicals. But this film clearly is third-tier for entertainment. The singing would hardly qualify for professional anywhere. The hoofing of the sisters amounts to nothing more than some synchronized steps and movements. And their comedy is lame. It may have been good enough for the smaller venues of the huge vaudeville circuit of the late 19th and very early 20th centuries. In that time, every town big enough to have a theater and people hungry for entertainment had vaudeville.

Some of the early 1929-1930 films with vaudeville-like revue formats had very talented entertainers, some of whom went on to have successful careers in cinema. But, others had people with lesser talents who wouldn't make the cut. This movie is in that group. Besides the lesser music and dance talent, the three leads are very hammy throughout. And the screenplay is sappy melodrama and overacting in the frequent epithets of disgust between Jimmy and Casey.

So, it It should come as no surprise that this was the only sound picture and last of three total feature films that the Duncan Sisters made. But for one more short they made together seven years later, they were finished in films. It is interesting, though, that most of the rest of the staff, including the bit players here, had long careers in film. Jed Prouty who plays David Parker would have 149 credits in films and then television into the 1950s. Benny Rubin who plays the Hogan Sisters' agent, Benny Friedman, acted in cinema and TV for more than six decades, and has 212 credits. Others have more.

One doubts that many people today would find this film entertaining. Most would probably give up on it by halfway through. I'm something of a cinephile who's interested in all aspects of the cinema and its origins and performers. Some others with similar interests, or students studying cinema may appreciate this film for those purposes. But I doubt that there will be many more to join the few who have commented positively on this film to this time. Most may even find my four stars a stretch. But the opening scene is worth one all by itself, and the color sequence toward the end with the choreography and unusual sliding scene earn it one more of the four stars I give it.

Here's an example in the dialog where the vaudevillian hamminess blots out the slight humor. Babe Hogan, "Jimmy, Jimmy, were...were you really thinking of me when you wrote that?" Jimmy Dean, "Sure I was. Every great composer has a girl who inspires his masterpieces."

IT'S A GREAT LIFE is a one-of-a-kind comedy-musical-melodrama starring the legendary The Duncan Sisters, one of the few vaudeville headlining acts to be given a chance at major film stardom. MGM appears to have spared no expense at attempting to showcase the Duncans to best advantage and while the end result unfortunately did not result in screen stardom for the gals (the Duncans never again appeared in a feature film although they would make a musical two-reeler and several appearances as themselves in short films over the next decade) they are utterly charming though surely more than a little eccentric to modern viewers.

Sisters Casey (Rosetta Duncan) and Babe Hogan (Vivian Duncan) work at a major department store. Babe is sweet on the store's pianist for the sheet music department, James Dean (!!!) (played by Lawrence Gray). For reasons never quite clear, Casey hates him with a passion and constantly makes him the butt of her humor. Ill-humored Casey is a sarcastic cutup and ultimately her mockery of the store's "theme song" during a store musical production ends up getting all of the trio fired. Fortunately, a pal of Jimmy's, a talent agent, has seen the act and launches them on a successful career as vaudeville performers but the fighting between Casey and Jimmy only escalates and when Babe and Casey sneak off and get married, an infuriated Casey breaks up the act leading all of them down the path of failure.

Rosetta Duncan is a riot as the sassy older sister, she's a fantastic comedienne and her mocking, disrespectful humor seems astonishingly contemporary today even while the movie itself creaks like many early talkies. She also is a delight with a comic song. The talents of the (considerably) prettier Vivian Duncan are more modest although she is an endearing presence and sings lovely harmony with her sister. The sisters, both into their thirties at the time, are quite effective as their "little girl" personas in several song numbers as they no doubt were even more so on the stage at the time.

The movie seems a bit long with it's slender plot and small speaking cast and the turn toward melodrama was at least for modern audiences was a mistake, but the movie has still has much to recommend it with it's vivid glimpse at 1920's New York, a "flapper" fashion show, appealing two-strip Technicolor sequences, quite good songs and numbers and above all the two and only Duncan Sisters. As Babe Hogan would put it, this movie is quite "sweet".

Rosetta and Vivian Duncan have always done things together. When Rosetta gets fired for being a little free in her vocabulary, Vivian quits. Fortunately, agent Benny Rubin has seen their act at the company show. Along with Lawrence Grey at the piano, they are a hit in vaudeville. But Rosetta thinks it's all them, so Grey gets downgraded... until Vivian marries him. That breaks up the act, and neither is particularly good without the other.

The Duncan Sisters had commitments that made them unavailable for THE BROADWAY MELODY, so MGM made this diagetic musical for them You can see what made them a starring pair in live performances in their performance of "I'm Following You". There are also a couple of two-strip Technicolor sequences for the big production numbers. They definitely were crowd pleasers, but given the advances made in movie musicals over the years, they haven't aged particularly. Even so, it's a decent if unremarkable movie, and excellent for 1929. With Jed Prouty, Oscar Apfel and, I am told, Ann Dvorak in the chorus.

A sister act finds IT'S A GREAT LIFE in show business as long as they can stick together.

MGM crafted this confection as a showcase for the talents of the Duncan Sisters, of Vaudeville & Broadway fame, and as such it's an interesting relic of its era. The sound quality is remarkably good, considering its age, one of the songs is quite good, and the antique color, which highlights a couple of stage sequences, is very pleasing to the eye. As a vehicle for screen stardom, however, the film proved a disappointment. The Sisters' movie career was over almost before if could get started.

Rosetta (1900-1959) and Vivian (1902-1986) do quite well as siblings who rise from performing in retail follies to the Vaudeville stage. Vivian, the pretty one, gets most of the film's few romantic moments, but Rosetta, who was an true clown able to do hilarious things with her face & body, steals the picture. When allowed to be silly she is enormous fun to watch. The script, unfortunately, keeps her character in a bad temper for much of the time, eventually wearying the viewer with her interminable fuming. She's so much more enjoyable when in a jolly mood, especially when teamed with sister Vivian. Their lovely duet, "I'm Following You," is a genuine heartwarmer.

Lawrence Gray, who had made a name for himself in comic Silent film roles, makes the most of his somewhat thankless part as the piano player who captures Vivian's heart. Jed Prouty, as the department store manager who quietly loves Rosetta, and Benny Rubin, playing a Vaudeville booking agent, both do well with their small roles.

The opening scene, with the Sisters madly dashing down the street to work, hotly pursued by a cop and a mob of excited New Yorkers, is one of the movie's best and gets the proceedings off to a frenzied start.