The Mild West

It is the wild wild West. Lulu cheats at cards to lose to Gentleman Joe. He wins her hand in marriage. Some years later, they are old and living wealthy in New York. They are visited by Lulu's rival Baby Doll who hasn't aged a bit. Joe runs off with Baby Doll. Lulu sets about to turn herself younger.

This is a musical short. Lulu seems to be a skinnier version of Mae West. I like the old west. The de-aging story adds a completely different aspect to this short. It turns this into sci-fi. For a short, the story is doing a lot and changing even more. It is almost chaotic. At least, it is different.

Like so many of the Vitaphone shorts, this one features a stage performer famous in her day but today pretty much unknown. This one stars Janet Reade in a short western...more like a movie than a traditional Vitaphone short.

This begins in a wild west saloon. Lulu (who looks very 1930s despite most of the rest looking old west) sings a number. Then, she learns that Gentleman Joe has broken the bank! With nothing else with which to bet, Lulu bets herself...and if he wins, she'll marry him. Then, Joe begins singing about the future as a montage passes to indicate the passage of time. Now it's the present day (1930s) and Lulu and Joe are older...but oddly, Lulu's old rival looks the same as she used to. And soon, the rival runs off with Joe. So, to catch him back, she heads to a beauty salon which claims it can take decades off her! What's next? Does she lose all those years and does she win back that rat, Joe?

This is a mildly enjoyable short--certainly not among the best of Vitaphone but still enjoyable and worth your time if you love these sort of old fashioned short films...and the music is very, very old fashioned.

TCM recently ran this lightly entertaining short. It starts off as a Western and ends up as a just off-Broadway musical. The link is advanced plastic surgery, of all things. Not to be taken seriously, of course, but fun can be had in the right mood.

Janet Reade and Olive Borden trade quips as saloon girls, while the patrons snipe at the piano player, and everyone sings a song or six in this Vitaphone short. The women fight over Paul Keast, a fight that continues over thirty years and roves from the old west to a modern Broadway leg show in a beauty parlor.

A paper-thin and nonsensical plot connects the two eras, and if you don't take any of it seriously, you should enjoy this short, as well as the decent, if totally unremarkable songs, old and new, that are showcased in this one. Miss Reade is an attractive blonde here, with the brassy voice that stage performers cultivated during Musical theater's heyday.

Just caught this Vitaphone Broadway Brevity on TCM. I won't go into a synopsis as many other reviewers here have already done so. I found this pre-code short to be refreshingly entertaining. Something that most of the shorts aired on TCM are not (TCM airs mostly shorts produced after the code was enforced). I highly recommend it!