Shake, Mr. Shakespeare

This absolutely hilarious 20 minute satire on Hollywood adapting Shakespeare to suit its own vaudeville sensibility comes in the form of a dream by a producer while he sleeps at his desk. The books representing complete works of Shakespeare soon see their characters step literally from the pages and argue, sing dance and interact (Henry 5th goes to Rome to see Julius Caesar etc) all to swing music and backstage antic characters overlaying The bard's thesps as written. This is the "SpringTime For Hitler" of 1936. Juliet does a torch song number plaintively bleating from her balcony about "Ro-me-o where's my Ro-me-o" in the Lullabye of Broadway style. As a satire on the illiterate corporate minds who mangle literature and feed it to the masses as showgirl or western or mawkish studio output, Shake Mr Shakespeare is a truly inspired in- house Warner Bros success. My favorite bit? the team of Tapdancing Hamlets, all in tune tapping and swingin away on the headstones in the graveyard. This short is one of the funniest 2 reelers I have ever seen. you can find it on the breathtaking new DVD release for A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.... equally satisfying it its Busby Berkeley meets The Bard depiction of Shakespeare in Hollywood. This DVD has a feast of 1935 WB archive material all produced around the release of their sublime tinsel forest version of MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM. What a great DVD! You can watch every bit of extra material and all of it is good...! And then there is the feature itself. Heaven!

This 1935 short by Warner Brothers is on the 2007 DVD of the studio's 1935 hit film, "A Midsummer Night's Dream." I remember as a kid going to matinée movies, and later as a teen going to early evening showings. The movie theaters then often ran newsreels, cartoons and short featurettes such as this. Since it was made the same time as the Shakespeare film, I would imagine "Shake, Mr. Shakespeare" played around the same time in theaters. But, that was before my time.

This is a snappy little musical film that has various entertainers perform as characters from Shakespeare plays. Thus, we see Hamlet, Juliet, Romeo, Falstaff, Macbeth and others. They emerge in full costume from oversized book props to dance, sing or do their thing.

It's an entertaining little musical comedy that pokes fun at some of the bard's plays and characters, but more so at stage and screen for their renditions of the bard's plays. I doubt that any of the TV movie channels would show these shorts today, so the only way to catch this would be to borrow or buy the Warner Brothers DVD of the 1935 film with the bonus items.