Ma's Pride and Joy

Harry Gribbon wants $5000 a week to star in movies for Vince Barnett and his brother, but Aggie Herring's boy, Don Novis, sings in a tenor so high that only dogs can hear him.

Film fans know that the shorts that Bing Crosby (not to be confused with Philippine actor Bingo Crosby) starred in for Mack Sennett helped make him a star. What they may not know is that Sennett hoped lightning would strike again with radio tenor Don Novis, who sings pretty, if you like that sort of music, but needs to be carried by a large cast of comics, including Dorothy Granger and Toby Wing, who gets a couple of lines. Novis had a bit of a movie career, generally as a specialty, and this movie shows why. Gribbon is very funny, though.

"Ma's Pride and Joy" is a short from Mack Sennett that has NOT aged well. Apparently back in the day, Donald Novis was popular on radio, Broadway and made a few films. But today, you'll likely find his very, very high-pitched singing antiquated and even a bit painful to hear!

There isn't a ton of plot to this one. An obnoxious movie star is playing hard to get with the executives of some movie studio. Suddenly, a much more obnoxious woman barges into the office and insists the executives listen to her son sing. For some insane reason, they agree...and Novis 'sings' (if you can call it that)...leaving the obnoxious actor without a contract.

There just isn't a lot of plot to this one. Combining that with the singing, it's simply a difficult to like little film.

Ma's Pride and Joy (1932)

** (out of 4)

Rather static Mack Sennett produced short has Donald Novis playing Danny O'Brien, a young singer whose mother takes him to a talent agent office where she demands that the owners listen to him.

Novis has pretty much been forgotten today but back when this short was produced he was quite big on the radio. As with a lot of Sennett shorts, this one here features very little to no plot and was obviously just made to show off Novis' voice. On a technical level there's certainly nothing impressive about this short as it's filmed rather ugly and the "story" isn't here. As far as Novis voice goes, it's certainly good but I can't say he's any greater than countless others that were featured in these shorts from this era.

This particular Mack Sennett short is in bad need of preservation. As it is a musical short designed to feature the singing talents of Donald Novis you won't get too much listening pleasure from it.

The rather thin plot of this short has Novis accompanied by Oirish mother demanding and getting an audition from a pair of radio producers. Novis gets to sing Sylvia and Charmaine for his audition.

Novis was a popular radio tenor in the 30s, did a few feature films and also was on Broadway. In Jumbo, Rodgers&Hart wrote The Most Beautiful Girl In The World which he introduced.

Novis deserves better than a short with fading sound. You can catch this on YouTube at the moment.