A Grande Atração

GREETINGS & SALUTATIONS! "Swing High," (1930) is about a circus aerialist who fights to keep her lover out of the hands of a scheming woman. It stars Chester Conklin, Stepin Fetchit, Helen Twelvetrees, and Ben Turpin. However, it is Stepin Fetchit who breathes life into this musical. Stepin Fetchit was born Lincoln Theodore Monroe Albert Perry in Key West, Florida sometime between 1892 and 1902; the son of a cigar maker. He left home in 1914 to pursue a show business career, joining the Royal American Shows plantation revues. Years later he is said to have taken his stage name from a Baltimore racehorse that had inspired him to write a routine for himself and his stage partner of the time, Ed Lee. They billed themselves as "Step 'n' Fetchit: Two Dancing Fools from Dixie." After splitting with his partner, Fetchit kept the name for himself as he spent long, arduous years in the vaudeville circuit. He provided comic relief in many films during the Depression years. Respectfully yours, Sarge Booker

A fairly ambitious Pathe musical from 1930, set in a traveling circus of the 1880s, this one's no neglected masterpiece, but it does show how quickly the talkies were learning to tell stories with, and through, song. A barely-singing Helen Twelvetrees is the put-upon heroine, wooed by nice-but-weak Fred Scott, and threatened by an unscrupulous Dorothy Burgess, who played this kind of part over and over, and well. The emphasis is on how the circus is a real community, an extended family, with good guys and bad guys, and on the strong woman/weak man pairing, and Helen's Cap'n Andy-like protector. I'm guessing Pathe had Show Boat in mind quite a lot when they made this. The songs aren't Kern quality, but they're OK, and there's at least a passing relationship between some of them and the plot. It's more than capably directed by Joseph Santley, nicely shot, and has some fun supporting players, including Stepin Fetchit, who's alternately delightful and cringe-inducing. There's an exciting if predictable climax, and Scott, who later became both a singing cowboy and an opera star, while goofy-looking, partners well with the delicate Ms. Twelvetrees. Among forgotten musicals of 1930, and there are many, this is one of the more impressive.

Helen Twelvetrees is a trapeze artist in the circus about 1880. She is in love with handsome singer Fred Scott. However new ringmaster Bryant Washburn has talked owner George Fawcett into hiring Dorothy Burgess... and the two of them, unknown to the honest and kindly Fawcett, are about to practice every deceit and swindle that the traveling midway was notorious for in the 19th Century.

Joseph Santley directs this circus musical with an eye and ear for the big screen, with many well-known movie comics of the era crowding the screen for a few moments each. Some have not aged well - Stepin Fetchit has a sizable part - but don't blink lest you miss Chester Conklin or Ben Turpin. Other former Sennett regulars include Daphne Pollard and 'Little Billy' Rhodes.

Fred Scott may be remembered as a singing cowboy, but he was a resident baritone at the San Francisco Opera. After he retired to a different career, he told an interviewer he had a deal with horses: he didn't get on their backs and they didn't sell real estate. He hung up his cinematic spurs in 1942, and lived until 1991 and the age of 89.