Soft Drinks and Sweet Music

George Harris (Georgie Price) is a soda jerk where all the waitresses are beautiful dancing babes. He gets fired and befriends Broadway singer Sally Ray. He's an aspiring songwriter and she is his opportunity to get on Broadway.

This is like a bad Hollywood movie about a bad Broadway show. The big song seems to be Bring Back Those Melodramatic Days. I don't know if that's a good sentiment especially when it starts talking about the slavery days. I get the concept is not actually going back to those days, but going back to doing stories about those days. The distinction can be very thin. It's an odd visual to see that dance in the modern sense. It's not that good, but it could be worse.

I love good songs from this era of movie musicals, but, sadly, there are none in this short. It's a pity, as quality musical numbers *might* have helped make up somewhat for the ridiculous story and multiple white people appearing in blackface.

Georgie Price is a song-writing soda jerk at at a parlor where there's a chorine-waitress dancing on every table. Sylvia Froos is a customer who gets him fired, so she connects him with a producer, and he sings introductions to melodramatic scenes in this bizarre musical short.

Mr. Price was born in 1901 and was performing with Caruso by the time he was six. At the age of 9, he introduced the song "By the Light of the Silvery Moon. By the time he turned adult, he was being compared to Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor, but a dispute with Jacob Shubert caused him to give up show business and start working on Wall Street. He died in 1964.

Other reviews berate this Broadway Brevity as though they were critiquing a feature. This short was intended to be a piece of candy for audiences who'd come in to see a feature. It succeeds royally.

This story of a soda jerk who goes from rags to riches (sort of) is thin, but that's okay. It's not intended to be anything other than a vehicle for more musical numbers. If you take a moment to look at the bio of the star, George Price, his early life is punctuated with the same sort of unlikely breaks that our soda jerk experiences.

If you want a solid story with great writing and memorable performances, look elsewhere. If you'd enjoy a light hearted stroll, look no farther.