Calling All Girls

In the days before video and (lord help us) DVD, there was 8mm. We used this format for home movies and serious hobbyists would even purchase severely edited versions of Hollywood feature films like SUPERMAN THE MOVIE and ALIEN. I had both these half hour versions on 8mm sound film during the 1970s (in fact I still have them).

But the pride of my "movie" collection was this short, CALLING ALL GIRLS, which was structured like a magazine article in which we'd see the audition process, with the call going out to Central Casting, then several sumptuous Busby Berkeley routines from the classic Warner Brothers musicals of the 1930s.

I was very proud of this film because I'd found it for about £8 ($14) at London's famous flea market, Brick Lane - this was at a time when the edited feature films cost about £30.

Perhaps this stuff seems cheesy to modern audiences, but I've loved these musicals since I was a kid, so it might be hard for me to be objective.

I haven't watched it for years as I've not owned a projector since 1980, but I remember this well and would love it to turn up on TCM so I could get it on disk. Better yet, I wish TCM UK would screen some of the original musicals ... though there's nothing quite like watching the movie in a darkened room, the image ten feet square on the screen with the whir of the projector barely masked by the blaring soundtrack.

And they say nostalgia ain't what it used to be ...

Warner Bros. supposedly presents a behind-the-scenes look at selecting the dancing girls in the big studio musicals. Then it's a clip show of several large scale musical performances. It's fine as a short in between movies but it's nothing great. The clips are not worth much. It's better to see the whole movies. The 'behind-the-scenes' section is rather short and fake. There are some fun look at the studio backlots. It's not really worthwhile like most clip shows on TV. It doesn't even have the stars do a bit of introduction to their clips. It's interesting for about five minutes and nothing else.

Calling All Girls (1942)

** (out of 4)

Nineteen-minute short was probably highly entertaining back in 1942 but today it doesn't hold up well for one single reason. The short pretty much starts off talking about how Hollywood, every once in a while, opens up their doors for new talent to arrive and for our shorts sake a new musical is about to be shot so they're "calling all girls". We then get musical numbers from various Busby Berkeley films including WONDER BAR, FOOTLIGHT PARADE and GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933/35. There's no question that the music contained in this short is terrific and the dance numbers are marvelous but it's somewhat hard to recommend this short when all four features are easily available to be viewed. In my opinion a lot of these dance numbers lose some of their touch when they're not seen within the entire original film. Since the above movies weren't in circulation when this short was released, I'm sure this had a lot of benefit to those originally seeing it but today there's really no point in it. Check out the original films and you'll be a lot happier that you did.

If you like this stuff at all, these big dance scenes, this is a great 25 minute short with one number after another using literally hundreds of dancers in some of them.

You can't beat the waterfall scene with 100+ beautiful dancers/swimmers.

It's wonderfully dated.

Here's one of those Warner Brothers short subjects made up of clips from old movies. After narrator Owen Crump talks about pretty girls making a play to become Hollywood stars, it's time for a casting call: Busby Berkley needs a lot of women for one of his production numbers! Too bad he's gone to MGM to direct Esther Williams films!

Jean Negulesco is credited as director, but it's more a job of editing, with plenty of process shots and some liberal use of an optical printer. Negulesco entered the movies and his earliest direction was of Warner's musical shorts, and his editing was a lot more complex than earlier workers' had been.