Symphony of Swing

Symthony of Swing (1939)

*** (out of 4)

Turner Classic Movies recently had a documentary on the career of Johnny Mercer and played this short as well. The film features the then popular Artie Shaw and his swinging band performing four songs including "Jeepers Creepers" with Tony Pastor and "Deep Purple" with Helen Forrest. This was my first time seeing a short with Shaw but he certainly lived up to some of the hype I had heard about him. I'm sure this short wouldn't fly too well if shown on MTV today but if you're a fan of these old swing bands then you're in for a real treat. On the technical side of things we're really not given anything overly special as director Henabery makes the right decision in just staying out of things and letting the band do all the work. Shaw's orchestra is extremely entertaining as they jam one number after another and Pastor does a very good job with "Jeepers Creepers".

This is one of the later Vitaphone shorts--known as a "Melody Master". These later musical shorts generally were more straight forward and had simpler sets and no real story to tie it all together--just a famous band of the day doing their stuff.

In this film, we have Artie Shaw and his band playing a swing songs. The best of these, by far, was the band's great rendition of "Lady Be Good". While I've heard this song quite a few times, Shaw and his band really did a great job by speeding up the song and giving a nice swing rhythm to the piece. You can't help but want to move when you hear it--and the music would be excellent for jitterbugging...though I think there are only about 15 people alive today who can jitterbug! I know I can't, as it takes the athleticism of a track star to do it well! And, although the young adults do pretty good, in the late 30s and early 40s, there were some dancers who would have truly amazed you with their huge leaps and tosses.

By the way, this has nothing directly to do with the film, but when I watched Artie Shaw, I just couldn't understand his allure to women. He was married eight times (wow)--including marriages to Ava Gardner and Lana Turner.

TCM's salute to the life and art of Johnny Mercer was the basis for it showing this particular short subject which featured Artie Shaw and his swing band of the time doing four numbers, two of which were current hits.

Jeepers Creepers came out that year with music by Harry Warren and lyrics by Johnny Mercer. Also new out that year was Deep Purple by Mitchell Parish and Peter DeRose. This was not a song curiously enough identified with Shaw, the big hit for Deep Purple came from rival orchestra leader Larry Clinton. Clinton's record with vocal by Bea Wain is the standard although Shaw at the time had one of the best big band singers ever in Helen Forrest and she does a beautiful job.

Artie and the orchestra also do instrumentals of Lady Be Good and Alone Together featuring him of course on the clarinet. Lovers of the big band era can't go wrong with this short subject.

Actually, this Artie Shaw band sounds like many other big bands of that era with nothing to really give it a distinct sound--at least not in the same way as the Glenn Miller orchestra.

But he does a good job on a few oldies like "Deep Purple" (sung by Helen Forrest), "Lady Be Good" and "Jeepers Creepers," all done in swing fashion with good photography concentrating on the band members rather than Shaw himself.

It's a lively ten minutes of band music, a Vitaphone short that was used to round out a double feature program in the '30s when going to the movies meant newsreels, cartoon shorts and musical "brevities."