Woody Herman & His Orchestra

Just about every popular band during the '30s and '40s had their own short subject and this one is dedicated to Woody Herman and his Orchestra.

He and his band give the swing treatment to a number of oldies, beginning with "Carolina in the Morning" which he sings, a tricky dance number with two sisters doing "Two Little Girls In One" as a mirror act, his rendition of "You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby" (which Dick Powell crooned to Olivia de Havilland in "Hard to Get"), and two more swing renditions of "Jail House Blues" and "Hello Central."

Summing up: Not much style to praise here. It's a simple band act before an audience that looks as though it were dressed up for a concert at Lincoln Center.

Strictly for curious interest in the '30s band era, which looks mighty dated in this particular outing.

After sound came to motion pictures, when you went to the movies, you got your money's worth; a newsreel, a cartoon, a 'short subject,' a second-billed feature, and the 'main' feature film! 'This' is one of the great musical 'short subjects' from Vitaphone - Warner Bros.. Woody Herman was a 'big star' in dance pavilions and live theater shows, and this short is a perfect example of the era. Going to the movies back then was a special occasion, and everybody dressed up! There are some shots of the theater audience that look like they're at the opera, but that's how you dressed when you 'went out' back then. Woody's band is top notch as always, and the two specialty dance numbers are terrific! The first, by Wiley and Hartman, is the only known film performance of Marie Hartman. The second dance number, by Hal and Honey Abbott, a great vaudeville eccentric dance team,is 'their' only known filmed performance as well. This little gem is what live performing was all about in the thirties and forties.

This is like a 1930's music video. A compilation of a few tunes by Woody Herman and his band. The tunes are bouncy and the band is very competent, and Woody has a decent voice. There are guest dancers swinging up a storm, and an audience full of very old people wearing extremely formal clothes, and they all look really out of place. They had such serious looks on their faces while the music was playing that it made me wonder why they clapped at the end of the songs. Just polite I guess. It looked like they enjoyed dressing up and going out a lot more than the music they were listening to. No lighters waving or mosh pit head-banging here.

This is all very nice for fans of the music of the era I'm sure, but as a guitar-rock guy, the music didn't do much for me.

Your mileage will vary depending on musical taste.

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.

This short features Woody Herman and his band. It begins with a zippy rendition of "Carolina In The Morning" sung by Herman himself. Then two girls who look like twins do a ballet-like dance that, frankly, was a bit weird...yet dull. I'd have rather just heard Herman sing another tune--which he did next with "You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby". While he didn't have a strong voice, it was smooth like glass and very pleasant. Unfortunately, once again his singing was followed by a couple jitterbuggers wearing taps. They were pretty good but I just liked the singing more. And, as the pattern continued, Herman sang another song one the dancers were finished. Overall, a pretty typical sort of short--pleasant but not a lot different from the norm.

Woody Herman & His Orchestra (1938)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Woody Herman and his orchestra are appearing in front of a theatre audience (thanks to some stock footage from a silent movie) and do five numbers including the well-known 'You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby' and 'Carolina in the Morning'. If you watch Turner Classic Movies enough then you know that various Warner/Vitaphone shorts are played and their main goal back in the day was to show off various musical talent that most people probably only knew from the radio. With that in mind we got some great artists and some that probably weren't remembered a few years after their films were released and that might have been the case here. Now, if you're a fan of these shorts or older music in general like I am then you're going to at least be entertained because the numbers are good enough to go through once. I thought Herman had a very good voice and I thought it worked perfectly well on the 'Beautiful Baby' number. 'Two Little Girls in One' wasn't the strongest number but we do get a decent dance sequence with Lee Wiley and Marie Hartman. 'Jailhouse Blues' features another dance number this time with Hal and Honey Abbott.