Headline Bands

Headline Bands (1946)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Mildly entertaining short takes some of the biggest bands of the late 30's and puts them on film for the post WW2 era. Woody Herman and his Orchestra, Larry Clinton and his Orchestra, Carol Bruce, Jimmy Dorsey and more are here playing rather famous tunes including "Carolina on the Morning". All of the footage here was taken from previous short films and that includes VINCENT LOPEZ AND HIS ORCHESTRA, which includes some footage of a young Betty Hutton, which fans of her will certainly want to see. On the whole this is a fairly good short but I would personally recommend you trying to watch the full versions on the previous shorts. I'm not sure how these numbers would have played after the war, if these were old fashioned by then or not but looking at them today is a pretty interesting history lesson of music back then.

"Headline Bands" is a collection of of brief numbers by some of the big bands of the late 1930s - several years later. I don't know if this music was considered dated by the end of World War II or not.

It starts off with Woody Herman and his Orchestra playing "Carolina in the Morning". It seems like the band was probably going to start "wailing" or whatever terms were being used at the time, but were cut off in mid-song by showing Larry Clinton and his Orchestra with Carol Bruce. I'm not familiar with the band, the vocalist, or the song. They're on screen for maybe a minute, if that.

Next is Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra playing a fairly fast tempo number complete with a drum solo. Part of what they play seems to be "Hold that Tiger".

Following Dorsey, is Rubinoff and his Violin - the orchestra apparently doesn't count. He starts off with a violin solo that's fairly slow-paced. The pace does increase and the whole orchestra does get involved.

Finally, there's Vincent Lopez and his Orchestra with a fairly young Betty Hutton with a pretty amazing vocal range that includes some sort of bird sounds. She does punch several people in her enthusiasm.

A strident and bouncy BETTY HUTTON does an energetic job on "Mose and Me" (written by Louis Armstrong), practically knocking over some of the male singers who join her for the chorus. Interesting to see this '38 image of Betty who obviously knew how to belt out a song with Vincent Lopez and His Orchestra.

Best of the lot: Woody Herman doing a nice singing job with his orchestra in the background, on "Carolina in the Morning." Other than that, the other shorts were hardly memorable, even the one featuring Jimmy Dorsey and Orchestra. David Rubinoff does a violin solo that is not especially intriguing and is the number chosen to end the show.

Summing up: Nothing special about this one.