Echo Mountain

ROy Atwell's godawful stuttering overacting by wife (Rosalind Marquis)

I am not the most politically correct person alive...although some may think so when I say I absolutely HATE Roy Atwell's character in this Vitaphone short. His shtick is stuttering and several actors during his time specialized in being 'funny' by stuttering. It wasn't funny in the 1930s...just tedious. And today it's generally viewed as offensive as well. I just wanted to throttle his character and scream "STOP that stuttering...it's NOT funny!".

So is this short any good in spite of Atwell? Well, technically speaking it's lovely to look at--as the film is in spectacular Three Color Technicolor...a true color process (unlike previous systems like Cinecolor and Two Color Technicolor which didn't present a full spectrum of colors--they tended to be more orangy and green than true color). It also looks good with Yosemite Valley subbing for Switzerland. IMDb doesn't say it's Yosemite but I clearly recognized the mountains and waterfall from a recent visit.

How about the story? Well, it's about a group of annoying tourists who are brought into the mountains by Johann (Fred Lawrence). He breaks out into song for no logical reason but he does have a lovely voice. When he takes the annoying tourists to a nearby chalet because of a storm, they meet a nice old clock maker and his lovely daughter--who Johann is smitten with and hasn't, up until then, told her this. There's a lot of Swiss-style dancing, a cute St. Bernard and the usual Alpine trappings such as yodeling and beer...much like actually taking a trip there instead of California! A bit schmaltzy but aside from Atwell, not a bad little film.

Its a group of travelers who are brought into the mountains by Johann, a handsome young man. He usually sings a few songs for no reason in this short film, doesn't make sense, but his voice is soothing and enjoyable. When the travelers keep climbing up the mountain, a storm draws near, and they meet a nice clockmaker and his lovely daughter. They go inside, and Johann and the blonde girl sing how they will have kids, in one of the sequences. Then after the travelers eat and drink in the clock makers house, they receive a gift from the clockmaker and sing outside when another group of travelers sing laying on the side of the hill. This film is great, astounding, enjoyable, and breath taking. Especially in technicolor, you can see how beautiful nature and the houses are. Particulary the costumes.

"For centuries people have climbed the trails to Echo Mountain" the opening title card explains, "To be thrilled by nature's magic -- the answering echoes of their own voices." And so we see people dressed like Swiss glockenspiel players leading some tourists up to Echo Mountain, accompanied by a St. Bernard with a cask around its neck. In the end, Fred Lawrence sings a couple of schmaltzy songs with the echoes.

Of course it was undoubtedly shot in the Hollywood Hills, but its purpose, like many of the Vitaphone Technicolor shorts of the 1930s, was to show off the beauty of the color process. The images are bright, colorful and have too much brown.