Vaudeville Days

Vaudeville Days (1942)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Warner Bros. short takes a look back at the Vaudeville days in a decade when many new movie goers might have forgotten or not known there was such a thing. This short, running just under twenty-minutes, takes a look at some of the forgotten acts such as Eddie Garr, The Fuddins, Rio Brothers and The Whirling Camerons. I'm not positive but some of the footage appears like it could have been lifted from previous films as the quality looks a lot different that other parts of the short. The narration is pretty good from start to finish and some nice information is told. The first half of the film is pretty much all recreated acts but they're still fun. The Jimmy Durante impersonator is pretty embarrassing though.

Warner Brothers did a short subject saluting the good old days of live vaudeville with Vaudeville Days. Considering that it was the coming of sound film that finally did in vaudeville, I think it was the least they could do. The short provided some vaudeville acts who were no doubt looking for work with a pay day.

The first half had imitations of some of the vaudeville stars in the past like Vesta Victoria, Pat Rooney, Sr., Eva Tanguay, and Andrew Mack. I actually have an old gramophone recording of Eva Tanguay singing her signature song I Don't Care. I'm wondering how close the Duffins were in channeling all of those acts, especially Tanguay. Note they didn't pick people who were still alive and entertaining.

The variety acts then presented were nice, nothing too special. It is sad that a lot of these people either never recorded or lived long enough to have their acts captured on sound film.

I watched this two reel short on TCM hoping to learn a bit about Vaudeville and enjoy some good acts, but was sorely disappointed.

The info provided by the narrator is very brief, and although there's a couple of interesting tidbits if you know nothing about Vaudeville, there's not nearly enough information to make this short educational or interesting.

The impersonators who recreated classic acts from the early decades of Vaudeville (imitating Vesta Victoria, Andrew Mack, Eva Tanguay and Pat Rooney Sr.) were bland, forgettable and certainly lacked the qualities that made those acts very popular in their day. As for the contemporary performers, I really enjoyed the two man song and dance team Rio Brothers, but the mimes and acrobats were quite forgettable. And I found comedian Eddie Garr painfully unfunny, which I hate to say because his daughter Teri Garr ("Young Frankenstein", "Mr. Mom") was one of my favorite actresses when I was growing up.

Oddly, the short wraps up with a large theatrical musical comedy production with a tropical island theme which I'm sure is archive footage from something else. And it's not very funny or musically pleasing, is not typical Vaudeville, and seems completely out of place in this short.

I've seen some entertaining Vaudeville acts watching old shorts on TCM, but unfortunately this short is completely lacking. Ironically, this short was probably intended to raise interest in Vaudeville, but the lack of quality will produce the opposite effect.

Skip it.