Awkward Early Talkie Theatre: "The Show of Shows"

Like most people who love old movies, I can't watch them without thinking about what was going on in the world at the time. And to me, "The Show of Shows," released in 1929, is more than a movie. It's actually more like a stage revue, and its variety of acts makes it a kind of time capsule of pre-depression America, a portrait of life at a studio that was feeling its oats just before hard times hit.

By 1929 silent pictures were as dead as Valentino and talkies were the new standard across America, so the major studios were poaching performers from the Broadway stage and vaudeville who could sing, dance and enunciate dialogue in clear, honeyed tones. Naturally the studios wanted to showcase these new stars, so there was a rash of revues heavy on comedy and music -- "Paramount on Parade," "Fox Movietone Follies of 1929" and MGM's "Hollywood Revue of 1929."

At Warner Bros., a studio that was first in the talkie sweepstakes, they spared no kale. "The Show of Shows" would be mostly in Technicolor, and cost an estimated $850,000. (In prints available today, only one Technicolor number survives.) Contract players by the dozens were trotted out, from Lupino Lane to Myrna Loy to Rin Tin Tin -- only Al Jolson, arguably the biggest star on the lot at that time, was exempted. Some performers headlined numbers, others introduced them, and still others popped up in bit roles.

Funny thing is, the headline performers who get the most screen time here -- people like Irene Bordoni, Ted Lewis, Lloyd Hamilton and Winnie Lightner -- would largely be gone in a few years, while the actors in smaller roles, like Loretta Young, Myrna Loy, Chester Morris and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., would emerge as stars over the long haul.

"The Show of Shows" opens with a weird little scene set during the French Revolution, where a titled nobleman loses his noggin to the guillotine, leading a peasant to proclaim: "Prologue is dead! On with 'The Show of Shows'!" Haha, what? Like the silent film was a titled nobleman, but now he's decapitated and the peasants of talkieland have taken over? More likely it was a farewell to live musical numbers -- the prologues that often preceded silent movies -- but it's still weird.

Anyway, here's our emcee, Frank Fay. I've written about Fay before -- his career and performance style are very interesting to me. He may not have made it in movies, but he was a hit in vaudeville, and his droll delivery of a monologue ended up influencing people like Jack Benny. Here's Fay at the beginning of the film -- he enters at the conclusion of a number by the Pasadena American Legion marching band:

The acts in "The Show of Shows" go from marching bands to Shakespeare, including a pirate number (?) featuring bandleader Ted Lewis, the self-billed "high-hatted tragedian of song," who looks like he's shot through gauze. And there are production
numbers where we glimpse the likes of a coy Myrna Loy (she's actually in a couple of them, including the only surviving Technicolor number) and a young Loretta Young.

Then we come to a number with Fay, Beatrice Lillie, Louise Fazenda and Lloyd Hamilton. They recite poetry that gets sliced and diced into a spicy limerick, and then they do something that happens a couple of times in this movie -- they parody MGM's rival effort, "Hollywood Revue of 1929." In MGM's revue, Charles King sings the tearjerking "Your Mother and Mine," and in "The Show of Shows" this quartet parodies it in a pretty funny way:



Another parody comes at the end of the "Singing in the Bathtub" number, performed by Winnie Lightner in a Busby Berkeley-like setting of old fat men in striped bathing suits. At the climax, Lightner then joins wrestler Bull Montana in "You Were Meant for Me," another parody of a "Hollywood Revue" number:



Then Frank Fay is joined by comic Sid Silvers, who imitates the man who isn't there -- Al Jolson:



And there is cult-cha, even: John Barrymore as Richard III, in a striking performance -- a soliloquy from Shakespeare's "Henry VI":

Finally, all the stars who have appeared in the film stick their heads through cutouts of stars and sing the final number, "Lady Luck." Even Barrymore.

There's an interesting allusion to economic hard times in the movie when Fay jokes about a play where the cast is dressed in rags -- "It was a futuristic piece" -- but the full effect of the Great Depression on America, including Hollywood, was still a few months away. "The Show of Shows" is the party before the hangover.

Here are the complete credits for "The Show of Shows."

Discovering Frank Fay: "The Matrimonial Bed"

In vaudeville, Frank Fay was big.

He strolled onstage casually, with a slight swish, and then stood and told jokes -- a revolutionary concept for the time. No juggling, no slapstick, no mugging. He was known for his quick wit -- when he was heckled with a Bronx cheer, he responded, "Two of those made you, pal." As part of his act, he would break down the lyrics of "Tea for Two," interspersed with wisecracks. ("Nobody near us, to see us or hear us." "Who'd want to listen to a couple of people drinking tea?")

In 1929 Fay came to Hollywood with his young wife, Barbara Stanwyck. Sound films were in full swing and the studios wanted performers with stage experience. Stanwyck thought she might try her luck in pictures, too. The studios were making all-star revues to take advantage of sound and Fay appeared in the Warner Bros. entry, "The Show of Shows." He was the emcee, and the players included John Barrymore, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Loretta Young and Myrna Loy. The movie was a hit, and Fay's screen success seemed assured. Yet within a few years he was out of Hollywood and back on Broadway, returning to films only sporadically.

Fay's fizzle is even more mystifying when you see him in 1930's "The Matrimonial Bed." He's good! Despite years on the stage, he seems to understand how to modulate his performance for the screen. The film itself is a lightweight farce, very much like a filmed play, and Fay himself gives it heart and humor.

"The Matrimonial Bed" is set in Lubitsch land -- that non-existent neighborhood in Paris that is filled with rich, charming men and beautiful, indolent women. We open in an art deco home on the fifth anniversary of the death of the master, Adolphe Noblet. In a long expository dialogue, two maids converse about what's happened since -- Noblet's wife Juliette (Florence Eldredge) has remarried, to a stuffy fussbudget (James Gleason), and they have a young son. But everyone, especially Corinne the maid (Beryl Mercer), loved Noblet, who by all accounts was kind, loving and full of fun.

A portrait of Noblet dominates the mantle -- it has just been repaired and returned to its place after falling off the wall and getting torn. "Something," says Corinne, "always happens when pictures fall down without a reason."

Enter Leopold Traubel (Fay), a popular hairdresser (he's having affairs with at least two women) who's here to style Juliette's hair. No one in the house has ever seen him before, so you can imagine their surprise when he turns out to look just like Noblet. Juliette is particularly unnerved, especially when Leopold starts touching her in special places:



Two of Noblet's friends -- Dr. Friedland (Arthur Carew) and Chabonnais (James Bradbury Sr.) --  learn that Leopold has no memory beyond the last five years, and under hypnosis by the doctor Leopold remembers that he is Noblet.

What follows is traditional, somewhat labored farce. To keep Noblet from realizing that his wife has remarried, elaborate white lies connect Juliette's new husband with Juliette's friend Sylvaine (Lilyan Tashman), who's been having an affair with Leopold. But when she confronts him, he doesn't know who she is:



To make matters even more complicated, we're introduced to Suzanne (Vivian Oakland), who is Leopold's wife and the mother of his four sons -- two sets of twins. Noblet/Leopold finally learns the truth, and he also learns that Juliette is happier in her new life with a stuffy husband and young son. And he starts to realize that Suzanne isn't so bad, either:



So Noblet/Leopold conspires with his friend, the doctor -- the doctor will pretend to un-hypnotize Leopold so that he can return to his previous life and ensure Juliette's happiness. The doctor puts Noblet to sleep and he awakens as the more flamboyant Leopold:



It's a sweet ending, and Fay plays the humor as well as the wistful sadness.

Today if Fay is remembered at all, it's for a couple of reasons. One is that his turbulent marriage to Stanwyck, which ended in 1935, is said to have provided the inspiration for "A Star Is Born." Another is that in 1944, Fay scored a personal triumph as the first Elwood P. Dowd in "Harvey" on Broadway. He had a reputation as a drinker and a bit of a bastard, but he's also remembered for saving Stanwyck's fledgling movie career by helping convince Frank Capra to cast her in the 1930 film "Ladies of Leisure." And he influenced one of the best comics of the first half of the twentieth century -- Jack Benny freely admitted that he appropriate Fay's relaxed style and his swishy walk.

Who knows where the truth lies -- but the guy knew his stuff.

Here are the complete credits for "The Matrimonial Bed," and a preview: