Saucy pre-Code entertainment frequently served up risqué dialogue, with edgy content like promiscuity and drug use. Mitchell Leisen’s 1934 murder mystery goes straight for a supposed family-industry no-no: Broadway-revue near-nudity featuring Earl Carroll’s ‘Most Beautiful Girls In The World’. Victor McLaglen is an inept detective and Jack Oakie a wise-cracking impresario. Gertrude Michael and Kitty Carlisle carry the musical numbers, the most famous being an ode to the still-legal Sweet Marijuana. Showgirls like Lucille Ball possess the daring to don the skimpy costumes, even if they hadn’t yet learned what Marijuana was. Duke Ellington and his orchestra sit in for Ebony Rhapsody, a mixed-race musical number with room for ‘guest dancers from Harlem.’
Murder at the Vanities
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1934 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 89 min. / Street Date October 11, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Carl Brisson, Victor McLaglen, Jack Oakie, Kitty Carlisle, Dorothy Stickney, Gertrude Michael, Jessie Ralph,...
Murder at the Vanities
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1934 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 89 min. / Street Date October 11, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Carl Brisson, Victor McLaglen, Jack Oakie, Kitty Carlisle, Dorothy Stickney, Gertrude Michael, Jessie Ralph,...
- 10/1/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Dr. Harriet Fields
By Robert E. Tevis
Recently, the American Theater of Actors, in conjunction with Dr. Harriet Fields, presented a theatrical reenactment of the 1928 trial of W.C. Fields for the murder of a Canary. Entitled “The Real Transcript of W.C. Fields Murder Trial (Of A Canary),” the thirty minute production is based upon a true story of the night that Fields was arrested for the inhumane treatment of a canary in his act at the Earl Carrol Theater by two New York City policemen attached to the Humane Society.
Fields had been appearing in Earl Carroll’s Vanities and was performing a routine that is immortalized in his 1932 film “The Dentist.” In the routine, a man with a huge brisling beard comes to see Fields, the dentist. As Fields pokes around the man’s beard in an attempt to locate the man’s mouth, birds fly out, at which...
By Robert E. Tevis
Recently, the American Theater of Actors, in conjunction with Dr. Harriet Fields, presented a theatrical reenactment of the 1928 trial of W.C. Fields for the murder of a Canary. Entitled “The Real Transcript of W.C. Fields Murder Trial (Of A Canary),” the thirty minute production is based upon a true story of the night that Fields was arrested for the inhumane treatment of a canary in his act at the Earl Carrol Theater by two New York City policemen attached to the Humane Society.
Fields had been appearing in Earl Carroll’s Vanities and was performing a routine that is immortalized in his 1932 film “The Dentist.” In the routine, a man with a huge brisling beard comes to see Fields, the dentist. As Fields pokes around the man’s beard in an attempt to locate the man’s mouth, birds fly out, at which...
- 1/19/2016
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
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