30's Fashions and Frolics

Director Irving Cummings and Technicolor Cameraman Ray Rennahan Look On As
Warner Baxter and Helen Vinson Emote

1937 Brings Walter Wanger's Vogues Of 1938

It might do for pop culture historians and fashion designers to make close inspection of this, a Technicolor'ed sampling of  what men/women wore and listened to at a moment Wanger freezes in time. Maybe there should have been a Vogues movie every year so we could better gauge the decade's faddish dress and up-to-moment music. The fact it's disposable otherwise is a given, the story being repeat of Warner Baxter 42nd Street struggles, transferred blocks up (or is it down?) to the garment district. He falls for dizzy deb Joan Bennett, much as producing Wanger would offscreen. She was at verge of coif-hue change and  renewed career as dark avenger among women of noir. Vogues color registers fine even on TCM's print from wherever; I don't know present ownership of this or fate of camera elements. Wanger had produced Trail Of The Lonesome Pine in pioneering Technicolor, so knew what not to do this time out. I'll bet Vogues Of 1938 would look dazzling restored, but who's going to front the expense? It's all for fun and fun for perhaps few now, song/dances nothing special, and comedy a matter of Alan Mowbray and Mischa Auer doing time-honored shtick. I watched out of a kind of duty, just another off a to-do list of obscurities.