Another From A Prehistoric Musical Past

Spring Is Here for 1930 Vitaphone Audiences

A Warners musical with a long beard that shows up in wee hours on TCM to fascinate those who'll forebear snail pace and locked-down cameras. I'll take these by boxload, thanks, and only wish WB could unearth more (and could cry over many that are lost). Spring Is Here is like plays of the day from which it was adapted, with isolated songs to still delight amidst farce grindingly dated --- but let it grind say mavens of such. The tunes do please; no wonder so many of 20's theatrical origin got parted from stage source to live on as popular standards. Well, they had to Spring up from somewhere. Two Grays are featured, Alexander and Lawrence, neither of whom I'm close-acquainted with, so obviously I've got further musical research to do (a best reading refresher being Richard Barrios' marvelous A Song In The Dark). Spring Is Here being an elopement story, there's balcony climbing and disapproving dad Ford Sterling, who gives clowning his Sennett all to make even unfunny lines seem so for muggery beyond calls of duty. The show was thankfully made in black-and-white, thus its survival, so many two-color Technicolor musicals having gone the furnace or powder route. Plenty of tunes to come away whistling, and the deed is done within a painless 69 minutes.