Up From Depths to Please Anew

 

Ghost World That is Paramount on Parade

From You Tube confine comes one not expected, let alone in quality we can at last tolerate. Paramount on Parade was of a cycle studios pedaled through 1929 and into 1930, being revues less like film than stage, chance to watch talent as though from seats facing footlights. Practical value of such as The Show of Shows, The Hollywood Revue of 1929, and Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 might be imagined, as after initial play came quick spoilage with portions if not close to whole of intended content gone missing since. Each had among other things Technicolor sequences. Scraps surfaced, in fact continue to, bare suggestion of what full auditoria regaled in. Paramount on Parade amounts to dive deep midst antiquity. Mitzi Green impersonating George Moran of black faced Moran and Mack begs question of who was Mitzi Green and who was George Moran? I emerged like from Mayan digs at finish of Paramount on Parade, itself but seventy-five or so minutes that was once a hundred and two. Entirety of it is gone forever, I fear. Loss of the color dispirits, little even in black-and-white of it survives, though rumor speaks of a Kay Francis-Harry Green skit glimpsed once in Gotham revival. I hear also of Yetis sighted here/there, but can't prove them. What must suffice is sift via YT means, hope that Paramount on Parade stays accessible there until folk vitally interested can watch. To seek beyond would be to ask more than chance or caring (by archives) will accommodate, but what of 2026, when this and other revues will have gone PD? Full speed ahead, Kickstarters!

Three men shown here are tendered as funny, and you may yet find them so. From left to right is Jack Oakie, Leon Errol, and Skeets Gallagher. Mastering-of-ceremony falls to Oakie and Gallagher, Errol left to his starring skit later and who knows what vanished footage could include him. Oakie is my notion of best-all-round comedy support in whatever used him during the thirties and after. Errol of course is master of mirth as testified previous, Gallagher obscure here and for work afterward. He is droll, an efficient host who reminds me of Criswell to come. Would that flatter Skeets? First of singing sweethearts (several pair through P on P) are Charles “Buddy” Rogers and Lillian Roth. Buddy on disc can be had given gray market source, legit limited to Wings which thrives on Blu-Ray. Lillian is cute and dimply, appeals modernly at least to me, had a hard second act with redemption that followed if you believe Susan Hayward in 1955’s I’ll Cry Tomorrow. Notice how many late twenties songs are suggestive as to lyrics? Had I been around then, and a parent, I’m not sure offspring would have permission to bring such shellac in the house.

What may be a most arresting section of Paramount on Parade is triad of mystery solvers that are Warner Oland as Fu Manchu, Clive Brook being Sherlock Holmes, and William Powell as Philo Vance. This resonated for years because it was all we had of those characters and essayers of same, their Paramount features gone from circulation and unlikely then to come back. Now by Kino grace we have Blu-Ray of two of three Olands as Fu, Powell upcoming in three Vance features, still nothing yet of Brook Holmes. The sketch is … sketchy … less amusing than curious. Fun is seeing them spoofy, but another few minutes and things would get labored. First among outstanding aboard Paramount on Parade is Maurice Chevalier, him ideal to variety format, a biggest “new” star the hodgepodge boasts, much the real thing along talkie finds. He is saucy and combative toward Evelyn Brent, undressing her to a slip, Brent herself on slip-slide from stardom, their parlay supervised by Lubitsch. Any rival company would have wanted Chevalier. Remember MGM and “More Stars Than There Are in Heaven”? Paramount was like “More Stars Than There Are at RKO or Columbia.” Revues such as Paramount on Parade were sheerest factory work, talent less pressed to act than be “themselves,” whatever that amounted to, which in several cruel instance was not a lot. Limitations were known among assets protected, Paramount loathe to see property ridiculed as growers would be to let peach trees wilt, but rush to sound was on, and everyone was pretty much on his/her own. The studio like others operational and earning profits felt they understood talent better than the talent themselves. Were performers invited to frame spots and stay within confine of what they did best? I’d like to know, for instance, how much latitude Maurice Chevalier had, or for that matter, Evelyn Brent.

Revue films amounted to advertising for entity that were  studios and Eastern industry that controlled them. “A Greater New Show World” was what Paramount boasted, greater that is, than any other firm’s show world, in fact, a world Paramount dominated to extent of owning the largest number of affiliated theatres. So many such edifices in 1929 seemed Greatest what with talk magnetizing movies as never before. Revues then were proof of solvency, an assertion that conditions were better than good and would continue improving. Paramount position thought impregnable that lush year became an anchor to drag them into receivership within short future, theatres no longer horn of plenty but empty caverns through which fewer paid customers passed. Depression was the door slammed against prosperity, not just Paramount’s but everyone’s. MGM ironically stayed in profit for owning less exhibiting venues, brick and mortar a menace now that panic was on. How Paramount fell broke in the early thirties gives useful instruction for anyone who thinks good times, no matter how good they appear, can last forever. I can’t imagine Paramount on Parade being made in 1931.

Re topic of combat, Jack Oakie and Zelma O’Neal knock each other around a gymnatorium. Tough to tell Zelma from a hundred other flappers plying trade for talkers, though she seems good as any. Zelma’s also in Follow Thru,’ early apply of two-color seen most at museums. Will future PD status loose it among rural dwellers? Next comes Ruth Chatterton dramatizing to Fredric March and other doughboys, played apparently straight, or maybe subtle-humorous over my head. Chatterton was early sound’s gift to high histriona. She did Madame X to acclaim for Metro and Skeets Gallagher refers to it. Ruth got more energy after Warners stole her from Paramount, then did what she’ll be best remembered for, Dodsworth, in 1936. Middle-age, and looking it, forced Chatterton into mature parts before retreat to the stage and years more successful work. Paramount on Parade is valuable for prodding us to ponder such matters. It is a curiosity piece in the best sense, and we are fortunate to have it finally on watchable terms. Participants fascinate where we recall them in other contexts and can make comparison. Even unknowns click for novelty sake, if not as familiars, then as objects for Google search. Paramount on Parade so far as I know has not broadcast anyplace since AMC back in the eighties. My VHS tape went to dogs long ago, so resurrect via You Tube came more than welcome.

Mitzi Green was a big little girl noise, age nine when Paramount on Parade was made, among other gifts hers for obscure impressions. In addition to George Moran here, she became George Arliss and Edna May Oliver for a Girl Crazy skit at RKO. Mitzi like moppets from stage transitioning to movies had brute assertiveness I freeze still for, waiting for the hook that won’t come, not wanting it once caught up in her weirdish spell. Helen Kane sings "Boop-Oop-a-Doop" before a classroom of kids. I wondered if even one of them might still be alive today. How long did Helen, or anyone, stay on the road trilling that? Reminds me of persistent Joe Penner asking endlessly if anyone wanna buy his duck. Nancy Carroll sings and “hoofs” to Abe Lyman and his Band. I know her primarily from Hot Saturday. Carroll was vaguely like Clara Bow, as were others at Paramount figured to be Bow successors. Said to be temperamental to tantrum level, and maybe that’s how she ended up far down marquees within a few years of leaving Para nest. Carroll shows up barely in a 1937 Deanna Durbin, That Certain Age, in but a couple minutes toward the end and hardly noticed for that. I’d like to know more of what went wrong for Nancy Carroll.

Clara Bow, the real Bow, is expectedly the spice of Para’s program, her navy number with male chorus boding well for talkie laurels, so why not the happy outcome? Read David Stenn’s Bow book and learn. George Bancroft was bull in anyone’s china shop but here plays polite, an untypical stance, then rough/ready where the skit speculates upon what happens where house guests show true colors rather than manners they’d ordinarily display, a clever jape and Bancroft gives it flair. He was tough to float for long thanks to few tricks in his kit, but Bancroft in reasonable dose is fine, got better as support once sun set upon starring parts in the later thirties. Largest gap in Paramount on Parade appears to be a Technicolor all-star go at Gary Cooper, Mary Brian, Richard Arlen, Jack Oakie, Jean Arthur, and Fay Wray under Edmund Goulding direction, which survives as a black-and-white prelude only, making little sense as left in present version of Paramount on Parade. Why do personalities of Paramount ownership seem remote to us now --- Nancy Carroll, Bancroft, Harry Green, Mary Brian, Dick Arlen? It comes to withdrawal of Para's pre-49 library lot once syndication and then landlord Universal lost interest many years ago. Early Paramounts, late twenties through much of thirties certainly, was rat poison after initial sales of the full package tendered in 1959. A big deal then, it quick became matter of buyers wanting only Hope/Crosby, DeMille specials, whatever else was at least recognizable to 1960’s and after viewership. What we get today via streaming or Kino Blu-Ray dole is but fraction of what there voluminously is. One could watch Star-Spangled Rhythm on out-of-print DVD and draw near as many blanks as with Paramount on Parade, both march for the forgotten. No point to carp and ask why, ours but to do or don’t with what little is available and rely upon You Tube or obscure sources elsewhere.