Java has a pack of public domain movie musicals. Here's one of them.
Career Girl (1944) stars singer Frances Langford in a poverty row production about a Midwestern young lady who makes it big on Broadway. The plot is standard Stage Door - ish fare.
I enjoy shots like this - freeze frame on an important, plot-inducing letter or telegram. These are great for several reasons, not the least of which is the filmmakers expect the audience to be literate.
Very little scoring means you hear every snap, crackle and pop from the aging film. Still, I like it mostly because of Iris Adrian whose loud, acerbic reading of lines is refreshingly lively (and distracts from the extraneous noise). Almost everyone else seems to be looking for his/her mark and mumbling, as if this is 1st rehearsal.
Oh, and by the way, a future cast member of the Dick Van Dyke Show had a hand in the songs.
I've never seen this film before. Thanks for sharing this with us. Have a great week.
ReplyDeleteHi Keith,
ReplyDeleteI hadn't seen it either until recently. There have been worse films, so it's not a complete waste of time.
Frances Langford is very pretty, down-to-earth and likeable. I could understand why she would be a huge hit in live performances, especially ginning up morale during the war.
I cannot find the film on archive.org, but I'm sure it's somewhere online for free.
First of all it's PRODUCERS RELEASING CORP. Poverty row is an insult to all the fine actors involved in their films. Next, Frances Langford was probably the greatest singer of the period or any period for that matter. And this is a terrific film, a real ensemble piece with no mumbling or searching for marks. These are all professionals doing a splendid job without all the flashy accoutrements of the bigger studios. PRC made a lot of fine films just as the other studios did.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Mr. Henson's comments in support of the PRC features. Thanks to aarchive dot org and youtube, most of the PRC features are available, albeit in poor quality. I believe TCM owns the rights to the PRC features, but they are rarely boardcast, languishing in limbo.
ReplyDeleteI just watched the bouncy Ms. Adrian a different feature, and as always, she was very fun and entertaining.