Ah, the pleasure is all mine.
>it's actually a fairly typical reel of the period.
Yes, I agree....but at the same time it has an overall weirdness that sets it apart from all of the shorts save for, perhaps, the reel of Hajii Baba The Trained Regurgitator and the 1925 test film of the scary man singing "Ma- He's Making Eyes At Me" while squeezing a duck to make it squawk on each "Ma."
>Near as I can tell, the plaintive "Bubbles" is an (ahem) original composition.
I take it that the plot of the film, if one can call it that, is the dream of the narcoleptic little girl in the "Bubbles Song" interlude. But the gentleman sitting to the right blowing bubbles through the sequence draws the attention. This may sound mean, but I immediately thought of "Warren" in There's Something About Mary when I saw that hulking bit player. Then, 30 seconds later we are in the presence of Judy Garland and her sisters dressed as Siamese Triplet moon creatures~ singing so out of synch, so off key, and so shrill that it seems that they are performing three different songs~ and the engagingly bizarre bubble blowing man vanishes never to return.
The teenage boy in drag flapper- an actor so desperate to get into movies he'd do even that? The loser of one heck of a sadistic bet? Or the victim of a driven monster of a stage mother?
>Then, as now, the real attraction would have been the Technicolor process, so we can only hope (?) that the color elements some day turn up.
Color would literally be gilding the lily!
BTW- Do you know the name of the creepy actor who played the Dark King of the Land of Let's Pretend, aka Protective Collar Man? Certainly the last person I'd leave my kids around
at least as presented in the film. His intros seem to be a bit...inappropriate... especially when he introduces the teen boy in drag.
>Only very recently, the only Technicolor fragment known to exist from ON WITH THE SHOW! turned up, as did an additional bit of color footage from GOLD DIGGERS OF BROADWAY --- so anything's possible --- for better or worse.
This is all great news! By any chance, do you know if the notorious Lost Film "Convention City" has ever resurfaced? From the synposis, it belongs right next to the uncut Baby Face on a double bill....but at the point where my obsession with pre-Code films waned a bit it was still MIA. And, has the last reel of Sadie Thompson been located in the collection of some obsessive hoarder?