8mm Forum: Three Cheers for the Girls

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Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on November 19, 2012, 02:32 PM:

Three Cheers for the Girls - Derann B/W 1 X 400 ft
This 1 x 400 footer from Derann is a pleasant reel of excerpts from the great Warner Brothers 1930's black and white musicals.
Many of the numbers are choreagraphed by the legendary Busby Berkeley, and others by Warners dance director Bobby Connolly.

Warner Brothers dug into their film archive to produce this 1943 featurette, which ends on a patriotic tone fitting of the times.
The film starts out in the dressing room of the chorus girls, singing 'The Floradora Chorus of the Screen - "We're the girls they undress to dress a scene'! [Smile]

The girls pop back into the film to introduce all the different segments, which include:

The Floradora Chorus of the Screen
Music by M.K. Jerome. Lyrics by Jack Scholl
Played during the opening credits, and sung by the chorus girls at the beginning and toward the end.

All's Fair in love and War from Gold Diggers of 1937
Joan Blondell leads a couple of hundred chorus girls in military formations.

Shadow Waltz from Cain and Mabel (1936)
NOT the one from Gold Diggers of 1933, but a later version with an early period setting.

Spin a Little Web of Dreams from Fashions of 1934
Here the girls become human harps!

I''ll Sing You a Thousand Love Songs from Cain and Mabel

The Words are in My Heart from Gold Diggers of 1935
The legendary miniature piano sequence

Aloha Oe from Flirtation Waltz (1934)

The Song of the Marines from The Singing Marine
Sung by a marine chorus headed by Dick Powell, accompanied by battle training shots.

Print quality is fair, some scenes a lot better than others.
Altogether a nice bit of musical film history, with some really rare musical clips in amongst the better known ones.
Nice to see Berkeley's chorines getting a chance to talk and sing before the camera.

Please note that the S8 box art is my own effort - Derann supplied this reel in the ubiquitous white box. I wanted my film to be packaged like the other Derann Berkeley films, and somehow, packaging it in a decent box seemed to improve the print quality! [Big Grin]

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