‘On With The Show’ (1929) was the first all talking movie in color. Unfortunately the only surviving prints are in black and white, though as you’ll see in the above and below clips, fragments of the color print have somehow survived and been lovingly preserved. Photographed in the two-strip Technicolor process, the film was a huge hit in its day–which should be a lesson to any filmmaker concerned only with grosses; it turns out that most films that are successful in their first run appear to be either forgotten or lost. Exceptions occur of course. Like all the work of Spielberg, Lucas and company for example.

Reviews from critics at the time were mixed. Mordaunt Hall (love that name) of the NY Times wrote that the film was “to be felicitated on the beauty of its pastel shades, which were obtained by the Technicolor process, but little praise can be accorded its story or to its raucous voices….It would have been better if this film had no story, and no sound, for it is like a clumsy person arrayed in  Fifth avenue finery.”  Variety reported that the film was “too long in running”, but was nevertheless “impressive, both as an entertainment and as a talker.” Film Daily called it “fine entertainment and a very adroit mixture of comedy, some rather bad pathos and musical comedy numbers.” The NY Herald Tribune declared it “the best thing the films have done in the way of transferring Broadway music shows to the screen and, even if the story is bad and the entire picture considerably in need of cutting it is an admirable and frequently handsome bit of cinema exploring.” WTF is ‘cinema exploring’?  John Mosher of The New Yorker (an early movie reviewer who clearly despised his lot in life as an early movie reviewer) wrote that the film was “completely undistinguished for wit, charm, or novelty, except that it is done in color. Possibly in the millennium all movies will be colored. In these early days of the art, however, not much can be said for it, except that it is not really distressing.” You’re welcome, John.