Last week I posted several versions of talking front titles, courtesy of the Hal Roach Studios. Both movies were made in 1930 (the year Roach tried this experiment) and I confidently contended that the only Roach players that didn’t get this treatment were Laurel&Hardy. A reader wrote in to tell
It wasn’t easy to become a member of the premium-level all-girl 1920s orchestra ‘The Ingenues’. As you’ll see, you not only had to be a woman who’d mastered one of many instruments that, for various reasons, were not necessarily associated with female players (saxes, trombones, tubas etc.) but you had
Here’s an astoundingly lousy Vitaphone short from 1929 featuring ‘Harry Wayman and His Debutantes’. Yes, it’s an all girl orchestra much like the one in ‘Some Like It Hot’ (‘Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopaters’). The only differences are 1) The leader is a guy not a woman. 2) There