This week I’ve posted two examples of the stunning work of forgotten movie musical director/choreographer/designer Dave Gould. Above is one of his best sequences, the ‘Hollywood Party’ number from the 1934 film –er–‘Hollywood Party’. For a brief stretch in the 1930s, Gould was given the resources of major Hollywood studios–RKO, MGM, Fox–and encouraged to create his peculiarly imaginative musical sequences. At some point in the later part of the decade, though, his career took a strange turn–he began working almost exclusively on musical short-subjects. The material is quite obscure and I’m having trouble finding much of it on YouTube. A number of the titles are ‘soundies’–those odd little reels made for viewing on a jukebox. What’s depressing is that Gould is unrecognizable in this format, having no resources or apparently inspiration to do anything much but shoot the performers in as simple a way as possible. One of the shorts that I found, ‘Paris Is Gay Again’ (1944) is frankly too poor for me to even post; honestly it looks like it was directed by the Woody Allen character in ‘Hollywood Ending’–you know, the blind director? But I managed to dig out one Gould short that shows the master still at work, albeit in reduced circumstances. It’s a 1941 soundie of the hit tune “Moonlight Cocktail”. I’ve posted it below. Comparing it to the ‘Hollywood Party’ sequence is like comparing a masters painting on a museum wall to a child’s crayon drawing on a refrigerator. Still, the Gould touch is recognizable. What on earth happened to the man? Drink? Divorce? Simple loss of inspiration? His credits struggle on through the late ’40s and then abruptly stop. He lived another twenty years, dying in 1969 at the age of seventy. Dave! Dave! What happened???