Yesterday I posted a lovely video mash-up of images (still and live) reconstructing the 1927 Ziegfeld Follies, accompanied by a twin piano arrangement of some 20s tunes taken from an Ampico piano roll. I mentioned that the twin piano act was a popular featured act in Vaudeville of the day and today’s Vitaphone short will show us the real thing. The pianists are Victor Arden and Phil Ohman and they play a medley of three songs; ‘Rustle of Spring’, ‘Mightly Like a Rose’ (‘Like’ is spelled ‘Lak’ for full racist effect) and the showstopper finisher ‘Try and Play It’. This is an incredibly early piece of sound/film history. It was released on July 11, 1927. This is curious to me since ‘The Jazz Singer’ wasn’t released until three months lafter–October 6th–and is widely heralded to be the first time audiences saw a synchronized sound track. Perhaps the fact that Arden and Ohman are voiceless is the reason this short isn’t considered a ‘talkie’? That seems a little too much of a technicality, doesn’t it? I think this short might be a candidate for a little revisionist history; before their was Al Jolson belting ‘Mammy’ and ‘Blue Skies’, there were Victor and Phil banging on the ivories.

The films is shot with three cameras running simultaneously–there was as yet no way to edit a soundtrack. (This is the reason, by the way, that most early talkies are staged like three-camera sitcoms).. A wide shot is used at the very beginning and ending only. A tighter two shot shows us the backs and semi-profiles of the pianists with a piece of their respective keyboards. Finally a close up of Arden’s hands is used–all too infrequently, in my opinion. No attempt was made to position a camera in what might have been a more interesting place–shooting through the piano from the back, strings in foreground perhaps? But if you let yourself drift into the minds of a 1927 audience you can see what was so special here. Their playing is excellent and seeing them actually hit the notes and produce music in a motion picture as opposed to live must have been mesmerizing. Finally: this colorization, according to the YouTuber who posted this, was performed using a method called ‘Deoldify’. Now, I was pretty sure this was a waggish little joke. But I looked it up and it turns out there really is such a thing. It appears to be an app which allows you to improve images quality of old photographs and film. Pretty cool, even if I don’t really know what the hell they’re talking about.. Click here to read more about Deoldify. Perhaps you can explain it to me better than their website can.