Let’s Go In to a Picture Show 1907-1922
(Musical Theater Project/Harbinger Records)
September 24, 2018
Reviewed by Alix Cohen for Cabaret Scenes
This is an illuminating, well-produced hoot—26 original recordings from 1907-1922 featuring the best vocalists and musicians of the time. Piano work is wonderful, vocal arrangements are lighthearted. Intermittent fuzz is evocative rather than annoying.
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Some selections come from the scores for silent films, others were recorded to promote movies, and several are about them. For example:
“Johnny and Mary were just as contrary/As sweethearts go/Johnny loved the ‘dram-er’ /But Mary would stammer, ‘A picture show.’ (“Let’s Go In to a Picture Show”; Junie McCree/Albert Von Tilzer, from an Edison two-minute cylinder).
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“Ev’ry night they used to go/And see a Ten-cent ‘Movie’ Show/Where all the lights were turned down low/Oh what heaven! Oh what bliss!/Not a kiss would Johnny miss” (“At the Ten-Cent Movie Show”; Leo J. Curley/ George Christie). Taking your squeeze to the movies was a date that implied action on and off the screen as “Take your girlie to the movies/If you can’t make love at home” testifies.
How about “They All Do the Charlie Chaplin Walk” (Mills and M. Scott) or a song like “He’s Working in the Movies Now” (Harry Williams/Vincent Bryan/Henry Lodge), which wryly talks about dad’s colorful new job? He’s doing what?!
Movies, sheet music, and recordings followed one another in as quick a succession as possible. We hear “Movie Rag,” “Brooklyn Cakewalk,” (dance arrangements sold songs) “Mickey” (Harry Williams/Neil Moret) is a piano roll from a Mack Sennett-produced Mabel Normand feature), and “Poor Pauline” (from The Perils of Pauline series). “The Sheik (of Araby)” (Harry B.
Smith/Francis Wheeler/Ted Snyder) is a tongue-in-cheek riff on Rudolph Valentino’s 1921 film The Sheik.
The single familiar number (besides perhaps “The Sheik”) is “At the Moving Picture Ball” (Howard Johnson/Joseph Santly), a precursor to celebrity list songs. Among others, it calls out Theda Bara, Wallace Reid, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Mister Zukor (Adolph Zukor, a producer at Paramount Pictures). Really, you want to get up and move.
Melodies and lyrics alike are refreshingly uncomplicated.
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The recording is great fun. It will leave you with a smile.