The Voice of Hollywood
Vložit
- čas přidán 12. 09. 2024
- The Voice of Hollywood was a series of short subjects produced by Tiffany Pictures in 1930 and 1931. Each newsreel featured a different celebrity host whose job it was to link together the footage of the different celebrity guests. In this installment, Robert Woolsey is the host, and his first duty is to introduce Al St. John and Nancy Welford, who clown around for a bit. Then Johnnie Walker says a few words about Hollywood, and Mary Carr "gives a little motherly advice to the young ladies." A group of little girls -- "the stars of tomorrow" -- next do a dance for our entertainment. The last portion presents several stars and, for some reason, a lion. The stars are Lew Cody, Gwen Lee, Cliff Edwards (and uke), Buster Keaton, and Raquel Torres. Raquel calls the lion Leo.
Thanks for posting this. My great Uncle Johnnie was amazing...Funny how you can really hear his NY accent..lol
Whoa! I'd never heard Al St John's voice before. And Buster's voice was so much smoother when he was so young.
Love Robert Woolsey and Buster!
The reason Nancy Welford is performing with Al St. John in this short is because they were working together on the stage at the time this short was lensed. Al St. John was the nephew of famed comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. St. John was a talented slapstick comedian in the silent days known for his athletic abilities. Unfortunately he was never able to come up with a comic persona to endear himself with motion picture audiences...that is, until the talkies, where he became a very popular bearded cowboy sidekick in what seems like a hundred westerns under the name of Fuzzy St. John.
As to Nancy Welford, she made only about five films. Her most famous was Golddiggers of Broadway, which was budgeted at $500,000 but made 2.25 million at the box office. I have heard that it held the record for being the top grossing picture for ten years until Gone With The Wind. To bad the film only exists in a fragmented form. Out of curiosity, I went to see if I could find any other information about her and came upon a blog written by a film enthusiast from Oakland named Rob McKay. The following is from what he wrote about her and I felt it was interesting enough to share:
I knew Nancy Welford very well. I met her in 1974 and we were friends until her death in 1991.
Nancy came from a theatrical family - her parents, Dallas Welford and Olive Loftus Welford were actors, as their parents and grandparents had been before them in England.
Nancy had a very successful stage career during the 1920s. She appeared as leading lady in a couple Broadway musicals, RAIN OR SHINE with Joe Cook in 1928 and LADY DO with Karyl Norman in 1927. She had also made a great success playing Nanette in the road production of the original NO NO NANETTE in 1925. This was a tremendous hit that Nancy toured with in most of the major west coast cities - including a long run in Los Angeles - so most of the important movie people had seen her long before 1929 and GOLDDIGGERS.
In 1929 Nancy received a phone call from Warner Brothers who asked if she would make a screen test for them. She and her NANETTE leading man, Douglas Keaton, went out to the Warners / Vitaphone studio in Brooklyn and sang "Tea For Two" in front of the cameras. The Warner's executives out on the coast liked the test and Nancy was offered a ten week contract for $1,000 per week. She accepted and took the train out to Hollywood, where she filmed GOLDDIGGERS OF BROADWAY.
After finishing up with GOLDDIGGERS, she went up to Portland Oregon to appear in another stage revival of NANETTE. When she returned to Hollywood, Actor's Equity was on strike. Her contract with Warners called for one picture with an option for another. With the coming of the strike, Warners did not pick up the option. Having been out of work for a couple weeks and unable to work at major studios because of the strike, her agent suggested she do a film on "Poverty Row", since the cheaper studios were not so involved in the strike. Having no idea how long the strike would last, she decided to follow his advice and that is when she made PHANTOM IN THE HOUSE and JAZZ CINDERELLA.
Sad to say, his advice probably wasn't the best, since once the strike was settled she wasn't able to get any more work in Hollywood. Likely this wasn't entirely due to Equity frowning upon her working during the strike, but surely it was a contributing factor.
Underrated remarks.
@AndrewGilmore1986 Sorry, don't have any more. Glad you enjoyed this one though! :)
It’s the MGM lion ...