User Reviews

Frances White sings a few of her better known songs, including the one I used for the title of this review and "Creole Rose". She was one of the wellnown singers of the 1910s and 1920s, and had appeared in a dozen or so movies a dozen years before she made this one for MGM -- a screen test not only for her, but for sound films; MGM was being very cautious about moving into them.

Miss White is clearly a talented singer, doing songs in a variety of styles and clothes. ZThe top brass was still thinking about how to move into talkies, and this makes it look like they were considering musicals. Then 1929 came, and First National and RKO so overloaded the market with the form that no one would be interested until 1933. It's too bad: Miss White looks like she would have been a wow.

Up until recently, I assumed that the Vitaphone unit were the only ones doing experimental sound films by recording various vaudeville singers of the age. Well, when I bought "Classical Musical Shorts from the Dream Factory", I thought they were also Vitaphone shorts but instead they were from MGM. However, the sound films appear to start about 1928...years after Vitaphone already created quite a few sound shorts. In other words, MGM was playing catch up and they weren't about to start making sound full length films until they learned the technology with these cheaper shorts.

Among the many stage performers on the DVDs is Frances White...a rather ordinary looking woman...at first. She sings a song wearing a gay 90s sort of getup. But then she appears dressed as a child-- much like Fanny Brice and her Baby Snooks character. In fact, she sports many different outfits and isn't particularly bad compared to most of the MGM shorts singers. Now I am not saying she's great or a must- see...for goodness sakes, no. But she is moderately talented and you won't hate the short...which makes it different from many of the other films in the four-disc set.