State Theatre Collection During COVID Part 8 The Comedy

This was the time when serious shows felt they might be turning the audience away and they had to create something fun. Added to the show was the comedy short, usually before the main feature. These comedies were a drawcard in themselves. Not only were popular numbers played but once again the sound people were encouraged to use a full barrage of sound effects as they did during the early years of vaudeville, see the note about Foley at the end.The late twenties was when some comedic duos began their careers and moved on to success in the talkies. Perhaps best known would be Laurel and Hardy, I would argue that some of their best work occurred around 1929, the end of the silents. I have fans who ask me when we will show Big Busines, maybe next Christmas we will. Buster Keaton is still the audience of The Moving Picture Show’s favourite actor but still many of the earlier short comedies were dragged out…Keystone cops, Charlie Chaplin.  and the rest.Finally, the films would once again use popular songs of the day, they no longer had to prove themselves as a respected art form, the days of vaudeville were long gone  Now the State Theatre collection had the later Irving Berlin, as well as composers such as  Walter Donaldson, Ray Henderson, George Gershwin. Irving Berlin 1888 to 1989 101 years. Performing rights are now a problem for longer-lived composers  Irving Berlin is still a big problem, hate to complain about a composer’s longevity but his death at a very old age means this extraordinary successful popular musician will not have his music released in the public domain until 2040. Just as well I know his works well and own a large number of them. The State Theatre Collection lists 58 charts but as there are many doubles there are not nearly as many as I would have expected. I have already noted there is not a copy of Alexander’s Ragtime Band in the collection which was a surprise but the collection does not seem to have started seriously until around 1910. Alexander’s Ragtime Band was written in 1911.Watch all the sound effects used to part of Barney Oldfields Race For Life accompanied by theTwelfth Street Rag (all helped by some kids, this part of the show was to be fun)This one is from Laurel and Hardie’s The Two Tars. Music is Whispering by Paul WhitemanWhat is now called Foley originated as adding sounds to live broadcasts of radio drama from radio studios around the world in the early 1920s. Phonograph recordings of the era were not of sufficient quality or flexibility to faithfully reproduce most sound effects on cue, so a sound effects person had to create all sounds for radio plays live. Jack Donovan Foley started working with Universal Studios in 1914 during the silent movie era. When Warner studios released The Jazz Singer, its first film to include sound, Universal knew it needed to stay competitive and called for any employees who had radio experience to come forward. Foley became part of the sound crew  Because microphones of the time could not pick up more than dialogue, other sounds had to be added after the film was shot. Foley and his small crew projected the film on a screen while recording a single track of audio that captured their live sound effects. Their timing had to be perfect but Jack Foley’s skill was all developed during the silent era.Finally a sing-a-long of one of the most popular songs of the era. The sing-a-long replaced the illustrated song slides of the earlier era but kept its popularity. The song is over 90 years old and still my audience knows it all. Bye, Bye Blackbird from The State Theatre Collection.