The Show of Shows


Show of Shows is a 1929 American sound pre-Code musical revue film directed by John G. Adolfi and distributed by Warner Bros. The sound Vitaphone production was shot almost entirely in Technicolor, cost almost $800,000 and earned more than twice as much at the box office.
Show of Shows was Warner Bros.' fifth color film; the first four were The [Desert Song (1929 film)|The Desert Song], On with the Show!, Gold Diggers of Broadway and Paris.. The film features most of the contemporary Warner Bros. film stars, including John Barrymore, Richard Barthelmess, Noah Beery Sr., Loretta Young, Dolores Costello, Bull Montana, Myrna Loy, Chester Conklin, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Winnie Lightner, Tully Marshall, Nick Lucas and Betty Compson.

Plot

The film is styled in the same format as was the earlier MGM film The Hollywood Revue of 1929. Because of the film's high budget, although it performed well at the box office, it did not return as much profit as did The Hollywood Revue of 1929. Show of Shows was originally intended as an all-color sound film and promoted as such, but 21 minutes were shot in black and white—17 minutes of the first part and the first four minutes of part two.
The film features nearly all of the stars under contract with Warner Bros, most of whom vanished from the studio by 1931 after tastes had shifted as a result of the Great Depression.
Show of Shows features many stars of silent films as well as stage and novelty acts. Frank Fay appears as the master of ceremonies.

Segments

Songs featured

Cast

Uncredited

Production

Four specialty acts were filmed but deleted from the final release print. Each was released separately in 1930 as a Vitaphone Varieties short subject:
  • Evolution of the Dance : A pageant of performers offering various styles of dance, featuring the comically clumsy Lupino Lane in a hobo ensemble. Dance directors Larry Ceballos and Jack Haskell received screen credit in the short subject, but Lane did not.
  • Jack Buchanan with the Glee Quartet : The British entertainer originally performed this sketch on Broadway in The Charlot Revue of 1926. Buchanan apologizes to the audience for his unscheduled appearance and explains that he is an emergency replacement for one of the Glee Quartet. The group presents "The Fox Has Left His Lair", but the singers perform so briskly that Buchanan becomes flustered and tries desperately to keep pace.
  • Beatrice Lillie : Lillie sings about men but is interrupted by young male dancers, followed by old male dancers, followed by midget male dancers. Lillie was angered that this sequence, staged with low and obvious comedy, was released as a short subject. She sued Warner Bros. for $50,000 because the short "presented her to the world as a cheap and inconsequential performer". She lost the suit, appealed the verdict, and finally lost again in 1934.
  • Hello, Baby! : Ann Pennington sings "Believe Me", which originally was to be sung by Irène Bordoni but was cut from the final release. The Bordoni version was later released by Columbia Records with the accompanying song "Just an Hour of Love". Pennington also sang three other songs that were only planned for the short. She was intended to have dance sequences in the finale, but they were also cut. "Hello, Baby!" Is believed to be completely lost.

Reception

According to Warner Bros. records, the film earned $1,259,000 domestically and $336,000 internationally.

Preservation

Show of Shows survives in a black-and-white 1958 print from an Associated Artists Productions. Some color segments have been recovered, including:
1. "Meet My Sister" – Sequence was shown publicly at the 2015 TCM Classic Film Festival.
2. "A Chinese Fantasy" – Entire sequence is present in commercially available copies of the film.
3. "Frank Fay With Sid Silvers" – An announcement was made in July 2017 by the Vitaphone Project that portions of this sequence have been recovered, and preservation is ongoing.
4. "A Bicycle Built For Two" – An announcement was made in July 2017 by the Vitaphone Project that portions of this sequence have also been recovered, and preservation is ongoing.
5. "If Your Best Friend Won't Tell You" – An announcement was made in July 2017 by the Vitaphone Project that portions of this sequence have also been recovered, and preservation is ongoing.
6. "King Richard III" – At least one Technicolor specimen frame is known to exist.
7. "Finale" – A six-minute segment of this sequence was shown publicly in Australia in the late 1970s, but the print is believed to have been destroyed in the late 1980s. The British Film Archive has extracts from this scene along with snippets from other early film musicals. At least one Technicolor specimen frame from this sequence is known to exist.
8. "Curtain of Stars" – A four-second segment of this sequence was restored by the George Eastman House.
The Library of Congress maintains a copy of the black/white version.
In 2022, an unofficial reconstructed colorized version was published online.