The Paramount Comedy Shorts 1929 - 1933 - Cavalcade of Comedy
by Bret Wood
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DVD details
Director: Bret WoodBrand: Kino International
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 216 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-02-21
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: 4472
Studio: Kino Video
Product features:
- CAVALCADE OF COMEDY 1929-1933 (DVD MOVIE)
DVD Reviews of The Paramount Comedy Shorts 1929 - 1933 - Cavalcade of Comedy
DVD Review: Rare glimpses of Vaudeville & Radio stars performing on film!
Summary: 3 Stars
I want to give this set ***** 5 stars because of the rarity of the material. But it is rare for a reason, it is hard to sit through more than two comedy shorts at a time.
The shorts from Paramount are defenately a different breed of short. These are not matured Keystone Comedies like the Hal Roach & Columbia comedies, these are filmed radio. The fact that they use vaudeville & radio stars is the reason for this. I give Paramount credit for doing something different, but they are a bit difficult to sit through as a group. I find myself watching no more than two at a time.
GEORGE BURNS & GRACIE ALLEN are a delight to see in their young radio days, but you will yearn for the crisp banter of their later 1950's TV show.
Young JACK BENNY will also bring out the same reaction. It is nice to see him forming his character, although in this short he is not necessarily the cheapest one on screen.
EDDIE CANTOR has no memorable TV series for us to compare him to, although he did appear on TV, so he is a joy to see. Some of the picture at the end of his short seems lost, the dialogue keeps going while a replacement Paramount logo fades up.
One gem I found was a SMITH & DALE comedy about a pants factory. It is a two-reeler, the first reel is pretty standard then suddenly reel change & story arc change, surreality enters the short! I won't spoil it here with any details. Smith & Dale are a long forgotten comedy team worth seeing again.
It is followed by a strange suicide comedy starring GEORGE JESSEL that I almost turned off, it was so dull. However it was interesting to get the opportunity to see Jessel.
I have only gotten through 1/3 of it, but I will be continuing through the land of vaudeville greats for more rare glimpses.
The Paramount shorts have been abused over the years when they got sold to television in the early 1950's. UM&M TV chopped up the openings & closings and used the master fine grains as printing negatives. Kino has made a vallient effort to restore these with 1930's style Paramount logos, but the title cards are still the re-shot TV titles with UM&M as the copyright holder. As mentioned above, some picture segments at the beginning & end have been lost, and the original negatives show much wear & damage. These are mastered from 35mm, so they look fairly sharp and until a computer restoration is done (and likely won't be) this will be your best presentation of these rarely seen comedies!
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Description of The Paramount Comedy Shorts 1929 - 1933 - Cavalcade of Comedy
CAVALCADE OF COMEDY - DVD MovieTo watch this more-than-three-hour collection of 16 Paramount short subjects is to be transported to vaudeville heaven. These priceless performances were produced between 1929 and 1933. Comedy was to Paramount what musicals were to MGM, and who better to usher in a new era of talking pictures than audience-tested stage entertainers? The studio recruited New York's finest. Among the headliners on this bill are George Burns and Gracie Allen, Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, George Jessel, Bing Crosby, and Milton Berle. The shorts themselves are mostly just filmed records of these established acts, much as if you watched them from your center aisle seat at the Palace Theatre. The jokes, unlike fine wine, have not aged well ("Prosperity is just around the crooner," Bing Crosby offers in "Sing, Bing, Sing"). But several of these shorts offer revelatory early glimpses at these future show-business legends. "A Broadway Romeo" (1931) presents a cockier Jack Benny than audiences would come to know and love. Burns & Allen reveal a surrealist streak in "100% Service" (1931), which climaxes with a parade of would-be takers (including a man with a horse!) for a woman's invitation to join her for honeymoon bridge. Comedy Cavalcade also rescues from obscurity such faded former stars as dialect comedians Smith & Dale ("What Price, Pants?"), who were the inspiration for Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys. The timeless slapstick of "The Plasterers" (1929) with Charles O'Donnell & Jack Blair, "Plastered" (1930) with Willie West & McGinty, and "A Put Up Job" (1931) with Karl Dane and George K. Arthur, fares better than the more dialogue-driven shorts. Taken together, this is a precious time capsule from a bygone era when comedy was just beginning to finds its voice in the movies. ?Donald Liebenson
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