Reviews for Free Magazines for Libraries

The average rating for Free Magazines for Libraries based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-01-09 00:00:00 Moishe Feuchtwanger Even though my copy is only about 10 years old it is like a bible to me - I refer to it so often, it is now held together with a couple of big elastic bands. An extraordinary 171 musicals were made between 1927 and 1932 - Edwin Bradley has researched every one, given detailed cast lists, a song list with who sang what and who wrote which and then a critical analysis and proved he had tracked down even the most obscure. Like "Howdy Broadway" (1929) at 48 minutes and distributed by Ray-art, it was made to promote Tommy Christian and his Collegians. Cheaply made and with 5 or 6 songs, only the last 10 minutes took place in New York - it was essentially a college movie but unfortunately Christian proved an amateur actor!! "Spring is Here" (1930) had Bradley mystified. With a score by Rogers and Hart and bright young hopefuls like Bernice Claire, Alexander Grey and Inez Courtney, it seemed to disappear and didn't even have a New York opening. When he finally tracked it down the answer was clear, it was very lightweight about the idle rich and their giddy offspring - still it does feature the standard "With a Song in My Heart". No plot was too contrived for an old musical - a circus girl who marries her sweetheart's best buddy so she won't be deported (that's Marilyn Miller in "Sunny" (1930), still she does get to sing "Who"!!) Two buddies who impersonate big city financiers while escaping the law for catching under sized fish!! ("Top Speed" (1930) and a college professor's mousey daughter (Joan Bennett no less) vamps up and manages to engage herself to an entire football team - all in an effort to save her dad's school from closing ("Maybe It's Love" (1930). From the excellent - "The Dance of Life" (1929)- Barbara Stanwyck's non appearance gave Paramount contract player Nancy Carroll a chance to shine and she became a star, "Whoopee"(1930) - Eddie Cantor refused to sign unless they imported the stage choreographer Busby Berkeley to weave his magic on the movie as well, "Sunnyside Up" (1929) - Janet Gaynor sang "Sunnyside Up" and "I'm a Dreamer" in such a little girl voiced but somehow made she makes you believe in her. To the embarrassing - "Golden Dawn" (1930). Bradley thinks it was films like this that helped kill off the early musical cycle. "Golden Dawn" was about a native woman idolized for her golden hair - it was even mocked and jeered on it's release!! The two leads (Vivienne Segal and Walter Woolf King) were finished in movies. Segal, who went on to be "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" by Broadway's "Pal Joey", just had the misfortune to peak when the first musical cycle was dying. King brought a breach of contract suit against Warners that was apparently settled before he was asked to sing in court (to prove his voice was not as bad as Warners has hinted). Bradley has divided the book into chapters such as "No Business Like Show Business" showing backstage musicals like "Pointed Heels"(1929) which proved Helen Kane was better as a support player. "Glorifying the American Girl"(1929) - Ziegfeld wanted to show Hollywood how to make a first class musical but was left with egg on his face. "Hail to the Victors" about the birth of the college musical - "Sweetie" (1929) the best, "Sunny Skies" (1930) the worst. To say nothing of the All Star revues - every studio put one out starting with MGM and it's "Hollywood Revue of 1929" - over two hours of stars being dragged out to sing and dance in skits that looked as though they had had to choreograph them themselves (ie Joan Crawford). By the next year when "Paramount on Parade" and "King of Jazz" showed how stylish and entertaining they could be the public were staying away. You start to realise what really killed off the early musicals (aside from a glut on the market (171 in 4 years!!), it was trite plots, people singing at the drop of a hat and, of course, weak forgettable songs. When studios brought the rights to Broadway shows it was often cheaper to junk the scores and bring in their house composers to write standardized forgettable ditties of the "moon, june, spoon" variety. "Fifty Million Frenchmen" was one of the successes of the 1929 season with a scintillating Cole Porter score (including "Let's Do It") - the studio filmed it as a comedy, junking all the songs and it flopped. A film I liked very much, "Kiss Me Again" (1930) showed an operetta could work. All the songs were retained with Bernice Claire glowing as "Mademoiselle Fifi", singing the beautiful title song and the stirring "Mascot of the Troops" and the sensuous dancing of the Sisters G in the "Tropicana" ballet and it was only 70 minutes long. But by the time it was released (it had been made in March 1930) in early 1931, the writing was on the wall, people were staying away from any film vaguely resembling a musical and Claire, whose voice equalled Jeanette Macdonald's, was already back on the stage.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-03-13 00:00:00 Thomas H�rdler I borrowed this book on interlibrary loan because it contains a list of the American prisoners of war who were lost at Subic Bay, Philippines. My cousin was one of those. The author describes the capture, transportation, and eventual repatriation of the men. It is an amazing story of endurance.