Once there was a place called Hollywood, and out of it poured wonderful things, fantastic creations that included musicals, musical comedies, and operettas. What fan of classic films has not watched One Hour with You, Shall We Dance, The Pirate, or a hundred others, and not marveled at the level of artistry and studio production that made these films possible?

The golden age of movie musicals falls roughly between 1932 and 1954, but music was a key element in film production almost from the start of the sound era. There were fully orchestrated soundtracks as early as Universal's Captain of the Guard (1930), and even such genres as westerns and gangster films began to use feature songs and musical acts to attract an audience. By the mid-30's, top budget non-musicals had elaborate scores by such masters as Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Of course, music had always combined with image in the movies, because even a one-reel melodrama playing in some Electric Theater in small town Nebraska in 1911 would have had an accompanist, most likely the local church organist. Sound films made music part of the production process. Those who immerse themselves in the films of the 30's can see how quickly the film makers learned to integrate feature songs and scores and put them to the service of storytelling.

In this piece, I'll highlight a handful of non-musical films that have memorable interludes of song, dance, and whatever category one assigns to W.C. Fields' vocal production.

The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933)

This 2-reeler is W.C. Fields' most subversive film, and one of the strangest comedies ever made. It's a spoof of 'demon rum' melodramas, but Fields also mocks the conventions of vaudeville sketches with endlessly repeated punch lines ('And it aint a fit night out for man nor beast!') and the shoddy process work in low-budget films. Most of all, he assaults the audience with repetition, launching a dead-pan delivery of cornball gags and non sequiturs. Almost half a century later, Andy Kaufman used this strategy, and it was the 'new thing' in comedy. Fields did it in 1933 with 20 minutes of acidly funny footage.

He puts the audience to the severest test of all when he picks up an out-of-tune dulcimer and brays a long, long ballad about his son coming to ruin from drink. The film is set in Fields' cabin in the Great North Woods, and he strums the dulcimer with his mittens on. The lyric has the Fieldsian stamp (although its authorship is hard to document) with ornate phrasing and a syllable count that deliberately keeps the singer off the beat. Sample lyrics:

'He dashed his glass upon the floor / And staggered out the door / With Delirium Tremens. / ...And the first person that he met / Was a Salvation Army lass. / ...She placed a mark upon his brow / With a kick that she had learned before she was saved.'

The Fatal Glass of Beer is closest in spirit to Fields' final starring effort, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. Both are surreal and essential.

Addendum: A worthy companion to Fields' temperance ballad is supplied by Marjorie Main in The Women (1939). Playing Lucy, a rough-hewn hostess at a Nevada divorcees' ranch, she hollers several verses on faithless love to the tune of 'On Top of Old Smokey.' A tape loop of Fields' ballad and Main's folk tune would fully equip an army interrogator.

The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933)

With this film, MGM tried to make a star out of boxer Max Baer. He plays a pugilist who falls for a gangster's mistress (Myrna Loy). About an hour in, the script contrives to give Baer a barnstorming tour of vaudeville. Suddenly, we're watching a stage revue, although it's one of those Hollywood revues that would never fit in a conventional theater.

Baer sings! He croons a few bars of 'Lucky Fella,' and, because his voice is flat, the production team throws him straight into an energetic dance number with a chorus line. All the girls are a good foot or shorter than Baer, which adds to the fun.

This is something to see. Baer taps passably, jumps rope with the girls, shadow boxes, and joins the chorus on gymnastic rings, which aren't designed for dance and make for an awkward break in the routine. Through it all, Baer has a cheeky grin, as if to say, 'Betcha didn't think I could do this.' He won't make you think of Gene Kelly, but he brings pep and humor to the routine.

Baer gives a journeyman performance throughout, and reviewers were kind to him. But Prizefighter wasn't enough to make him a film star. He was in two dozen films in the next 20 years, usually in bit parts. His most important contribution to the biz was Max Baer Jr.: Jethro. You should not miss his footnote to Hollywood musical history.


The Gilded Lily (1935)

Claudette Colbert plays a stenographer who becomes a cafe society celebrity after she turns down an offer of marriage from a British noble. Lily is one of several romantic comedies in Colbert's filmography (The Smiling Lieutenant, Tovarich, Midnight, It's a Wonderful World) which deserve the high profile that It Happened One Night enjoys. With excellent support from Ray Milland, Fred MacMurray, and C. Aubrey Smith, Colbert shines. By 1935, she had proved herself in comedy, romance, drama, costume drama, and even a crime drama (The Wiser Sex), and she displayed supreme confidence on screen. Gilded Lily put her back in romantic comedy, a genre in which she was uniquely gifted. With her sauciness, her fashion flair, and that voice, as warm and rich as fresh-poured butterscotch pudding, she's irresistible.

In the script, she is offered a feature spot at a swanky nightclub, and her song is 'Something About Romance.' Stage fright gets her. She misses the beat, forgets lyrics, and begins to talk-sing as she wends her way between tables. The joke is that the patrons take her faltering vocal as a new style of sophisticated cabaret singing. She wins them over, as she wins us. If you are a fan of 30's musicals but haven't seen The Gilded Lily, see it for this number. It may become one of your favorites.

Way Out West (1937)

This is Laurel and Hardy's western spoof. A few minutes in, they arrive in Brushwood Gulch and find a quartet of singing cowboys (The Avalon Boys, featuring Chill Wills) performing 'At the Ball, That's All,' a bouncy pop tune. Stan and Ollie are transfixed. They can't resist. For a magical minute, the story comes to a stop, and we see what instinctive dancers our two friends are.

They sway to the beat, hitch their legs to it, and then break into a graceful soft shoe routine. Within a few turns their dancing becomes exaggerated, as they ornament their steps with waving hands, flapping of coat tails, and backward kicks. They finally give in to wild abandon and do a comic tango into the camera and an outrageous chicken walk in which they snap their heads backward.

This hilarious dance lasts 90 seconds and incorporates about 20 different dance steps. Billy Crystal loved it so that he inserted himself into the footage as a third dancer for the 1992 Oscars telecast. It's a pure gift to Laurel and Hardy's fans. Cut it from the picture, and you'd still have all the plot threads of Way Out West; but you'd be missing a scene of pure enchantment that elevates this team to the top ranks of screen comedians.

Dark Victory (1939)

This is the celebrated tearjerker with Bette Davis as the doomed Judith Traherne, who faces certain death from a brain tumor. It was made at the peak of Bette's career and brought her some of her best critical notices. The picture does have credibility issues. There is the plot set-up of Bette learning exactly how her last minutes will play out (unlike any actual cancer prognosis). There's Humphrey Bogart as Michael O'Leary, the Irish horse trainer, doling out the begorras for all he's worth. E.B. White devoted an essay to the unrealistically upscale depiction of what Judith calls the simple life in the picture's later scenes. Finally, Max Steiner's score has been criticized.

In her later years, Davis cited Dark Victory as a picture with too much orchestration. Judith's final scene, ascending the stairs to her bedroom, is accompanied by Steiner's end theme and a vocal chorus. In an interview, Davis said (paraphrasing), 'It should have been just me going up the staircase, but Max Steiner brought in his angels.' (Warner Brothers buffs know how bombastic the movie scores got beginning in the late 30's. Overbearing strings marked the dramas, and blaring trumpets announced pratfalls in the comedies.)

However, Dark Victory has one musical moment that, depending on your emotional investment in the story, can be devastating. It's the scene where Judith has learned that her condition is terminal and she goes on a drinking binge. She ends up in a club where Vera Van is singing 'Oh Give Me Time for Tenderness.' The repeated phrase 'Give me time' cuts Judith to the core. She pays the band to play and replay the song. Director Edmund Goulding gives us a shattering close-up of Davis, held in bitter thrall to the song, singing along with Vera Van.

Addendum: Edmund Goulding wrote the song for the film with musical comedy star Elsie Janis. It's a sophisticated pop song for 1939, with an unusual chord structure and a bluesy feeling that are perfect for Dark Victory.