Word: operettas
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This week's feature attraction is the screen adaptation of last year's musical comedy success "Music in the Air." The music and lyrics by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein have been retained and are the redeeming feature of an otherwise dull and tiresome operetta adaptation...
Gloria Swanson, who has unwisely returned to the flickers, and John Boles are cast in the leading roles. Douglass Montgomery and June Lang are prominent in the supporting cast. The story is centered around two temperamental singers, an operetta production in Munich, and two Havarian ingenues who finally leave the glamor of the city and return to the simple pleasures of country life. The acting is burlesqued and lacks the humor and naturalness characteristic of the original...
...does not succeed. Nor does she jilt her bumpkin boy friend (Douglass Montgomery), although for a moment or two it seems likely that he will succumb to the wiles of Gloria Swanson. Instead of Broadway, the scene is Bavaria and instead of jazz the music is a sort of operetta through which continuously looms the grave, of fended shade of Victor Herbert. Music in the Air is principally important for providing Miss Swanson, 36, with her current comeback vehicle. She seems very well preserved and sings through her teeth in a sprightly way. Aside from her triangular mouth...
...which the cinema excels. Particularly in fantasy for children, there usually prevails a certain horrid condescension on the part of producers who, unwilling to risk inventing fantasies of their own, prefer to adapt classics. This fact makes it hard to believe that any adaptation of Victor Herbert's famed operetta would amount to more than a ridiculous calamity. Fortunately, Producer Hal Roach, well-versed in the art of gag comedies, saw fit to throw most of his original material out the studio window, retaining only three Herbert songs. What remains is a queer blend of Alice in Wonderland, Mother Goose...
Africana (by Donald Heywood; John Mason, producer). Negro Donald Keywood, the Noel Coward of Harlem, recently returned from a trip to Africa. His visit inspired him to write Africana, billed as a serious Negro operetta. African atmosphere is supplied by a King Yafouba, a Prince Soyonga and a chorus of "African jumpers...