| Sally (1929) | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | John Francis Dillon |
| Written by | Waldemar Young A.P. Younger based on the Broadway musical by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse |
| Starring | Marilyn Miller Alexander Gray |
| Music by | Jerome Kern Leonid S. Leonardi Irving Berlin Al Dubin Joe Burke |
| Cinematography | Devereaux Jennings Charles Edgar Schoenbaum (Technicolor) |
| Editing by | LeRoy Stone |
| Distributed by | First National Pictures: A Subsidiary of Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | December 23, 1929 |
| Running time | 103 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Sally (1929) is the third all talking-all color movie ever made (the first was On with the Show 1929). The color process of Sally was Technicolor. Sally was also the 6th color movie released by Warner Brothers, the first five were The Desert Song (1929), On With the Show (1929), Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), Paris (1929), and The Show of Shows (1929).
It was based on the Broadway stage hit, produced by Florenz Ziegfeld (which played at The New Amsterdam Theatre, from 12/21/1920 to 4/22/1922),[1] and retains three of the stage production's Jerome Kern songs ("Look for the Silver Lining", "Sally", and "Wild Rose"), the rest of the music newly written for the film by Al Dubin and Joe Burke.[2] Marilyn Miller, who had played the leading part in the Broadway production, was hired by the Warner Brothers at an extravagant sum (reportedly $1000 an hour for a total of $100,000) to star in the filmed version.[3] The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction by Jack Okey in 1930.[4][5]
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Sally (Marilyn Miller) is an orphan who was named by the telephone exchange where she was abandoned as a baby. In the orphanage, she discovered the joy of dancing. Working as a waitress, she serves Blair (Alexander Gray), and they both fall for each other, but Blair is engaged to socialite Marcia. Sally is hired to impersonate a famous Russian dancer named Noskerova, but at that engagement, she is found to be a phoney. Undaunted, she proceeds with her life and has a show on Broadway, but she still thinks of Blair.
While never technically a "lost" film, Sally was unavailable for public viewing for nearly six decades. It wasn't until around 1990 when the film was once again available for archival and revival screenings. However, the film survives only in black and white except for a 21⁄2 minute color segment from the Wild Rose musical number, which was discovered in the 1990s and inserted into the print currently in circulation. Sepia-toned black and white footage is inserted to replace individual frames which are missing in the color fragment.