Song of the West

Song of the West
Directed by Ray Enright
Written by Harvey F. Thew
based on the Broadway Operetta by Oscar Hammerstein II and Laurence Stallings
Starring John Boles
Vivienne Segal
Joe E. Brown
Music by Harry Akst
Grant Clarke
Oscar Hammerstein II and Vincent Youmans
Cinematography Devereaux Jennings
(Technicolor)
Edited by George Marks
Distributed by Warner Bros.
Release dates
 March 15, 1930
Running time
 82 minutes
Country United States
Language English

Song of the West (1930) is a musical operetta film produced by Warner Brothers, and photographed entirely in Technicolor. It was based on the 1928 Broadway musical Rainbow by Vincent Youmans (music), Oscar Hammerstein II (lyrics) and Laurence Stallings (book). It starred John Boles, Joe E. Brown and Vivienne Segal, and was the first all-color all-talking feature to be filmed entirely outdoors.

Plot

The story takes place in 1849. Captain Stanton (John Boles), who because of a misunderstanding over a woman with Major Davolo, has been cited for a court martial. As a scout, he is sent to escort a wagon train which is under military escort. It turns out that this escort is his own former regiment. When he meet Davolo, there is another fight and between Stanton and Davolo in which Davolo is killed.

The colonel has Stanton put in the guard house on a murder charge. He escapes disguised as a parson and continues along with the wagon train in order to be near Virginia, the daughter of his former commander, played by Vivienne Segal. They fall in love and when Stanton decides to leave the wagon train, Virginia follows him.

Stanton marries Virginia and opens a gambling hall. When the regiment eventually turns up at the gambling hall, Virginia makes merry with her former friends. Stanton, in a fit of jealousy, leaves the establishment with another woman and tries his luck in California, searching for gold. He has poor luck and becomes a derelict. Eventually he meets his wife in San Francisco, resulting in a happy reconciliation. Some soldiers find him and give him a choice between being deported or re-enlisting in the army. He re-enlists. Joe E. Brown, in the part of Hasty, his doomed sidekick, provided the comedy for the film.

Production

This was Boles's follow-up to his successful role in The Desert Song (1929). The film was finished in June 1929. Following a number of dismal previews, however, Warner Bros. shortened the film by two reels, removing some of the musical content in the process. In spite of being delayed for almost a year before release, the film had a worldwide gross of $920,000 and the featured songs were quite popular, leading RCA Victor to hire Boles, who was then at the height of his popularity, to record "The One Girl" and "West Wind" for commercial release.

Songs

All written by Vincent Youmans and Oscar Hammerstein II unless indicated

Cast (in credits order)

Preservation

Alleged recently discovered fragment showing the wagon train in the film.

No copies of the film are known to exist. The complete soundtrack survives on Vitaphone disks. Warner Bros. records of the film's negative have a notation, "Junked 12/27/48" (i.e., December 27, 1948). Warner Bros. destroyed many of its negatives in the late 1940s and 1950s due to nitrate film pre-1933 decomposition. No prints of the film are known to currently exist, though rumors that private collectors who own foreign prints have continued to surface as late as 1999. When in February 1956, Jack Warner sold the rights to all of his pre-December 1949 films; (inclusing Song of the West) to Associated Artists Productions (which merged with United Artists Television in 1958, and later was subsequently acquired by Turner Broadcasting System in early 1986 as part of a failed takeover of MGM/UA by Ted Turner). In a June 2011 forum discussion, a small fragment, running about a minute, was claimed to have been discovered in the UK and identified as being from the film.[1]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "A fragment of a colour nitrate film". nitrateville.com.

External links