Variety Reel #3 2 of 2

Year Published: 19301940

Complete Record: “Dames” (1934) Vitaphone short directed by Busby Berkeley starring Joan Blondel, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell and Zazu Pitts. “Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarfs” (1943) (Cartoon directed by Bob Clampett, Merrie Melodies) A blackface parody of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with a strong swing backbeat...and no apologies! Mammy (who resembles Aunt Jemima) tells her "Honey Child" the story of "So White" and the wicked Queen who "was as rich as she was mean." "She had everything," including sugar, coffee, auto tires, scrap metal, Chattanooga choo-choos, and a family coat of arms consisting of dice and switchblades. So White is a lascivious sexpot forced to wash miles and miles of laundry as she sings "Blues in the Night." "Magic Mirror on the wall, send me a prince about six feet tall," intones the Queen. When zoot-suited, thick-lipped hipster Prince Chawmin' (who has dice for teeth!) finds So White "dynamite," the Queen calls in Murder Inc. to "black out So White." Prince Chawmin' and the dwarfs are all miniature caricatures of Fats Waller, except for one who resembles Stepin Fetchit. The prince kisses and tries to revive the heroine. Ruth Etting in “Roseland” (Vitaphone) 1930 Helen is a taxi dancer at Roseland, a Manhattan club. That night she plans to enter a singing contest Roseland is hosting on the radio. Her dad, a servant at a household where her boyfriend is the chauffeur, has been ill, so she stops by to see him where he works. While there, she sits with her beau in the back seat of the town car and drops her Roseland ID card, which Jack, the heir to the family fortune, finds on his way to town for the evening. He goes slumming at the Roseland to return the ID. He likes Helen at first sight, setting up a choice Helen may have to make between the wealthy Jack and the chauffeur. With that choice on her mind, she enters the contest. Singing male and female police officers from “Calling All Crooners” (1937)