After The Jazz Singer broke the sound barrier
in 1927, there was a rush from the film studios to start making sound films.
Many of these were musicals which fully embraced the new technology and were
popular with the audiences (sadly, many of these have been lost). RKO had
its biggest hit with Rio Rita in 1929 and brought back the director (Luther
Reed) and three of the stars to make this film. But by then musicals were
on the outs temporarily and the film lost money. Which is a shame because
though it feels very much like an artifact today it is rather fun with lots
of musical numbers. One issue seeing it today is that the camera is very
static so that it feels like you are watching a staged show. Within a few
years camera movement was greatly improved and the musical came roaring back
with Busby Berkeley.
The female star is Bebe Daniels who had
been in films since the silent days as a teenager but who had no problem
moving into sound as she had an excellent singing voice. Over the following
years she made fewer and fewer films - though the classic 42nd Street and
the first Maltese Falcon were two of them. She moved to England and during
WWII she and her husband had a radio show and she refused to go back to the
USA and did her show even during the blitz. Her two co-stars from Rio Rita
are the comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey who had been teamed in 1927 and
were to become big stars with their own films through the 1930's till Woolsey
died in 1938. Their comedy style is pure vaudeville patter doing skit like
scenes that are still reasonably amusing even today.
It is the south in Antebellum times (pre-Civil
War) and the slaves on the plantation are just happy folks out in the fields
singing as they toil. The owner Mr. Van Horn boasts that his slaves are the
best singers in Louisiana. The concept of contented slaves was to be a theme
in Hollywood films for decades. The owners son (Everett Marshall who has
a big baritone voice and only made two films as he preferred doing opera)
tells his father that he is going to get married to a belle in New Orleans
and will bring her back to the plantation. This is Dixiana (Daniels) whose
voice drips with honeysuckle southern gentility - she is an entertainer with
her two partners. The family is thrilled until they learn about her background
and kick her out.
But who cares about the plot - it is as
creaky as a week old corpse - most of the film is devoted to musical numbers
(that look and sound very old-fashioned even compared to musicals within
a few years) and comedy skits from W&W - and one also from Mr and Mrs
Van Horn that is quite clever. Within the music and the comedy they squeeze
in the plot and the less the better.
The last 20-minutes of the film suddenly
turns to Technicolor and it looks great. Two firsts in the film - the first
orchestral credit for Max Steiner who would go on to compose many classic
film soundtracks - and the debut of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson who gets to
do a solo dance number (though the video version I saw often cut off his
feet). He was 52 years old at the time.
