Every Sunday
Director: Felix Feist
Year: 1935
Rating: 6.5
Much to my surprise and delight at the end of His Butler's Sister they tacked
on Every Sunday, an 11 minute musical short. I had tried to find this but
not been able to. It is weird watching this - a real time capsule of before
they were famous. Deanna Durbin and Judy Garland were signed to MGM and neither
had much going on - Durbin was waiting for her film to start shooting (it
never did, so she was released) and Garland was between assignments.
In it Garland and Durbin are teenage girls - 14 in real years - and in it
Durbin's grandfather is a band conductor on Sunday's in the park. And no
shows up, he is going to be fired and so the girls get up and sing a song
each and then join together and the people flock in and good old granddad
is saved for now. They are both remarkable singers - Garland does a swing
number and Durbin something operatic. The producers didn't spend much money
on make-up - Garland is wan and very plain and Durbin is unrecognizable from
her role in Three Smart Girls later that year. You would have likely watched
this and thought great voices for being so young but there is no star material
here.
